f13.net

I've rebuilt four characters so far with enhancement diversification in mind.  I have two more still to rebuild, and they are the ones about which I remain most apprehensive.  I still do not believe I can maintain a reasonable level of power for my human-specialist Warshade.

That being said.

Of the four characters I've rebuilt, one is slightly less fun, the other three are more fun.

Ashen Eidolon, my Controller, is now reliant on much more diverse methods of control- throwing out a Spectral Terror each fight, using Decoys as frequently as they're available, holding, and using his Radiation secondary to keep everything debuffed and largely harmless.  I don't think he's either more or less powerful than he was- but he's more interactive, more diverse, and just plain more interesting to play.  Flash and EM Pulse are now useful tools, but they don't trivialize Blind the way they used to.  I'll admit that more than once previously I asked myself "Why am I bothering to use Blind? It's just one enemy."  That thought didn't cross my mind today.

Llava, my Martial Arts/Super Reflexes Scrapper, is not as fast paced as he was before.  He's also not as durable, as I'm finding myself hit somewhat more.  The recent bonuses to the passives have helped that somewhat, but to be honest I haven't really noticed them.  What I did notice is that I've gone from an attack chain consisting largely of three or four powers to an attack chain of at least 6 powers, frequently 7.  This is not a bad thing.  With a rebalanced Martial Arts set, there's not so much cherry-picking to be done.  Just about every power is useful in its own way (though I still debate how much a Scrapper wants a Taunt power, especially given our increased squishiness).  Thunder Kick, Storm Kick, Crane Kick, Crippling Axe Kick and Eagle's Claw are my 1-5.  Build Up is 6, and I usually use that before throwing down a Dragon's Tail- number 8.  Number 7 is the one that gets used depending on the situation- Cobra Strike, a power I never really used before now.  Suddenly, stunning a Lieutenant is worth it.  This character, however, is level 50.  At lower levels, mileage may vary.  But overall, this guy is more fun to play.

Dullahan, my Sonic/EM Blaster has gone from "try to put out as much damage as possible" to "try to lock down as much as you can, then strategically apply attacks to maximize safety while doing damage".  I think I lucked out a bit, as there's quite a bit of syngergy between Sonic Blast and Energy Melee.  I generally open on a group with Siren's Song, a cone sleep with minor damage, then pick a target and nail him with Stun from Energy Melee.  Follow that with Energy Punch and Bonesmasher and most are dead by then.  Next target, nail with Scream and Shout, Shriek if they're still not dead, another Energy Punch if they're still not down after that.  Take it from there.  Almost like a Dominator in playstyle now, I was bored with this character before and now I'm not.  More fun, good good.

Gin is my Dark/Dark Scrapper.  He's the one who's less fun.  I was very happy with my high speed chain of quick attacks before ED, but they are impossible to pull off without permanent Hasten. (Maybe I could pull it off, but I'd be sacrificing some damage.  I'll copy to Test and see if that works out, someday.)  Before he used permanent Hasten to cycle through Shadow Punch, Boxing, and Smite.  It was fun.  Wham, Thunk, Pow, Thunk, Wham, Pow, Thunk, nonstop.  I still don't care for Midnight Grasp aesthetically, so I decided to continue to avoid it.  Now I use Shadow Punch, Smite, Boxing, Shadow Maul, and Air Superiority.  A while ago I did use Air Superiority as part of my attack chain, but I respecced out of it because it was just a bit slower than I liked.  I was very happy with Boxing, Shadow Punch, Smite.  I regret that being taken away.  I also regret losing the very fast recharge speed I had on Dark Consumption, which worked nicely with the heavily slotted for end. reduction Dark Regeneration that I had.  I'd get low on health, drain everyone around me and get back to full health, and if I got low on Endurance I'd just suck that up as well.  Now, I'm slower, I don't deal as much damage, I take more damage, and I'm less able to fix it.  Does the character still work?  Yes.  And pretty well.  But it's not as much fun as it was.

I expect my results with my Warshade to be similar to my results with Gin.  I also expect my Storm/Rad Defender to still feel like there's not much synergy between his two sets, and like he's really missing a niche.  But that's how he is now, so I can't exactly blame that on ED.

So far, though, ED gets a rating of:
 :-) :-) :-) :-(
Or, to put it more simply:
 :|

EDIT:  All that said, I think the way this was handled was awful.  Directly after a HUGE batch of nerfs, people are coping, figuring out how play is happening, assured that no more big changes are on the way, then this is announced in a way that seems almost reluctant, as if they wanted to slip it past us (whether they wanted to or not- the way it was announced made it seem like that), to say things like "We want you to test it so we can refine the patch notes" and generally give the players the impression that whether or not we like this system, it's going live, then for it to only have, what, one or two weeks of testing before being pushed to live?  And the dev team couldn't give us any examples or solid reasons why this would improve fun or diversity, just "It's more fun, and suits our vision."  Awfully handled, I'm still grumbling about that.

So I suppose that Statesman was right... you just didn't know how to play your characters before so he needed to teach you.  What a guy!

My Mind/Kinetics Controller plays pretty much the same after ED then before, supposedly Kinetics will be the next flavor of the month with Speed Boost, but we'll see. So far no harm no foul.

Now my Fire/Fire tank, ye gods. Much like the controller he plays pretty much the same as before, only worse in every conceivable way but endurance drain. He takes more damage and deals less damage, single targets in particular. Good thing CoV's out tomorrow because right now playing a tank is about as fun as playing an FPS with a gamepad.

My BS/Inv scrapper, lvl 45, plays about the same, except for the whole doing a LOT less damage thing.  Headsplitter was utterly destroyed...  It went from being a major slow heavy hitter to merely a good damage attack, when I replaced 2 of the (now pretty much useless) damages I had in it with recharges.  A crit will still kill a not-too-resistant minion, but even buildup is not enough to kill a minion without a crit.

On the other hand, ED does make Aim and Build Up type powers a lot more useful...  They only effect the base damage, so many people shrugged them off as the bonus from enhancements far overshadowed the boost from BU...  now that you can't get much over 110% in enhnacements, the +75-100% from BU is looking pretty good.

Finally, a friend of mine really likes playing a sonic/sonic defender... which makes me truly nigh invulnerable(caps everything but psionic resist, pretty much), and puts my damage back up near i5 numbers due to resist debuffs.  I love me some Disruption Field...  it's a toggle he casts on me, reduces the dmg resistance of everything in melee range around me by a good bit.  In i5, I could get crits in excess of 1400 damage on headsplitter by using buildup on a heavily debuffed mob.  Now, I can still manage 900ish on crits, but not near what I could before.

Alkiera

It was reverse MMOG engineering.

When you boost one thing, people inevitably complain that it's a stealth nerf to something else. 

So they nerfed damage and defense, and suddenly utility powers seem WAY more useful.

Those clever bastards.

Even though I didn't speak to any Cryptic folks, having spoken to the NCSoft peoples, it seems they are a lot smarter than I gave them credit for...

...hell, almost everyone was. Almost everyone.

Maybe that's why people get annoyed at the "devs are stupid" rants that they read here sometimes. It just isn't that simple. Whenever you make any sort of product at a company there are conflicting interests, money concerns, schedule conserns, personal politics, etc.

Well, some changes are really transparent. Most of the time you can blame the publisher. Fortunately NCSoft isn't the sort of publisher you blame for this sort of thing with the "it'll ship when it's ready" motto. They care about their games. I really don't think EA cares about their games. They might, but it doesn't show...at all.

I really do have to give them credit.  I'm sure the gnashing of teeth will continue for some time to come, and in some cases it's justified (tankers, in particular, were hit VERY hard by this) but for the most part, mission accomplished: the game IS more fun.

Holy shit.  The developers knew the game better than the players.  THEY DO PLAY IT!  MY WORLD IS CRUMBLING

I really do need to rebuild my Warshade and Defender to see how they work out, though, before I come to a final decision for myself.  I do regret that I don't have any decent level Tankers, so I really can't report on how they're doing except through hearsay- reliable hearsay, but hearsay nonetheless.

I have a Fire/Energy tank (42) that I'm not too worried about, I only solo, and I only play him as a scapper anyway (no taunt, no burn).  There is occasional waiting for an attack to recycle so I have ways to slot the powers that will soften the blow.

My fire/fire blaster (32) I'm worried about - he doesn't (didn't) have end problems, my single target attacks recycle very quickly, my AE attacks... I shouldn't be using that often or I'll be sucking dirt... what am I suppose to slot?  I have very few of the /fire set cause melee damage in a blaster seems stupid to me.

My storm/elec still won't play like a corrupter, and I'll still be disappointed by that, so I still won't play him (stuck at 34).

Played my Dark/SR scrapper and noticed no differences because he was my "hard" character, very few defenses chosen, very lite slotting of those defenses - so, nothing to compare to here.

