f13.net

From the announcements on the official site:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=7442701

Another double experience weekend!  That will rock, too bad I'm taking my son to Universal Studios in Florida that whole weekend.  Maybe they will have a bonus weekend like they did last time (for those of us unable to play). 

At what point do the players begin to get the fact that it is a half experience game?

Some people like it that way thanks the broken mission system (outlevelling contacts and trivializing storyline missions).

I would probably be perma-subbed if the cut the grind by at least 50%. Just thought I'd throw that out there, again.

I'm glad we got this out of the way early.

Nah, it will hang around because it's true.  The grind is limiting their player base not extending it's longevity.

I used to bitch about the grind, but the last time I played (to the highest level I've been thus far), I agreed with what Trippy said. Exp rate was just about perfect in the mid 20s, too fast at lower levels and I had to be a debtard to keep my stories going.

Never understood the level limits, just scale the freaking missions.  They already have the tech to do to, why not?

One of the early explanations I heard was that they wanted each AV to be fought at a certain level range. So somebody like Dr. Vahzilok was meant to be fought early on and so on up the line as a progression. Sort of like how Kingpin would be a "lesser" AV compared to somebody like, say, Dr. Doom.

There used to be some ways to really get the exp going even if it wasn't a double exp weekend.  This was done on the villians side, we would go and get a full 8 person team, everyone would set their mission level to max, the leader would get a mission in Bloody Bay (it was allways the destroy the base one), he would go in alone, then add all of us after he was inside.  From what I understood, it would make the mission into a max difficulty for a 1 person villain, but all 8 of us would be inside and able to blow up the bad guys pretty quickly, plus we all got the mission completion bonus @ max level.  It is powerleveling...so it can be boring if you're not into blowing things up really fast.  The best part is that everyone was blasting, smashing, holding, buffing, debuffing, etc... something, not like most powerleveling in other games (I remember camping some damn trees in DAoC).

I would be happy if they did increase the leveling speed, too bad all the idiots back when CoH came out leveled to 40 in a month and bitched...so the purple nerf went into effect.

ah so that's what the PvP zone mission exploit is about.

Well, because aside from wondering exactly _how_ Skulls could exist that were more powerful than, say, the Malta Group, lower-level enemies aren't just higher-level enemies with the stats dialed down. They generally have fewer attacks, lower resistances, and less potential to mess you up with status effects. The Vazhilok are terrifying low-level enemies mostly because their minion repertoire consists of a whopping _three_ attacks. Compare this to the five attacks plus self-buff that a high-level minion like an Ice Thorn Caster gets.

Yes, it's certainly possible to retrofit old enemy groups to present a challenge at higher levels by putting upgraded versions of them at certain level bands. Yes, this might well put a Skull boss off the streets of Kings Row on par with a top-of-the line Darkness Elite Paragon Protector. But it would take time to test and balance the "minion upgrades", and how many people would ever bother to take advantage of them?

Whereas if you just left them the way they were and let them spawn up at 50, I can think of a _lot_ of people who'd want to take advantage of that. And not in the good way.

--GF

But you can't design with that group in mind.  ..Or you can, but then you'll get CoH numbers and not WoW numbers.

What I don't understand is, these guys are the masters of dynamically adjusted difficulty in the MMO space. They do sidekicking and mentoring like no other. So why then can you outlevel missions in the first place? And to add insult to injury, why are you denied the mission alltogether when you have outleveled it??

Here's a free idea: Flashbacks! You go to an agent you have outleveled and instead of nothing you get "Remember when..." followed by a cheesy flashback effect and then you're mentored down to the correct level, can do the mission and get exp for it.

See above. Why would anybody bother with the Malta Group or the Carnival of Shadows when at 49 they could just Go Hunt Kill Skuls and get 50?

The justification floating around for why flashback can't happen is something like "we don't intend for one person to have seen everything". If there's a badge involved you can do somebody else's mission and get it, but some of the reason I keep playing alts is because I keep finding "new" mission on my contacts.

About the only thing I'd like to see is an option to have a contact assign you the team's active mission if you haven't already done it, to reduce the amount of overlap a single character sees.

--GF

Or put an xp penalty on over-inflated mobs, so people only who are interested in the story will continue.

Or a little more elaborate, you have storyline track what level the player was the last time they did a mission in it. As long as they are no more than 1 level ahead, let them continue. 

I have no qualms with flashback system for lvl 50s to explore missed content. Since they don't need the XP anyway. Influence can be cut in half or none at all.
But I really am not in the badge crowd but IMO this is their main gripe about 'outlevelling' their misisons, that is missing on badges.

