ranagrande

Even worse than that time I made a character who could only do damage with toggles! I wanted a fun/painful new project in this game, so I looked through a bunch of other challenges people had posted and amalgamated them. I am now doing all of the redside and blueside content at level, stopping experience frequently along the way, on a petless pool power-only mastermind that isn't allowed to buy anything. I have currently completed the first (and easiest) step of this journey, everything up to level 4. I have keenly felt the lack of P2W powers, especially athlethic/beast/ninja run and a jump pack when dealing with vertical challenges. This was more of an issue on redside, but also a notable factor in one hero mission, in everyone's favorite layer cake cave. There was only one mission I really struggled with so far, the one where you have to rescue Arachnos prisoners from Longbow. I could not handle fighting more than one of the Longbow guys at a time, and often if I ran away after defeating one it would have already respawned by the time I got back, preventing the captives from ever being freed. Eventually another villain showed up to do the same mission and I was able to mooch off their kills to complete it. The counterpart blueside mission to defeat Arachnos Commanders was almost trivially easy. I'm not sure if that's because the mission really is that much easier, or because I was rocking three DFB buffs by then, or both. I've got a Thugs/Traps MM. The only power I'll ever have from my secondary is caltrops. I've been impressed by just how useful that power can be as a survival tool. I am also a little worried that it will become much less relevant as I get more pool powers and become more melee-oriented. Next stop, level 7!

I don't like the original idea, and have already stated my reasons. Several people have posted alternative suggestions in this thread that I would wholeheartedly support.

I like to do escort missions with stealth sometimes. You can only move like four steps at a time without the NPC losing you and it takes forever. But it's amusing to see all the enemies stand by idly and watch their captive slowly shuffle away.

OK. If this does go through, I hope you're right.

Does the timer even do anything? I usually have it run out and I can still complete the mission anyway.

I think the comparison with the DFB badges was particularly appropriate. Yes, people are reasonable when they don't get it. That's not the point. The point is that people go for it in the first place. The presence of a reward has altered the way people play the game. The same thing will happen here. "But it's only once per day!" It's once per day per person. On any given team, there's a strong likelihood that someone hasn't gotten their PA yet. And we'll almost always accommodate that person, because the CoH playerbase is overwhelmingly composed of nice people (this is a good thing), and no one wants to prevent someone else from getting a reward. If this goes live, I expect the Role Diversity bonus will become the new standard for PUGs within a short amount of time. Recruiting will become a bit more confusing and time-consuming, teams will become a bit more homogenized, and people will learn that there is, in fact, a "right" way to play, and a very small part of what makes this game so great will be lost.

That's a perfectly good team though. Having crowd control is nice, but it is not strictly necessary. None of these roles are. One of my favorite things about group content in this game is that you often get lopsided teams and have to find ways to adapt to get the job done. It's always possible in the end, and in my opinion, is more fun than always having the perfect team composition with perfect answers. I was on three teams yesterday. None of them would have qualified for this bonus. Two of them lacked control, and one lacked melee damage (according to the list here; there were two brutes). All three runs were successful. "Role Diversity" is unnecessary and should not be encouraged in this manner. It doesn't take long to go from encouraged to required.

Here's how I would buff Flurry: make it an AOE if you use it while Whirlwind is active. A buff with a price for some thematic intrapool synergy.

I said you could build a stalker to do it; I never said they'd be good at it. As for how, power pools are the obvious go to, with Leadership and Medicine for support and Presence for control, along with various options from their primary, secondary, epic/patron pools, procs, and/or incarnate powers. It may not sound like much, but depending on power selections there absolutely will be characters who do less from ATs that are considered control and support. Many ATs are better at filling multiple roles than EATs are. EATs are not special in this regard. It's a conditional reward. It introduces the possibility of FOMO. It's a system that imposes extra labels and rules in a game that I feel is better off without them.

You could make a stalker to be control or support, but most people don't, so a generic classification probably shouldn't consider them as such. But why would it be unfair? The EATs are already counted as three things, so why not the controller, if the controller is as versatile. Then again, they could choose to ignore their primary after level one, so why even force a generic classification of control? As for the part about doomsaying... if the reward is no big deal, then we should forget this whole thing, because it's no big deal anyway. On the contrary, if the reward is a big deal, than doomsaying is valid and we should forget this whole thing.

It all just seems so arbitrary and unnecessary. None of these roles are required for general content in this game. I've done teams of all defenders, all masterminds, all tankers. They usually steamroll things, often working much better than a conventional team that would qualify for this diversity bonus. The role assignments are also a big issue for me, like a mastermind being support while controllers and corruptors are not. You said you wanted each AT to only count for one role, but why? Why pigeonhole ATs that are clearly much more versatile? That would work in a game like WoW where class and spec clearly defines the abilities the character will have, but we have so much freedom in builds that by endgame, anyone can do anything if they really focus on it. Anyway, I'm against it, and I think it should be scrapped.

Honestly, this is what I would vote for.

That being the case, why would this change anything? At best you might have teams bring a dominator or controller. More likely, they'll stick with the list you mentioned because a faster clear is more valuable than the reward. But it absolutely will cause delay and confusion at lower levels. Problems and solutions for regular and hardmode TFs/SFs should not be lumped together. They're too different.

I'd say VEAT. Double leadership is a nice contribution and doesn't require you to do anything.

Is this even a problem that needs to be fixed? I've always thought that one of the things that made red side the best side was that it has less people. But maybe I'm just a more antisocial villain.

You should ditch the role system entirely and give the bonus to any team with at least five different ATs.

Yeah, CoH screenshots automatically remove the UI and there seems to be no way to change it. The really odd thing is that the image copied to the clipboard does still have it. So if I want the UI, I'll open the default screenshot in Paint and paste the other one over it.

VEATs need some dev attention. They seem to get left behind by changes here. Soldiers and Widows are the only ATs that still only have access to one secondary power at character creation. Bane Spider Cloaking Device is inferior to the Concealment pool's Stealth.

This time I'm the only one on. I think this thing might just be doomed.

I don't think I've ever used the help window. I doubt I ever will.

Sounds good. Is there a time next Saturday that works for both of you?

Want to try to do something with this next weekend?

Lorenzo DiCosta's mission "Shut down the Council cell" As soon as you take the elevator, the Archon escapes and you fail the mission. You're given no time whatsoever to react.

If both the primary and secondary sets have important buff/debuff elements, I'll probably go defender. Otherwise, I just like corruptors more.

We do have a set for whips! Tygra could be a petless demons/ mastermind.