So mostly I can reslot, or don't have to but really I don't see the point. My fragile desire to play the CoH game is gone.  Additionally, I am really starting to resent that I don't know how large a value is when slotting - how much end does a power use?  How long is it's recharge?  If I had numbers, I could make an informed decision on where I wanted to put end redux or rechargers, but I still have no good info at the time I'm reslotting.  In what way is giving me percentage increase/reduction better then giving me the numbers?

From the perspective that ED will revitalize the game, for me, was a failure, and I'm guessing that I'm not the only one in this category.  I'll play CoV till the shiny is gone, or something new comes along, or I suddenly discover that CoH/CoV PvP is fun (was in Bloody Bay during beta, had some fun, I'm leaving open the possibility that I could have fun with this for awhile) but I'm likely not here to stay.  Harder isn't going to be less boring, harder is just going to increase the frustration factor.

Bloody fanbois.  Not you, Typhon, you're still okay... and I agree with you, ED has NOT made my existing characters more fun to play.  Quite the contrary.  My main, ma/regen scrapper, is completely meh.  It doesn't matter for now, however, as I've stopped playing my higher level heroes completely and have started a new set of villains.  I'm playing powersets that I have little experience with so I don't compare so much. Some people compensate by respeccing, but I can't be arsed to do it yet again.  I compensate by starting over and forgetting that my previous game ever existed.  We'll see how long I last.

While I have enjoyed the game in the past, I'm hardly a fanboy.  I still enjoy the game now, tho not nearly as much as I did back in i4...  There is the nice advantage that by the lvl 40-45 contacts, they have enough missions per contact that I can completely avoid the villains I don't care to fight.  Rikti and Nemesis aren't a big deal, and now that I have teleport, I pwn the Knives of Artemis...  but I have yet to face a single Circle of Thorns since the late 30's, except ones from other people's missions(20% fire resist 4tlose!).  I can take or leave the Malta Group, and don't need to see another carny ever if I so desire.

Really, I'm seriously considering picking up a new game just to experience something... different.  CoV is an awful lot similar to CoH, tho the villain ATs play differently, everything else is the same.  I could get that same effect, + new enemies, game systems, etc etc, for the same $50.

Alkiera

Not you, Alkiera... I'm just teasing Llava.  He's too easy.  CoV doesn't feel very different to me, either.  I enjoy it when I play, but I don't find myself compelled to play, really.  Maybe I'm just 'gamed out' at the moment, dunno.  I've been mucking about with a beta from time to time, but as far as the games that are out right now...  nothing jumps out at me, either.  If you find something wonderful, let me know!

I've made no secret about my fanboi-ism.

But I'm always careful to point out that this is how I feel, someone with less fanboi might feel differently.

Sure.  My scrapper is the only char I have high enough to be affected by ED.  He's not notably worse than he was before.  Sure, his resists are down a few percentage points... but I was okay solo in i5, and I'm still okay solo in i6.  He's certainly not any more fun, and not really any less fun to play.  The biggest downer is the need to respec every few months after major changes to the game.  I came back in May or June, respec'd then.  Then again when i5 hit, and again for i6.  And I've spent far more time agonizing over figuring out how to do those respecs... copying to test, running a respec, running a mission to check out the changes, comparing it to how well it works on Live, etc.  It's just a lot of effort to figure out what the changes actually are(because they can't seem to reliably tell us everything that changed, or exactly how things have changed), and the changes sometimes mean major changes in the playability of certain powersets.

It just cheeses me off, all the rebuilding.  It's fun once or twice, but over and over and over?  Not really.

Alkiera

I absolutely agree.  Notice that I haven't rebuilt my Warshade or Defender yet.  It's because I'm dreading trying to figure out a way for them to work.

But I don't bother copying to test anymore.  Too much trouble, and I've got too many characters.  If I ruin one, oh well, I'll either go get him another respec or I'll retire him until the next free respec comes along :p

Llava you don't need to apologize for still liking the game, we're just jealous... you happy bastard.

I agree with Signe, nothing else appeals to me.  WoW would be good, if WoW had PvP that wasn't so absurd (I feel like a hamster on a wheel with WoW PvP, it's not even alittle bit good at hiding that I'm on a treadmill to nowhere).

I've admittedly been tempted to pick up WoW just to remind myself how much I dislike loot and level based games, so CoH will feel great again.  At least it's only level based...

Alkiera

Some of us are still stupid!

I never thought you were stupid, Lum... I just figured you were really, really stoned all the time. 

The only character I had who is really effected much by ED is my force field defender. almost all my primary powers have 1 and only 1 viable enhancment which is defense. Endurance is never an issue with these powers nor is recharge so about all you can slot in them is Defense. Its kinda funny but with ED almost all my primary powers are now 3 maybe 4 slotted and secondary and power pools wind up getting 5 or 6 slotted.

Seems odd that one would enhance their primary powers far less than they would their secondary stuff but its just how it works out. Now for my storm/psi defender hell I don't even notice ED at all I was already spread out pretty equally.

kaid

Aye, this has done some weird things to the status quo.  I still have 6 slots in my scrapper primaries, and my secondary looks similar (didn't 6-slot much there in i5, either) , but my power pools have gone from being either 1 slot or 6 slots, to lots of 2s, 3s and 4s.

Alkiera

Just to be bandwagonesque...

My Storm/Psi defender (31) was unaffected, since she never had more than two enhancements of any sort. The exception was Stamina, which had four. The changes to End drain appear to have countered that loss, though.

My Claws/Reflexes scrapper (21) was left unplayable and mired in debt after the I5 defense nerf. With all her 3-4x enhancement defense powers nerfed again, I've been forced to write her off as time wasted.

Incidentally, I voted with my wallet and cancelled my sub because of the nerfs. I only play my defender with the guys at work, most of the time I soloed as the scrapper. My CoH play has dropped from ~20 hours a week to ~6 hours a week.

Uh, it's not even a majority.

Personal Force Field - yeah, slot defense, but it's a turtle power.
Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield, Dispersion Bubble - defense here, yeah, but -end for Dispersion wouldn't be bad either.
Force Bolt, Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb - knockback? End cost? Recharge? No defense here.
Detention Field - accuracy and intangibility if you like that sort of stuff.
Force Bubble - pretty sure that's -end only.

You know, with ragdoll physics in play, knockback powers are more valuable now, since it takes NPCs more time to get up from their crumpled heap, though PC-on-PC knockback isn't ragdolled, that I've seen.

Still. Why must Force Field be a purely defensive set? You've got just as many powers to knock enemies down as you have to boost your allies' defense.

--GF

People will have to adjust to knockback being desirable.  Melee used to hate knockback because they had to chase down enemies after they were knocked back.  With the changes, it seems like groups will need to focus on one enemy or a small set of enemies, with the rest being knocked back to keep them out of melee.

Really, the "oh no I have to move 2 yards" excuse was bullshit.

There were two good reasons to dislike Knockback:
1) It spread enemies apart instead of bunching them together, meaning that AE attacks would hit fewer targets.  This is still true, but less so as AE caps have been imposed and herding has been limited.
2) Unyielding Stance, which Invulnerability tankers and scrappers needed to remain protected from status effects, used to immobilize its user.  Since they had to shut that off, move over to the enemy, then turn it back on, it was risky and inconvenient.  Unyielding has since been reworked and this is no longer an issue- however, the Stone Armor power "Rooted" is similar (except its effect is a Slow, not an immobilize).  It was exponentially worse for Invulnerability, though, as their survivability greatly depended on how many enemies were actually in close range, thanks to Invincibility.  Stone Armor doesn't lose defense for having enemies knocked away.

With the increased lockdown time of Knockdown, making it actually significantly delay enemy attacks instead of trying to just prevent them from using melee, it is quite a desireable effect now.  I do not know, however, if it would be desireable to enhance this effect.  Most of the delay in enemy attacks is due to the time it takes them to get back up, not the time they spend flying through the air.  Knockback Enhances, unless they've been changed, would only improve the latter.  While it's fun to see how far you can send an enemy flying, it's not really that useful.  If it enhanced the length of time they spend laying on the ground before standing back up, it would be better.

There was one other reason melees didn't like Knockback back in the day.  It used to be you couldn't use a melee power on a moving target.  Knockback creates moving targets (both the initial knockback and the getting up and running around).  Running villains used to be loathed by tanks and scrappers until they changed the code.  Now running villains are merey disliked.

Yes, true.  Good point, forgot about that.

As a Mind/Kinetics controller I tend to grumble about knockback as well. I can no longer count the amount of times a blaster has whined for getting no heals and then knocked away the minion I've been trying to get close enough to get a heal in.

I love my bro dearly, but he had an energy blaster that duo'd with my fire/energy tank.  His solo routine was to blast the nearest enemy, which I have to admit works pretty well for a solo energy blaster.  He'd use this same routine when we were grouped and I wanted to brain him.  Not being able to punch things was infuriating, so ya, knockback pretty much sucked.