Subscription ends today :/ I have mixed feelings. The first 2 weeks was great. After the first month, the world felt small and not enough stuff to explore and too many same looking instance.  :heartbreak:

I would exploit that by carrying a low level mission with me, preferably one just before a mission involving giant crowds of Hellions.  I'd save it for a tough level, then go in and wipe out the grays, run back to the contact and grab the properly scaled mission, then farm the living crap out of some level 41 Hellions.

You don't get denied story arcs (now visible thanks to a little icon on your contacts) if you've spoken to that contact. Of course, some people hate this since they get left with story arcs full of greys to work through because they missed them the first time.

As said before, most villain groups are set to work between certain lvls. It was part of the initial game design and revising it at this point for all villain groups would probably not be worth the time or effort.

That said, the newer villain groups appear to span the whole lvl 1 to lvl 50 continuum (eg Red Caps, Snow Beasts).

Also I don't expect that Cryptic thought that players would hold onto missions for 5 lvls (or more) at a time.

I wrote a long thing about how you didn't understand what I was saying. But you do, you are right.  I feel pked.  You'd have to track the mission level.

You DO get denied story arcs if you're a villain.  Most villain contacts have 2 arcs and while you'll never be denied the first arc if you've spoken to the contact, you'll be denied the second arc if you outlevel the contact, which pisses me off.

The problem of having an open story arc that you're unaware of was taken care of in I8, since now you'll have a little book icon next to contacts with open arcs.

Some villain contacts have arcs that'll still stick with you. They're the yellow book arcs. The red book arcs won't. On the other hand you can have an arbitrary number of red book arcs open at any one time. I don't know which is which, though, and I'm not sure there's any kind of consistency in which arcs are yellow-book.

--GF

This still happen:

Contact A tells you to talk to contact B. On the way there, you do a mission for Contact Y and level up. Contact B tells you you're too high level and to talk to Contact C.

?

Um, I'm trying to get the precise _problem_ here.

CoH contacts will pass you in two ways - to someone else in the tier once you have their number, and to someone in the next tier up, if you're either just at the end of their tier but with a full bar, or after you've passed their tier. CoV contacts tend to pass off only at a full bar.

If you _really_ wanted to frustrate yourself, at least on the CoH end, you could deliberately keep one spot in each tier open and then trace a chain of "you're too much for me to handle" from your level 5 contacts to your level 45 contacts.

Heck, you could get your first tier 5 contact, then go to Peregrine Island and leech your way to 50, then talk to your level 5 contact and get passed up in a giant chain. of zone crossings.

I'm not sure what part of that constitutes a failing on the game's part.

--GF

The problem is that there could be an interesting choice there: do I want to follow the story or do I want to get exp? Instead of letting me choose they've chosen for me, and for some inexplicable reason they've chosen exp. Ironic choice given superheroes are all about stories instead of gaining levels and the kind of grind their game was/is.

I might have gone for this if Vanguard wasn't getting released.  Like or hate the game, I'll take a full grind in a new experience over an old grind temporarily halved.

I completely agree with this.  I've considered buying Vanguard just because it's new and nothing out really does anything for me.  I'm pretty sure I'll regret it as soon as I've played a night though.  I can't seem to get the MMO monkey off my back. 

I usually play everything, at least for a little while.  I am so totally not playing Vanguard.  It was complete ass.  Even the very little bits that should have been clever, weren't.  I think I'd go back to Lineage before I'd go back to Vanguard.  And Lineage REALLY sucks.

I think you just saved me $50.  Lineage was a nightmare of bad.

I got to level 49 in Lineage.  hehe.  I was so hardcore!  I really think I'm just sick of the same old thing over and over and, after EQ, EQ2, WoW, etc., Vanguard is sort of Same Old ++.  Of course, the fact that it added in grindy things that other MMOs are eliminating, doesn't endear it to me.  If you desperately miss old EQ, this might be your thing, though.  Isn't there still time to give the beta a go?  I reclaimed my 20 GBs a couple of weeks ago.

I miss Double Experience Weekend.  A lot.   :cry:

I played my Ice/Storm controller a bit this weekend, and went from level 18 to 22.

I, too, miss double xp weekend. But, at least now I have Stamina and Hurricane  :-D

I managed to get my scrapper to 40, which is higher than I've ever had a character in CoX.  Now if only the levelling from 40 to 50 would be less grindy than the mid-30s, I wouldn't miss double xp weekend.

Something tells me that I'm going to miss it.  Tons.

At least double xp weekend taught me that pickup groups in CoH aren't horrible.  I only had one shitty group out of many many groups that I joined.