If they'd add a chance for longer periods of getting up (like the devouring earth) and/or additional damage (villian slams into a wall) I think it would both be "more comic booky" and more desireable... but I also think they should have been more liberal in spreading it throughout the powersets - people are constantly get knocked about in the comic books, every set should have acouple powers with the chance to knockback. (this also removes the stigma from some powersets, and makes folks think alittle more about the situation that they use powers with knockback in).

I have:

Ill/Rad controller lvl 38 - still not respecced - not sure I want to play her again

Fire/EM tank lvl 35 - respecced - didn't play her except for a few minutes in Warbug before I realized how toggle-dropping killed any PvP capabilities for tanks

Dark/Dark defender lvl 33 - not respecced - not sure I want to play her... beyong super-slow to level solo and finding decent teams is a pain.

Spines/Inv scrapper lvl 29 - respecced - had fun with him in Siren's Call - Accumulated 3 bubbles of debt while doing so - Wondering if I should make him my main.

Inv/SS tank lvl 26 - not respecced - no desire to play her anymore given my PvP experience + nerfs (and one more on the way) for Invuln

En/En blaster lvl 25 - not respecced - being a blaster is nice if you find decent teams, sadly they are hard to find in pickup mode... Not sure I want to play a blaster anyway since they are so monolithic in their gameplay anyway.

Ice/Stone tank lvl 18 - not respecced but leveled with ED in mind - fun character, a bad tank but fun :) Considering playing this hero almost exclusively.

-

Dark/EA brute lvl 13.5 - suffering from dramatic infamy shortage... hard to tell if my powers are any good, I am just dead meat most of the time due to my secondary ineffectiveness and my lack of accuracy.

-

ED has made me pull back from my altaholism habit. Pickup groups have been hit hard... by making the holy trinity (tank+healer+dmg dealer) necessary to let a team function. I have no intention of spending more time to handle groups / divas... I certainly won't play nice anymore with people. I won't spend time to try to finish missions with a badly built group.

This is utter nonsense.  There's no need for a tank+healer+dmg dealer to have an effective team in CoH, even post-ED.


Also, my Energy/Fire Tank has been my most effective character in PvP. 

I recommend giving it a shot.  I was bored and not having fun with my Ill/Rad Controller at level 40.  ED hit and, for whatever reason, I started enjoying him much more.

But, as with everything, ymmv.

My Ill/Rad was nearly untouched by ED as well, but I had always slotted my Phantom Army for damage instead of recharge anyway.  I mostly play Controllers and none of them were affected much by ED.  I5 had a much bigger impact on them.

I have rarely played with a tank, healer and damage dealer in either CoH or CoV.  It has just never seemed necessary, given all the holding powers of controllers and now dominators.

I have been playing with mission difficulty, and tried setting it to the midpoint (vicious in CoV).  It's really necessary with a group to set it higher in order to not get bored, I've found.  If you have 3 MMs in a group (which is common, so many masterminds) and a dom or two, the rest can be anything.  In fact, there doesn't seem to be any sort of group makeup that would fail, as long as your group has no Leroys.

Been playing almost all tanks except for Stone. My Ice tank in its 18s NEEDs a pocket healer. There is no way DO can make my ice armors worth it against +1-+2 in a 8 people team setting. That's assuming that you are playing to make at least decent XP progress.

Good thing for my Ice tank is that PvP zone auto-level system and buffs seem to make him über defense-wise :) Not sure this is intended but it's fun to be standing in the doorway of BloodyBay enemy base and waiting for them to attempt to come out :)

I'll take a look to my controller. She was clearly overpowered with her perma-PA and Phanstam(s). She's probably more interesting to play.

I have been spending all my time in CoV since it came live. Infamy shortage but all good. The newspaper system simply rocks: getting missions that do not send you 3 zones away is just a blessing.

I haven't found this to be true with any of my tanks.  Of course a healer is going to improve your experience gain rate.  Duh.  Things would be broken if it didn't.  Whether you consider the XP gain rate without a healer acceptable or not is a matter of taste, of course, but you certainly do NOT NEED the "holy trinity" in order to group in CoH post ED.


This is the problem with this sort of hype.  I've found that when people say "The game is impossible now without x, y and z in my team." what they REALLY mean is "I don't like the rate of XP gain when I don't have x, y and z in my team."

Ice tanks probably have the same issue SR scrappers do... that until 22 and SOs, their defensive powers are just short of useless.  After SOs, things are somewhat better.


Yeah, with CoH, that is an accurate translation.  In other, more EQ-like games, it really can be impossible to complete certain goals without the trinity.  Devs balance to make it interesting under the 'ideal' case for the players... and thus it's nigh impossible without that ideal group.

Alkiera

Is it not an established rule on these boards though that the only grind acceptable to the vast majority of players will be the one with the optimal xp to time ratio?

I'm going to pass on picking up CoV, I just dont think I'd make it to the base endgame, even though it sounds cool, and I dont think I have time for a guild which is required for said endgame.

If that's the case, then we have a problem, because you're stuck with two hard choices:

1. The optimal XP gain can be obtained with a solo player, and adding additional players doesn't increase this rate.  So why invite players to your group?
2. The optimal XP gain requires you to group with other players.  In which case you get people complaining that they are FORCED to group.

Every AT SHOULD contribute to the group in some fashion, and I'd be disappointed if a group that has a healer/defender+damage dealer+tank/control did NOT increase the XP gain.  That a group of all defenders, or all tanks, etc.. can still be successful (albeit less so) is a bonus.

My thoughts were:
- I need a healer for my Ice tanker on a team setting
- That is in the case of a team fighting yellow+... fighting blues/greens is never a problem for my ice tanker but as soon as I see red mobs (especially bosses), I have to make sure that the healer is at the keyboard or we have a faceplant of my tanker in a dozens of seconds if I am not lucky (and that seems to be the case a lot).

For info, my armors are slotted 5 defense DO + 1 endredux (toon created before ED). Reslotting is in order at 22 (and SOs) to go for 3 def + 1 endredux.

1. Better synergy & Fun.
2. Even before I preferred to group, more mobs == more fun. I am worried about being forced in a certain team constitution format. CoH and CoV are still way above the competition in loose requirements about team members though. Lots of ATs have overlapping capabilities. That's a really good thing but that was already the case before. Some tank ATs needed a nerf because they were truly overpowered (as in tanking 40+ mobs and not see their health bar go below 90%). Except that ED wasn't really targetted at specific types but to everyone. My dark/dark defender for instance was doing crap damage when solo, it's even worse now.

I am very concerned about XP progression at some points in the leveling curve of CoH.
12-20 CoH : not fun at all, you are basically taking travel powers + fitness line => the faster you are out of here, the better.
35+: Slloooooowwww leveling. Doing a mission and having hardly 3/4 of a bubble for it is painful. Moreover when you have to travel from mission to contact and to next mission... when that contact is in FF or somewhere really remote, this is uselessly painful. You spend more time doing travel & zoning than killing mobs and we are talking CoH were travelling is super fast. Hopefully the addition of newspapers missions (missions in the same zone you are in) in CoH will solve that problem nicely. If it's remotely like CoV newspapers mission, it will rock.

I play CoH for a reason though (after this much complaining): It's the MMORPG that has the best casual player tolerance (1-2h sessions are worth it). Coming from AC2, that's a relief.

My biggest gripe of ED is that they didn't fix the need for Stamina once and for all.

I agree. Newspaper missions are a great addition to CoV, especially below level 14 when you don't have a travel power. It also seems that when you do get a contact from a broker, the new contact will give you their phone number a lot sooner than in CoH. It seemed like I would have to do 6+ missions to be able to call a contact in CoH. It seems like you only have to do 2 before you can call contacts in CoV.

In which case "optimal experience gain" wasn't the goal, and then there's no argument.


You _aren't_ forced to any team constitution format.  If you don't like the rate of XP gain when you don't have your "holy trinity", then that's not the game's issue, it's yours.


Of all of my characters, I've only taken the fitness line on one of them, and only then because it fit the character concept.   I usually DO take a travel power at 14, but that's about it for what I'm "forced" to take.  Even that isn't truly necessary.  It's a quality of life power, not an essential, no matter how much people insist otherwise.


I have no problem with that rate of progression.  If you're playing this game to level, you're missing the point. 


That's funny, I've never NEEDED Stamina on any of my characters, even the most END-Intensive ones.

You're using Chilling Embrace, right?

And, in fairness, just you don't need a "healer" to help you with tanking.  Force Fields stack well with Ice Armor, pushing your defense through the roof.  Dark Miasma and Radiation's accuracy debuffs also stack nicely with your armor.  Another Tanker can lighten your load by quite a bit.  A Controller can do the same.

But no, I wouldn't recommend that you head into an Invincible difficulty mission with you and 7 Blasters.

I am but it doesn't cover all the mobs especially those that like to stay at range and shoot. It generally takes some time to round the whole mob so that I have ranged ones in my CE.


FF is the only "set" to really help with Defense. Rad/Dark accuracy debuffs are the last one to be casted as they are the one that benefit tanks the less and for some reason, they are painfully long to cast and refresh (you know the insta-kills of anchors). I am guilty of this as well on both my Ill/Rad controller and Dark/Dark defender.

When I say benefitting the less, I mean that only one tank set is based entirely on defense. One out of 4. FF are a rare breed or they develop lots of friends and so are rarely available for PUG :)


Eek.

Get off the crack, the game is hugely repetitious.  That it also has a slow leveling curve, one beeelion AV missions (read: mobs with too many hitpoints) and nothing significant in terms of character development options in the post lvl 38 game is just wrong.

It's strong points are super hero/villain characters, short missions, and immerse travel powers.  period.  They got the base powersets mostly wrong, the non-travel pool powers completely wrong, the enhancements chronically wrong, and the villain npc's only occasionally inspired.  They added one new level that was really good (Stryga), and no new powersets that are interesting in any way (sonics doesn't seem to have any graphical difference besides size, and a sound effect sampling that is pure abortion).

It's good enough to keep playing because it doesn't require a large investment in time and everything else sucks.  Take that "the player is broken" crap and shove it.

*golf clap*

Thank you Typhon I was back on the verge of buying this, you have saved me from wasting 50+ dollars.  I salute you good sir, grinds suck ass.

Just a question here - how would they get the base powersets 'right'?

The customizability of Freedom Force, say? Where you could solo the game on a 3000-point character if you knew what build to take?

--GF

Almost every powerset has powers that are worthless, or they have been made worthless over time (as I play a fire tank, "Temperature Protection" and "Burn" come to mind immediately).  Yes, every mmo seems to have this problem and CoH is no different.  They should work on it.  When the vast majority of tweaking has been to make powers weaker/more situational it decreases my satisfaction with my hero and that powerset.  Ok, they've decreased over-all power levels, now is the time to increase functioning of under-performing powers (ideally giving broader range to powersets).

The 'feel' of using many powersets is inconsistent - energy blast is great, super strength is great, sonics blows.

The way they made level 32 powers situational is not satisfying.  Don't make the player pick an 'oh shit' power, if they want them in the game they should have given that type of power.  Put conditions for use similar to Blasters "Defiance" or Defenders "Vigilance" - example: Nova power is given to Energy/* blasters are char creation, but the power does not become activatable until after lvl 32 (or whatever), the blaster's team is below 50% health, and the blaster is randomly selected as the team member who's "oh shit" power activates.  With all these pre-conditions, Nova can now be truly devastating (larger AE, more powerful effect) without being imbalanced and maintains the "comic booky" feel.

Knockback as a side effect should be more prevalent throughout powersets (almost ever comic book hero knocks someone back at some point) and not limited to a few sets.  I would have loved it if you could hold down on the power button longer to build up the power of a blow (and  use more end in the process), which would give an increased chance for knockback.

Hero's should not be sniping.

The prevalence and power of AE effects that made herding a most efficient way to do combat is broken (how about making targetable AE powers very end expensive and non-aura pbaoe powers be less damaging, and more focused on secondary effects (which they mostly have)).

In all fairness it's seems like they are moving to some of those same conclusions, the game is getting better, albeit slowly.  Hopefully they will focus more on new content and maybe reworking some of the powersets (Energy blast sounds and looks beefy.  Fire looks and sounds anemic, Electricity now looks pretty good, but still sounds weak)

But really, these are all just my opinions.  I'm not a dev, I just play the game.  I very well may be in the minority position when it comes to judging "fun" in CoH.  Which is why I read forums, to get other viewpoints.

My previous post wasn't really about CoH/CoV, it was about having a conversation in a web forum.  I come to f13 because folks usually try to at least consider someone else's viewpoint when responding to a post.  Usually responses aren't some variation of "you must be playing it wrong", but lean more toward, "I must be special cause it never really bugged me".  The 'everyone else is wrong' sort of posting is what the official boards are for... IMO.

When I see someone posting with that sort of attitude here it just annoys the hell out of me - if you've made your mind up already that anyone who's going to disagree with you is wrong, or anyone who has a game experience contrary to your game experience is wrong, why are you having a discussion?

The thing I've never understood about CoH (having never played it) is don't all heros end up fairly similar?  At 50 it seems like you can pick every power you want, unless you really took a ton of the travel/fitness type powers.  But even then you end up with almost every power available in your primary and secondary set right?

It would seem like the difference between one Dark/Dark Scrapper and the next is only costume deep, in terms of their attacks or am I missing something?

Fixing that would be the point of the Enhancement change I figure, but it doesn't sound like it works because everyone seems to automatically know in this thread what to re-slot to.  Again never played, so just talking out my ass.

I actually consider "useless" powers a good thing since I need to take Power Pool powers to make my game play more enjoyable though I suppose that statement is more an indictment of the general game design than an endorsement. Hasten is, of course, de rigour given how slow combat is in the game. Stamina was a requirement but not so much anymore given the change to Rest and the global Endurance reduction in I6. I consider some form of Invisibility a requirement as well given how much time you can save in certain missions if you have it. Recall Friend is mandatory for grouping (especially for TFs) given how slow some people zone and travel and how much time you can save with it (in conjunction with Invisibility) by skipping over mind-numbingly repetitive content. And now with PvP things like Tactics (for +Perception) and some form of Invisibility are requirements as well unless you enjoy being killed by coordinated packs of Stalkers before you can even get in one attack.

Each power set has 9 powers and when the game only had 40 levels each character had 20 power slots so you had enough power slots to pick all your primary and secondary Power Set powers and a travel power (which requires you to pick something else from that Power Pool first). I believe that was how the designers originally envisoned most people would setup their characters and I vaguely remember Statesman responding to critics complaining during Beta about how "cookie cutter" all the heroes would be given the above setup by saying Enhancements were the mechanism by which players would "customize" their heroes. People figured out, though, that many of the common Power Pool powers were very very powerful (e.g. Hasten and Stamina) and so if you were trying to min/max you would need to skip over some of your primary and secondary powers so that you could pickup the requisite Power Pool powers. Also, as Typhoon mentioned above, some Power Set powers are pretty blah and are skipped over by players "in the know". When they increased the level cap to 50 they added 4 more power slots but they also added Epic Power Pools for each AT (each with 4 powers) and you still have the problem of deciding what powers to skip over if you want to take more than just a travel power from the Power Pools. So given that for many Power Set combos there are more useful powers to pick from than slots available not all players with the same Power Set combo will look alike, though with all the Power Pool nerfing that's been going on lately I think there's probably less power diversity than there used to be.

I believe that was original vision by Statesman as I mentioned above but of course the min/maxers figured out the best ways to slot every power and the ED doesn't really change that.

Who said it wasn't?  Certainly not I.  There's a long and venerable history of repetative video games which are considered fun.  If you don't like it, don't play it.


No, it's not "just wrong".  It's something you don't like.  BIG difference.  Personally, I'm not concerned with how long the leveling curve is because I'm not trying to GET anywhere in the game.  I enjoy it for what it is, a superhero combat simulator.


I see.  Did you get this from the "big book of how superhero games SHOULD be."?  I have few problems with any of what you've said.  There's dozens more playing that also see no real issues. 

Basically, all you've said so far is a grandiose "I don't like it" and claimed that this makes it objectively bad.  Forgive me if I'm unimpressed.


Never said the player was broken.  You don't like some things about the game, I understand that.  But, so what?  You can get together people who say the same things about ANY game.

I like City of Heroes because I enjoy the gameplay, repetative though it may be. 

Eh.  For most powers it didn't change it.  For some it did.  Mostly utility powers.  But attacks, yes, generally 3 damage, 1 accuracy, 2 recharge or endurance reducers, depending on what your character needs more.


No.  Warshades and Peacebringers especially do not experience this, as they have many more powers in their primaries and secondaries than do other heroes, but don't get more opportunities to gain new powers.  I can throw out a few examples right now- My Dark/Dark Scrapper doesn't have the final attack in Dark Melee, Midnight Grasp (generally considered a pretty good power) because I don't like it and I don't think it's that good.  Instead, he uses Shadow Punch (med damage, quick recharge), Air Superiority (pool power, med damage quick recharge), Boxing (pool power, less damage than Shadow Punch or AS but better recharge), Smite (heavy damage, slightly longer recharge) and just keeps up a constant stream of punching the shit out of whatever he's fighting.  And if I've gone through all the attacks and I have a second or two to wait until one of them recharges, which is rare but can happen, I use Shadow Maul (which basically means I punch 4 or 5 times, the animation takes about 2 or 3 seconds to do and the damage is better than Smite, but I believe doing the math will show that constantly using it slows damage over time... that's what it felt like for me anyways).