I got Midnight Grasp and slotted the hell out of it once I hit 33. I'm still not sure how much I like it.

It's by far one of the more useful powers in the dark melee set, IMO.  I have mine slotted up with three damamge SOs, two to-hit debuff SOs and one accuracy SO.  I use it about as much as I use shadow maul.  It is especially useful for fighting CoT mages -- and for some reason my mutie has tons of CoT-related contacts. 

At lv 40, it's one of my mainstays.

I'm wondering, how do you slot the rest of you DM attacks? Mine are something like this:

Shadow Punch: Acc DO
Smite: Acc EndRedx2 Dmgx2 Recharge
Shadow Maul: Acc EndRed Dmgx3 Recharge
Dark Consumption: rechargex3 Acc (All DOs, I don't actually use the skill that much, perhaps I should respec a slot or two out?)
Soul Drain: Acc recharge EndRed(DO) +To-Hit
Siphon Life: Healthx2(1 DO) Acc
Midnight Grasp: Acc Dmgx2(1 DO) Recharge DO

If it helps, the rest of my stuff is slotted as such:

Super Reflexes:
Focused Fighting (melee +def toggle): +Defx4(1 DO)
Focused Senses (ranged +def toggle) +Defx3
Agile/Dodge (passive +def ranged/melee): 1 +def SO, 2 +def DO
Practiced brawler (resist status effects): Recharge SO
Quickness (+recharge, spd, resist slow): run speed So (I love to run fast)

Prestige power Quick: run speed DO (heh)

Fitness:
Swift: run spd DO
Health: health SO, 2x health DO
Stamina: +stamina SO

Speed:
Hasten: 3x Recharge SO
Super Speed: Run speed SO


If I did something wrong, please tell me. The reason I kept some DOs (I use to have a lot more) is that I wasn't sure if I could afford to go 100% SO.

I haven't earned influence since lv 36.  I've spent the last four doing solely prestige gains and am just now running out of the reserve cash I built up in the early 30s.  EDIT -- That's because I had to buy a ton of new stuff....my scrapper hadn't been respecced since ED went in.  I use regen instead of SR, so some of my slotting may not make much sense for you (I don't need as much in the way of end reducers).

Smite & Shadow Punch:  3 Dam SO, 2 Acc SO
Shadow Maul:  3 Dam SO, 2 Acc SO, 1 Recharge SO (I may swap this for a 3rd Acc, I also run hasten three-slotted with recharge SOs)
Dark Consumption:  3 Endurance Mod (the one for end gains, not end use reduction) SOs, I believe I have two Accs in there as well
Soul Drain: 2 +to-hit, 2 damage, 2 recharge all SO
I don't use Siphon Life because, well, Regen.
Midnight grasp:  see previous post.

From regen, I did not take reconstruction, and I have yet to take revive or moment of glory -- I'll be taking revive after I take an epic pool

I use combat jumping for added defense, I plan to take acrobatics here or there if I can...I have so many respecs that it doesn't really matter what I do -- I can just redo it all at 50.

I also have taken leadership for the added defense power, this may get repsecced out if I don't have enough room for more powers.

Oh yeah, I also have the fitness pool.  Stamina is 3 slotted with the end gainers.  SO, of course.

IMO, you should be able to afford all SOs without much hassle, especially once you get your origin-specific shop in FF.

Now if only I could find the next one for me.....my FF store maxes out at 40.

No no, you're slotting makes sense. With the way mine are set up right now, my endurance is nearly infinite, even while hastened. Though in the last couple of levels, Siphon Life has put somewhat of a hit on that when I have to use it, and Midnight Grasp takes a Lot of Endurance, so in extended fights, if I am using both of those a lot, my Endurance will eventually wind down.

That's also why I don't have Dark Consumption slotted extensively - I only really need to use it in emergencies. Same with Blues - I usually give them away if grouped, or simply burn them off to make room for possible more useful inspirations.

The one part of your slotting I am wondering about is Soul Drain. With those damage enhancements...does that add to the damage you do while under the resultant buff, or does the initial "drain" hit just do a bit more damage? I thought it was the latter, which is why I don't slot damage into it; I figure, once I am buffed, everything around me is going to die in short order anyway, so a couple more points from the drain are not going to mean much.

Also, on your slotting of MG, and sort of DM in general: why did you slot the debuffs only into MG? Just wondering. Also...I was getting so much combat spam once I actually got MG that I didn't get a chance to check this, but...do the tendrils always "proc" when MG hits, or can MG hit but not give the immoblize? Just wondering, because when I first got it, the attack seemed Very innaccurate. Even now, it may not be as accurate as I would like.