With that very same character, I play my secondary set (Dark Armor) almost completely differently than anyone else.  A while ago, it was commonly understood that Cloak of Fear and Cloak of Darkness were necessary powers for a /dark Scrapper.  Cloak of Fear would put a Fear effect on all nearby enemies and debuff their accuracy, Cloak of Darkness would give the character Stealth and a Defense bonus.  Stacking the two made enemies miss frequently, and sometimes would stop them from attacking at all (due to the fear effect).  Others like to use Oppressive Gloom, which disorients nearby enemies at the cost of some minor damage to the player.  I, however, liked to just use my normal shields to lower some of the incoming damage and use Dark Regeneration to heal myself whenever I needed it (basically, it does miniscule damage to everything around me and, for each target it hits, heals me for a large amount... about 1/3rd my max health for each hit target, so 3 hits is pretty much a full heal).  I used Dark Consumption from my primary to do the same with my endurance (works same as Dark Regeneration, but with endurance- much longer recharge, but it was up as often as I needed it).  This gave me kind of an Energizer Bunny feel- I didn't ever really need to stop and rest, because whenever I needed one of these two powers I would almost always have it available.  This longevity, however, came at the cost of safety, since a focused assault could still take me down quickly before I had much chance to heal up.

A friend of mine plays a Dark/Psionic Defender.  At level 32, Dark Defenders can take "Dark Servant" and most everyone does.  This is akin to summoning another mini Dark Defender to help you do your job.  She's not avoiding it for RP reasons, she just doesn't feel it's particularly useful.  Others do.

Now, if you stick to the "common knowledge" about what powers are good and what powers suck, yes, you'll be cookie cutter.  Big surprise there.  But given a little creativity and knowledge of the power selection available to you, you'd be surprised how tactics can vary from one user of a given set to another.  The aforementioned Dark/Dark Scrapper plays nothing like most of the other Dark/Dark Scrappers out there.


Uh.  They did that.  It was called Enhancement Diversification.


Okay.  I can agree that the Shadow Shard pretty much sucks.  It was creative, but it's not fun to play in and mostly just good eye candy.  But Croatoa?  Hello?  I LOVED that fucking zone.  Bloody Bay and Warburg are fantastic too.  I haven't been to Siren's Call yet.  Then there are all the CoV zones, but I won't count those because they're not free content.

I love my Sonic Blaster.  Your opinions about the Sonic Blast power set are just that- opinions.  Ultimately not constructive in a discussion like this, because you have nothing to back it up or nothing to specifically point at and say "There, that, it needs changing."  Gut feeling does not good game design make.  The only things I'd change about Sonic would be to up the damage on Howl a bit (but it may be intentionally low, due to the utility of having a cone Resist Debuff) and either swap out Shockwave for something else, or up its damage too.  Siren's Song is surprisingly useful, even as a Blaster.  Really helps me solo when I can put the whole group to sleep first, then beat them down one by one.


I disagree.  I don't know how much more you expect than a giant fireball that explodes violently with a huge BOOM.  I'm quite satisfied with Fire effects.


I can halfway agree with there.  There are some powers that just aren't any good.  But most sets don't have powers that are "worthless", just "not worth it."  Generally, you can pick up something if you want it, and it'll probably work well.  But there's frequently a better choice out there, and of course if it goes to 10 then 9 is worthless to a player.


Tetris.

I'm also mostly happy with the rate of progression in the game.  Of course faster would be nicer, but I'm not pulling out my hair waiting for the next level.  I do wish that lower levels progressed faster, though, as these are the least fun (few power options, no travel powers to get from one place to another, crappy enhancements meaning frequent misses).

From my previous post, further on.


I read your previous posts as being dismissive of anyone else's viewpoint or some attempt to disprove the "stamina/hasten is necessary" cannon, simply because you don't mind playing a slower game, seemingly without any sort of effort to understand where the other players were coming from.  I took this to be fanboism at it's most annoying.

If that was not where you were coming from, my apologies for being so aggressive.

How about a giant fireball that explodes with a huge BOOM and flings off sparks of varying sizes, the larger of which take several seconds to burn out and leave a char mark on the terrain, which slowly fades?

'cause if you turn on particle physics, that's what you get.

--GF

I generally read statements that open with "get off the crack" as being fairly dismissive as well.

I have a Sonic's Corrupter, I don't have a problem with the power of the line, but the graphics and sounds seem uninspired.  If it sounded even vaguely like some sort of voice/scream I'd be happy.

For the fire blaster the fireball is good, but the first two blasts are nothing compared to the first two in the energy line, which definitely have an "oomph" to them.  And this is where I disagree with you on the "feelings have place in game design", which I read to be "game creation" (course, if you really mean "game design" then I don't disagree).  When they put together the energy line you know they had to be grinning at each other, regardless of how much damage it pushes, it just feels massive.


Agreed.  I'll try to stop being a jerkoff just because I dislike someone's tone.

Except that you really should get off the crack, Llarva, old son.   :-P

I agree :) Energy feels like blasting. Other sets do as well: Radiation, Electricity... but Energy is really capturing how I feel "blasting should be".

I also agree with what you said about character progression.
I am playing this game to experience PvE except that the billion-th mission against CoT or Council doesn't appeal to me anymore and that's what you experience "a lot" while playing in the 30s range. What do I get to compensate for that slow progression ? I get to choose powers at 30, 32, 35 and 38... My character is very established in his gameplay. By the 30s, I generally have all my core powers. What is made available in the 30s range generally won't make a world of difference in my gameplay experience. Some powers are neat like my pets for my controller but some are really meh as in "not really changing anything to my experience".

I am liking the early levels because you see your character getting new powers that define your gameplay. Higher level powers don't have that feeling most of the time. Rate of progression is slow in that regard.

Rate of progression is also too slow regarding the diversity of content. If you want to make it slow, you better make the time I spend grinding a fresh experience. Having diverse environments in the 1-30 game is cool (Striga and Croatoa certainly helped in that regard). Forcing me to do the 30-40 basically in Founder's Fall, Talos, Indepence Port and Crey's Folly doing the same missions over and over again is not fun. Oh cool another Defeat 30 CoT in FF, err not!

My biggest gripe with ED is still that they didn't get rid of Stamina for good. It's basically taken by 95% of the players out there. Of course, there is THE example of the guy not taking it (I know you are out there)... the truth is that most toons are A LOT MORE ENJOYABLE with it. Running out of endurance all the time is not fun.

How much time did it take to reduce the recharge rate on Rest ? Seriously?
They should make the entire Fitness line inherent to toons. People wouldn't feel forced to dedicate power choices in the 12-20 range to travel power + fitness and could take "all powers in their primaries and secondaries". Currently I know that it will be difficult if I don't take Fitness on my toons.

I believe there is something with Cryptic not willing to remove useless power pools. Apparently they can't force-reset toons... Something they should have to do, should they want to make the Fitness line inherent.

Another gripe is the fact that there is no real way to tell if a power will be useful to you or not in advance. You can't go back on your decisions if not for the 3 respecs (and free respecs but those are going to be rarer). You can't even just reset your slots allocation. There is no testing. There is no trial & error. There is no make yourself an opinion on a given power. People go to the forums to know what is good and what is not. People go to the forums, pick up a template from a guide and go with that. Where is the fun in picking up powers ? Currently you pick-up powers according to guides and hope that the majority of players on the forum are not wrong. Ability to copy toons on the test server is NOT an acceptable option since you basically have to be computer literate and to read the forums to know how to do it (and know it even exists)... but your copied toons is devoid of influence, thus forcing you to hunt to buy required SO just for a test and if that test is not conclusive, you have to copy again and re-hunt to gain influence...

They can redo powers a lot... they will gain only hate for doing so. People in City Of Heroes hate having to redo their builds because tools & information made available to them to know what is good in the new rules are simply not acceptable from a gamer point of view. If power selection is NOT obvious and makes a HUGE difference on the playability of the toon, then give the players the ability to tweak at will (with some reasonable timing to avoid any exploiting).

AC1/AC2 where I come from let you rearrange powers selection. They made the process somewhat long but nothing was done for good, you could test and adjust. Once a toon has used the 3 respecs in COH, this toon is doomed to wait for the next free respec which is not guaranteed. Given how dramatically the game changes between the pre-SO level and the post-40 levels... 3 respecs is really low.

Sorry if this long ranting seems destructured but the flow just came out of my mind like that.

Not at all.  My post was pointing out that people tend to make overblown statements like "It's IMPOSSIBLE to play the game without a tank, healer and damage dealer" when what they really mean is "I'm unhappy with the rate of my experience gain in the game without a tank, healer and damage dealer".  These are very different claims, and it is this sort of overblown exaggeration that >I< find annoying.  I'm fond of CoH, but I am FAR from a "fanboi".  There's a number of things I'd love to see changed about the game, but that doesn't mean I'd say it's unplayable without those changes.

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

I just hit 23 on my plant/thorn dom and realized I must have stamina or forget that toon.  Won't be happy without it.

Also, I can not solo nearly as effectively as my controller can because I can't kill things quickly enough to make it worthwhile.  Yes, I'm uber with domination, but when it's something I can use perhaps 3 times a mission, and I like to save it for the orange bosses at the end....

Regarding build - I'm one of those people who gets what looks good at the time.  Completely disorganized.  I suppose you could call me a min/min'r.  At some point I'll get it together to figure out what to take and what to slot, but that's after a respec when I've actually used the powers in question to see what they do and how they fit with how I like to play.

It would be nice to have a Power-Test server for the players, who could go and practice playing on temp toons different powersets they build.  What would be the downside to such a thing from a dev point of view?

A server where you could /level # and immediately be that level and where you could /influence # to give yourself the influence.

Interesting....I'd say daily wipes and it would be good.

Or log out and the toon disappears. 

The auto-level type of idea has never appealed to me because I like that character progression, but hard to please broken - I hate it when it feels like grind, but I like that my char progresses.

What I'm talking about is a test server for the players to be able to check out a powerset to see if it's worth levelling up in.

In other words, try before you commit.

I'd be happier just having the option to get dropped into a "training room" when you level up, select a power that's available to you and you suddenly have it there.  Toss in a few target dummies (some moving ones at varying ranks like minion/boss/etc, so people can test CC effects and magnitude).  Make it a public area instead of an instance so people can test buff powers and such.

I really don't want to bother logging out, going to the character copier, making the copy, waiting a few minutes, then updating my CoH Test Client, and trying it out there.  Pain in the butt.  Just give me a chance to dip my toe in the water before I jump in.

Well the problem remains the same... You won't know what a good template for your toon will be unless you practice a lot with all the powers and I think most importantly in a team setting. Defenders for instance have some powers that are only really useful in a team environment like anchor acc debuff. Huge endurance drain but really worth it in a team. Solo you will drain yourself out of endurance with it running and most of the time your attacks have a sufficient secondary effect to make it not worth it.

I'm having definite reading comprehension problems this week, sorry.

But if you don't feel an endurance pinch now and again, how are all the powers which restore endurance going to be useful?

Despite what anyone might say, click attack powers are the main endurance sink. Classes composed entirely of click attack powers, like the Blaster and Dominator, feel more of an endurance pinch than most others.

--GF

The end restoration powers come with other players, for the most part, who, by their very presence, increase the enemy population, and therefore endurance expenditure.

I agree, on the attack powers.  With Broadsword I've run with an end reduction SO in each attack for a long time, and haven't had the 'horrendous' end problems people normally associate with the set.  I also have end reduction in my defenses, but it's really a minor effect... paying .28 end/sec instead of .4 end/sec isn't going to make or break you, really.  You regen something like 100 end/minute, naturally.  .4 end/sec is 24 end/min, .28 is 17 end/min.  Sure, less is better, but not compared to the amount pouring out thru attack powers.  Most broadsword attacks are around 12.5 per use, and take, sec, 1.5 seconds to do.  A chain of those works out to something like 8.5 end/sec... a minute of solid attacking is nearly 500 endurance.  That 24 end/minute for a toggle is not looking like so much now, is it?

Alkiera

The problem I'm running into with my Dom is that I run out of end after 3 sllightly lower con mobs.  I don't have Hasten either (another must-have, I think).

So for my attack slots, it seems the most important are accuracy, damage, recharge rate and end reduction.

In a group, I run out of end quick.  Solo, I have to rest between every fight, which is boring.

Of course, there's every chance I'm not playing my dom "right."

I have no idea how to build domination in pvp.  Don't really see how I can unless it's group pvp.

I would agree entirely if we were not already going out of endurance with Stamina. Having all toggles up (and most of the time all of them are required) and dishing out attacks on the mobs as soon as they come up (or almost) in a 8-people team setting (so that's 17+-ish mobs encounters) still dries you out of endurance.

The fact is that there are still benefit in having additional endurance recovery powers.


Agreed and good advice. ED allows (or forces if you see it that way) us in slotting something else than damage. Makes room for recharge, accuracy, endurance redux and secondary effects.

Better but still not enough number-wise unless they allow us to have Hamidon style enhancements in earlier levels. Having something slotted like what follows would rock:
- Slot 1 : enhancement doing acc SO + rech SO
- Slot 2 : enhancement doing acc SO + rech SO
- Slot 3 : enhancement doing acc SO + rech SO
- Slot 4 : enhancement doing damage SO + secondary effect SO
- Slot 5 : enhancement doing damage SO + end redux SO
- Slot 6 : enhancement doing damage SO + end redux SO

And why not 3-effects enhancement (all SO level) for a single 3-acc SO enhancement. It could be the start of a trade economy and a very good reason to craft. Not sure people want CoH to head this way though.

Back to Stamina consideration, people want to dish damage (flying numbers!), defeat err arrest mobs by the dozens, see eye-candy (knockback, holds...)... it's good for the ego and it's even more fun in teams when everything is arrested in a spectacular way. They want to feel like heroes. Currently we are into micro-management of infamy to be able to afford DOs... and constant Rest because "wow, those 3 even-con minions really made me tired". Downtime is not fun and downtime is not part of content unless you add mini-games while I wait for my endurance bar to come up as I already used my Rest in the previous fights.

I am not for trivialization of content but nerfing us down to "you should be able to solo 3 even-con minions" was a bit much. Where is the fun in that when we have been dealing with hordes of yellows for months? If CoH was released today, sure. But not now. Push the envelope instead. Allow us to be more powerful. Make us face new harder content and revamp the existing one.

A good example of this is Asheron's Call 1 where instead of nerfing toons, they went forward. It took sometime sure but it was well worth it. They completely redid the mobs, their difficulty levels, their locations on the maps and so on.

In CoH, they adjust players down toward a fixed content. Maybe the huge amount of it prevents a revamp but bringing down players down a subjective line is not pleasant to the players. Especially when it is done repeatedly. People are really asking for more content (or revamp of existing one) but they only get that done very slowly. Lots of zones in CoH are desert zones because those zones have no interest. Even more so since they removed soloability of some toons in hazard zones (I know that was really wrong but that was fun).
- Shadow Shard
- Eden
- Terra Volta (outside of having to go there for the respec trial)
- Faultline
...

 :x

One more nerf is on the way btw. They are going to nerf Invulnerability defense buff because it's bugged currently and giving twice what it should give. One more month of hate on the forums? Err no, devs are very silent at the moment... not time to make another nerf announcement. I hope so very much that they have something up their sleeves for REAL SOON(tm).

I love CoH as a game. The combination of powers and ATs is just fun fun fun. Eye-candy whore I am and CoH fullfills that very well. But the bad mood, bitterness of the community is affecting my enjoyment of the game as a whole.

I agree, the concept and a great deal of the implementation is very well done (course, I've made it very hard to tell that this is how I feel lately).  I just wish that they would spend more time on aspects of the game that have a bigger net positive impact on 'fun'.  More time with environment/npc changes that a player can choose to learn/adapt to by visiting that zone/those npcs rather then character/powerset nerfs that a player needs to swallow without choice (and the feeling of regression/backward motion that comes with having power levels adjusted downward).

There were other means by which they could have reduced the impact/ability to herd (having each minion within melee range cause a minor debuff to damage resistance, defense and endurance regen that stacks with number of minions - giving the feel of the minions wearing down the tank).  Make broader use of underlings (I may be using the wrong term here - Rikti monkeys are underlings, less powerful then minions, usually come in greater numbers)

Implementing distributed amount of damage for AE effects, etc.  I agree with the philosophy of ED - I think the enhancements that mattered were allowed to matter far too much, but I also think they missed the boat in regards to making enhancements that don't matter so much actually matter.

All stick and no carrot in regards to character changes is not fun.

But they are making progress.  The Mu magicians seem to be a step in the right direction.  One adept is not so much to worry about - their blasts damage and reduce end, while 3 or 4 can be a serious challenge for an AT that needs toggles.  That is very well done.  NPCs that work in concert and scale with numbers feels right and are challenging if effective tactics are not used.

Binary/insta-dead type npcs are just tedious.  Take for instance the Malta sappers.  A minion level npc, which having played a tank against is an extrememtly annoying npc to play against (massive end drain + hold = death).  Give it a massive end drain, or give it a hold effect, or give it a moderate drain/hold that only becomes a problem if there are 3.  Then have other npc's have abilities that work in concert with the sapper, giving the player the choice of deciding which npc represents the biggest threat in a given encounter.  This sort of dynamic would also seem to encourage players to split a spawn - if the spawn had attacks/powers that worked synergistically with each other the player group would be better off splitting the spawn.

I'm still sick (fever) after a five days, and I see I'm still babbling. stopping now.

Hasten is just going to increase your bleed rate.