I usually lead off with soul drain.  Now that I think about it, I maybe don't have damage in there, but recharge instead.  It's sad, but I can't recall off the top of my head.  I do know that I've had damage in there -- it's fun for the tiny minions like rikti monkeys....let those little buggers swarm you, pop the soul drain and WHAM, you 're dishing out damage and hitting like nobody's business.  Plus, no more monkeys.

I also use the fear ability (name of which escapes me) early on in fights vs bigger nastier guys like LTs and bosses.  I'm working on the slotting, but it'll end up being 3 Acc, 2 tohit defbuffs, and 1 fear.  That in concert with MG makes for a mob that just won't swing at you and can't really hit if he does. 

The MG debuffs do work as far as I can tell, especially when stacked with the fear ability. 

My basic goal is to keep myself alive while my powers like Instant Heal and Dull Pain recharge.  I'm still getting used to IH being an activateable and not a toggle.  That's going ot end up 3 heal, 3 recharge, just like Dull Pain.  I try to add heals to all of my regen powers so that I'm rarely taking damage that isn't instantly healed.  I use mainly those "new" orange inspirations, defense, damage and accuracy.  I always get a shitload of blues though.  It's rather annoying...which reminds me...I need to put a storage area into the base so I can  pawn those off on teh others in the SG.

I'm still refining this slotting build....it's my first attempt at slotting post-ED so I'm a bit behind the curve of most other people.

Just wonder, what server are you and your SG on now, mostly?

We're on Victory.  We play one set of toons on Weds. nights from 8-11 CST.  The rest of the time, it's usually just me fooling around, Jimbo has a couple of toons in the SG as well.  I'm learning to stop worrying and love pickup groups.

ETA -- On not-Wednesdays, I'm usually on late...like 11pm CST or later until sometime in the morning hours, depending on how much I've had to do all day.  I'm currently working on two rather involved research and writing gigs as well as studyign for the CA bar exam, so my late night play sessions are my sanity maintainers.  There's nothing more satisfying than whuppin' up on some baddies after a day of slogging through the 1,466 page legislative history of the Privacy Act of 1974.  There's nothing that can make up for studying California's community property laws, but beating up Nazis comes close.

The enhancement store after 40 is the Invisible Falcon in Peregrine Island.  He's right up there at the front of the zone (or like 20 yards from it, hard to miss him, look for the big crowd standing by him buying enhancements), and he has all the SO enhancements for every origin.

In my opinion, slotting Shadow Maul for recharge is a bit of a waste.  Instead, I'd rather slot Shadow Punch and Smite for recharge, allowing me to keep up a stream of quick, powerful attacks.  Then, once  I've cycled through them all enough that they're all recharging (which is usually a few cycles), I hit Shadow Maul and let it go while the rest of them recharge.  While Shadow Maul may seem a devastating attack, it takes so long to activate that your  DPS actually goes down when you use it.  In the time it takes, you could have activated a Midnight Grasp, Shadow Punch and Smite (which should be WELL more than enough to take out a white or yellow minion).

That's my preference, though.  I only really use Shadow Maul in the above situation or if I have a nice cone set up.

I've found that it's really useful for me largely because I run at Unyielding or the highest setting (Invincible?) when I solo to make it more worthwhile.  The added damage for orange/red mobs is nice.  Shadow Maul also has the added benefit of keeping the mob you're hitting out of action for the duration of the attack, which kind of ups my survivability.  Heck, I may not have recharge in there, I would have to log in and check.  Doing that would seriously cut my productivity, so I've been guessing at my slotting. :)

No, it doesn't. That "owowowowowow" animation is completely interruptible.

--GF

That's odd, because I sure don't get attacked while it's going on.

Because the animation stops when they go to make an attack.  It doesn't prevent them from doing anything, though, anymore than them using the same move on you prevents you from attacking back.

It's the same as all "hit-reaction" animations, whether it's the one where you raise an arm to block the attack or the "pummeled" one.  Just decoration, no combat effect.

Well, the way my stuff is slotted at the moment, I do good damage Efficiently. At least until I have to start spamming Siphon Life, my endurance pool lasts me a very long time. Longer if I don't spam Midnight Grasp.

/shrug   I seem to do well enough as I run missions on Invincible. Only bosses give me a problem...sometimes.

I played on easy mode. With a mastermind.

I'm just not good at games, I guess :)

Me too.  I always play on easy mode.  If this were a single player game, I'd be cheating.

Probably not, but your TV is AWESOME at 'em!   :-D

ETA -- smileys ftw