Click attack powers, when you factor in animation and recharge time, all come in in the neighborhood of 1 endurance/second. If you have Hasten and nothing else you're just _increasing_ your expenditure to 1.7 endurance/second per power. So, uh, under Hasten, Stamina was equal to putting one SO end reducer in _three atacks_; under ED it's more like two attacks, tempered somewhat by the loss of permahasten.

AoE controls don't do significant damage; in addition, the AoE immobilize uses about 2 endurance/second. Fighting solo, generally don't use your AoE stuff, since you're only facing two or three at a time, and you can immobilize one, hold another, and kite slightly then immobilize a third since your immobilize recharges about half as long as it lasts. Then use your assault line and tear into one, renewing your hold and immobilize as they come up. Also keep in mind that melee AoEs need to hit at least three targets to be endurance-efficient.

Domination decays much more slowly than rage, so you could in theory whup up on some NPCs in a PVP zone and then go cruising for a hero group to pop Domination on.

--GF

So exactly how are the Mu different from the Clockwork?

--GF

Actually, in CoH right now (at least in the post-SO era 22 and up) one blue(-1) mob is worth as much as one white(+0) mob used to be in I4. One white is worth a little less than an orange(+2) used to be in I4. One yellow(+1) is worth more than one red(+3) used to be in I4.

So in effect, a six-man team running on heroic/villainous and facing +1s is better-rewarded than the same six-man team running on invincible/ihaven'tpaidmuchattentiontovillaindifficultylevels and facing +3s used to be.

But as you point out, the con color makes it feel less fun. Cryptic has managed to improve the numbers while still making people feel nerfed.

I'm betting that with Prestige and Salvage coming into the mix, supergroups may be mounting coordinated action in hazard and/or trial zones, simply because lieutenants and bosses produce large amounts of both. Especially since some of the higher-end base items require enemy group-specific salvage rather than more generic refined parts. Hazard zones spawn for 3-6 players, trials for 6-8 - and it's telling that CoV lacks not only "mandatory" missions to hunt in hazard/trial zones, but in fact lacks hazard/trial zones completely.

At some point in the future CoH has to adopt some facets of the CoV mission architecture - contacts with their own personality and stories, mission completion sharing, maybe the endless paper missions system or something like it. If they could do for all the old zones what they did for Striga and Croatoa (even the Hollows to an extent) you'd probably find more people in there.

I've never been caught up in _any_ story in CoH as much as I was by Seer Marino's mission chain in CoV. If they can put someone like her in Boomtown or Eden it'd go a long way to making the zone usable.


...which begs the question, if the devs aren't saying anything, how do you know it's going to happen?

--GF

I did this last night.

It was awesome.

"Your end is coming..."
"She's lying, get her!"
"...and its name is Horde!"

Funny how something as simple as that little bit can make me feel like some powerful, feared, vengeful villain.

(I should note: Horde was my character's name.  So folks can glean the right context from that.)

I was actually looking for the higher XP rewards in I5. I played my lvl 36 fire tank this week-end for two hours. Good pick-up group, we really had a good composition and we went through yellow/orange missions fast. 2 hours of play... around 2 bubbles. I felt progression was slow so in the middle of it I launched HeroStats. I looked at my "time to level"... 8-9 hours (at this rate). Eeek! Guess people powerleveled for a reason.


Interesting. Something I didn't think of. Maybe they'll make some of the less used hazard zones PvP zones. Probably not until they make salvage worth something though.


...which begs the question, if the devs aren't saying anything, how do you know it's going to happen?

Reported by Circeus and others from the tank forums that the defense numbers provided were not in line with what the devs said the number were.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=4024405&page=2&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=2&vc=1

And after checking, it's in the patch notes of the test server today:
 * Modified Invulnerabiity/Invincibility and Ice Armor/Energy Absorption. for both powers: Max number of affected targets have been reduced to 10; The first target you affect grants you more defense than before; Additional defense gained for each affected target after the first is at a reduced rate. This change will ensure the powers grant a reasnonable defense bonus when facing few foes, while making it more challenging to get a massive defense bonus.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2092861&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#2092861

Good point.  Truthful answer is "I don't know, but they feel different".  It feels like they are more of an impact to end.  Possibly they have a -end regen effect as well.  Possibly I'm full of shit.

And, after thinking about it a bit - all Arachnos don't have the same secondary effect.  Some have knockdown/back, etc.  So if the spawn is a bit random, the fights play out differently, and the tactics need to be different.  With the clockwork it's pretty much all the same, and the end effect is pretty mild.

This last point seems to argue for hero's to face larger numbers of villians (which they do when grouped), so that spawns can employ different tactics of their own.  For the combos/synergies to take effect, they would have to figure out how to have npc's assist each other.

Clockworks like to come to melee a lot and then they do smash/lethal damage. Mu don't. They stay at range and use end draining attacks. It makes a ton of difference even more so as it is very hard to have Mu in cone/AOEs as they are so static.

Mu can't shoot through walls, same as everything else.

Look, ma, I'm exploiting world geometry!

--GF

They seriously need to stick the guy that wrote that in a time machine and send him back to when Cryptic was first writing mission arcs.

Like, CoH, you plow through somewhat faceless and generic contacts for 40 levels before you hit the unique ones, with the occasional bright spark if you want to brave a hazard zone.

CoV? Level 5, baby.

--GF

"You've found where they're keeping the book? Why are you bothering to consult me? Go reclaim it! Though I do quite enjoy conversations with my moral peers."

Damn you people, I am trying resist buying CoV. You insensitive bastards.
I wish they'd fix melee attacks to close the distance when you attack.
As it was when I last played, melee was gimp in choatic battle.

So, did someone say Burn wasn't good anymore?

That'd be me, but honestly I always felt the power was stupid for a tank to have so I am not objective.

The way it works now is:

• It has a pretty large fear effect (NPCs run out of it's AOE unless held in the flames).
• Recharge time was increased (multiple burns is either impossible or close to impossible).
• Damage was reduced.
• Animation times were left the same
• They may have reduced the acc of the ticks, but I can't recall for sure.  If they did, it's not by much (although I spec'd out of it)
• Radius was left the same
• Still cures immobilization

I guess you could take it if you group with a controller/dominator alot, or if you have no other way to cure immob effects.

Edit: meant to say "not objective" instead of "not subjective"

You still need to close the gap to melee, unless you're a cheap bastard spine/claw scrapper, but sometime around I3 or I4 they fixed the server-side code so that melee range was more forgiving when trying to keep up with a moving target.

--GF

doh! of course this is why.  you are smart, thanks.

Things staying at range is more prevalent.  Somewhat odd that they put in AI to counter herding along with all the other herding-counters.  I never joined a herding group, were they as boring as they sounded? (question is to anyone)

I keep thinking about CoV but villians can't have the electric powerset and thats always been my favorite.  Also I still can't shake the feeling that the grind would kill be before I even got to the first pvp zone.  I've never met PvE that I truly enjoyed because for me it will always be just a hurdle to bypass so I can get to the gooey player conflict center.  Beating up on AI has never given me satisfaction.

Somehow they have a large bounding box, therefore when you use corners to gather them those in the back tend to be too far for melee cone attacks (guess it's the same for AOEs). Clockworks are small, they pack tightly :)

Hard to explain but Mu are harder to place using geometry than clocks.

Eh.

Anyone can take Combat Jumping.  Unless there are 4 other pools you just /have/ to have.

Well, I know I tend to be a concept fanatic. If my char is a flyer, I will not take a jumping power unless I can convince myself that it fits.  Was just looking for some reason to take it/silver lining.

Given that Acrobatics in the Leaping power pool is the only available knockback protection for a Fire tank, SJ as a travel power is pretty much a given for a Fire/ tank.

d

Ditto for Dark Armor. No knockback protection, and the only immobilization protection comes in Cloak of Darkness which is one of those awful powers that doesn't just obscure your character, it completely removes it and replaces it with a particle effect.  And activating it is kinda a pain, so Combat Jumping is a no-brainer for immob-protection.

I had a moment of weakness and bought the game.
So far, so good. 
Port Oaks is like a newbie Striga, neat.
Is there a task force at the end of it also?
I found the "strange" radio, it told me to go back to my contact, but he had nothing to say about it.
I don't mind killing other villains, but the game needs "rampage" missions to remind me I am not a hero.
Playing villain game without money seems sort of bizzaro.
The "chosen one or maybe not" story-line is a bit "gag me with a spoon."

You are probably a bit low level to get the missions from the Radio yet.

Nope. The first 'strike force' is in Cap Au Diable, for 15-20. For some reason there's no 10-15 one, which is eight hours long and involves running around all the zones up to that point, largely without travel powers, and fighting the most relatively powerful enemies in the game. I wonder why.
You can start listening to the voice in your head at level 10, assuming that contact tips you off.

(Yes, this is how the missions are actually presented to you. There's also a car and a slot machine later on.)
You'll never really get to kill innocents, except by proxy - well, unless you think the Vazhilok just give them a nice cup of cocoa and a muffin. There are a few civilian models who fight against you but, uh, fight is the operative word. If you want to go on a rampage then you can have a go at it around 25 or so, on Sharkhead Isle. The miners there are definitely civilians, except they've been doped up by the Cage Corporation so they can drill through solid rock with their bare hands. Every now and again the ghost of their leader rallies them on a giant protest march around the zone, and carving that up from the blind side is kinda fun.
Yeah, infamy would work a lot better if it were swapped for, like, R$ or 'spider-bucks'. But then that'd raise the problem of how money spilled out of, like, summoned demons and animate slagheaps and the like. Some people are floating ideas for a "bundle o' cash" salvage item which could be 'sold' for infamy or prestige or something.

The overall conceit of the game being that you're trying to prove yourself to Arachnos offers at least an in-world justification for things like why some Arachnos give you missions and others just shoot at you.

--GF

One of the first contacts you get from the brokers in Port Oakes is a mafia style guy who really hates the Council. In one of the missions, he says that someone in his family has betrayed the family to the Council. Your job is to go into the Council base and defeat everyone including the traitor. I did that and when the traitor went down, he yelled out something like "Sarah, I'm sorry!"

Turns out Sarah was his daughter who was sick with some rare illness. The traitor was going to betray his family because the Council was going to cure his daughter. The mafia guy then said that he would pay to get the girl cured and then would train her to be killer, telling her that the Council killed her father. Once the Council was destroyed or the daughter was killed, he would consider the traitor's debt to the family over. So not only did I kill the one guy, but I helped ruin his daughter's life by forcing her to become a weapon. That mission definitely made me feel like a villain and not just a hero with skulls on his costume.

I must quibble with this. If you knew the true story going in, and still took the mission - yes, you would be a villain. Making a choice in ignorance of the truth just makes you a puppet and a dupe.

Sorry. We have debates about this kind of thing at least once a week. :P

Neither a puppet nor a dupe.  A mercenary doing his job.

Good point. I still couldn't qualify that as an evil player choice, though.

Killing the guy can be defined as villainous, and you know you're doing that. That's the player choosing to do evil. (We'll ignore the fact that if the player chooses not to do evil, all he does is cheat himself of a mission - thus making it a non-choice.)

What happens to the daughter afterwards is not "your" evil, because you are at no time able to influence it. You aren't given the knowledge required to make a moral choice before it occurs, and you are given no opportunity afterwards to rectify the situation. At no time can you choose to do "good." Since you can't choose to do good, you can't be said to have been evil.

With regard to the daughter, the NPC is the active agent of evil. The player is a tool, at best (as you pointed out) a callous, morally neutral mercenary. And a mercenary is rather different from a true villain.

Er... I need to STFU and stop overthinking this. ^_^;

For the record, I don't expect CoH to be KotOR. I only expect it to let me punch people in the face. So... "Closed - By Design."

Since there are references to getting cash, gems and other valuables I like to think it goes towards behind the scenes things such as maintenance, bribes, pay-offs and the like.  In several kidnap missions it is hinted at that you are adding these people to your organization, so you have to look out for them.  Of course that may work better for some concepts than others.

I would agree.  I did not like the resolution because I had no say in it.  I would have rather spent my resources curing her and brainwashing her to my causes, not spend tons of money only to throw it away meaninglessly like the contact was going to do.  Being evil does not mean you have to be foolishly destructive.  (Sure a little sensless violence is fun, but why be wasteful?)

Although it will make it easier for me to deal with the Vendetti family should they get in my way... :-D

I am confused about newspaper missions.  Its say to do 5 and get a heist and new contacts.  But it only requires me to do 3 and I haven't received a contact beyond. You get more then one contact in Port Oakes, right? Damn radio won't talk to me even at level 12.

How newspaper missions work:

1) You do minor heists until

2) The paper says your broker has 'a big job for you', at which point you check back, then

3) You do a major heist, usualy a bank job or casino hit, then

4) You go back to your broker, who offers you a choice of contacts in the zone.

At 12, though, you need to move on to Cap Au Diable. I think your broker might say this when you check up, but am not sure.

If you're in a group, anybody's step 1 or step 3 will count towards your bar.

--GF

I have done 3) 6 times still don't have any more port oakes contacts beyond the first.

I haven't played it since beta, but IIRC, the first contact given to you by the broker gives you another contact.  The contacts seemed pretty free about giving you other people to talk to, but that may have been just for the beta.

If you have outleveled the contacts the broker will probably not assign them to you since they would have no missions you can do.  Otherwise you have people cluttering your contact list that only tell you, "I have nothing".

Did you do 4)? If so what did your broker say?

--GF

Do /newspaper missions until the red bar on the broker is full.  Then speak to the broker.

If you open the paper and there is nothing, talk to a contact and get a mission.

If the contact has nothing, go to the next zone to continue.  From Mercy (1-8) to Port Oakes (7-12) to Cap Au Diable (8 to 20) to Sharkhead to Nerva to St Martial.  You should get a broker for each zone.

The pvp zones - Bloody Bay and Siren's - also have a contact and missions.  The xp is better, and you don't get debt from dying in pvp (although you do if a npc finishes you off).  I believe I read that debt goes away twice as fast, and SG prestige is earned twice as fast too, but I could be mistaken.  I enjoy those zones in groups, but it's not as fun for soloing.

I get nothing.  This seems like a pretty big bug. I am geting screwed out of most of the good missions.

Nah, don't worry about Port Oakes, it's a bit eh, though the radio is nice (have you got Mr. Bocor?). Just move on to Cap au Diable and bum around there. I recommend Dr. Shelley, because she will eventually introduce you to Marshall Brass and by extension Seer Marino, but Peter Themarl and Dmitri Krylov are both pretty fun to run on their own.

Most of the later zones you'll only get a few contacts directly from the broker - contacts later on in that zone come from working up through broker contacts to higher-echelon people. And if you want to see _all_ the content at a given tier, you're pretty much going to have to kill yourself repeatedly so the debt can keep you leveling slowly.

--GF

Ya, it just a pain.  I went to Cap and the broker had no problem giving me a second contact.

Perhaps, but the story still had an emotional impact on me. The question I was answering was about missions that made me feel like a villain. I had a "holy crap" reaction after I found out what happened during that mission. I felt "villainous", even though I was being used by this guy to do his dirty work. If there was a mission like this on the CoH side, there would have been a followup mission where'd I'd go in and save the traitor guy and his daughter and take out the bad guys. The fact that there was no followup, there was no saving the girl, made me feel like a villain.


There are also some unlockable contacts. I know there's a Cage Consortium Representative in Sharkshead Isle that will only talk to you after you earned the "Kill a bunch of Scrapyarders" badge.

I agree.  There was no attempt to placate the player character by the NPC, indicating that the player character's reaction ranges from "Oh, okay, whatever, I don't care to."  "Hey, good idea man."  The tone is important, Vendetti mentions the girl almost in passing.

Apropos of nothing - today, I broke into the Zig. I carved my way through Longbow outside the gates, supporting Arachnos troops, and walked down the stretch of prison yard I'd scampered through during my breakout. Even slipped into the same sewer entrance.

Some guy on the inside had started a riot to cause a distraction, and that guy on the inside was JENKINS. Spaz got nabbed by Longbow _again_. Somehow despite his utter incompetence in the tutorial he managed to work his way up the ranks to Huntsman, shottie and AoE web grenade and all.

Worked my way up the stretch of sewer, up the blast hole in the floor, and down the prison halls to my old cellblock. Blew through a mess of prison guards, beat the hell out of the cell doors, liberated three villains to add to Recluse's ranks, and all of us fought through swarms of Longbow trying to recapture us before hitting the chopper and getting back to Mercy Island.

Yeah, I replayed the tutorial from the other end. It was pretty interesting, and more than a little bit chaotic. It was also the first time I can ever remember going _back_ to a tutorial zone, for anything.

Then I went off and liberated a small detachment of Goldbrickers from Wyvern and had a flying escort on the way to recover their boss.

I :heart: guest muscle.

--GF

Yeah I really, really enjoyed the Zig mission.  Allies are fantastic.

I've spent some time in Siren's and Bloody Bay... my impression is that there's a 10% inf and xp bonus in both of those zones (caveat: if you're too high level for the zone, you get no xp due to autoexemplar) both inside and outside missions, but debt in Siren's Call is just harsh.

Basically, if you get hit by a mob just once before a blaster snipes you to death, you get debt. You get caught in a flamethrower's AOE (and there's plenty of those around at hotspots) and then have 4 heroes gank you, you get debt. Etc etc. Hanging around the hotspots in Siren's is pretty much guaranteed to max your debt after a few hours if you're a melee class.

But it's still fun.


-- Z.