Jump to content

SentaiLavender

Members
  • Posts

    19
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

57 Excellent

About SentaiLavender

  • Birthday April 16

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Yes. You keep basically everything. All you have to worry about "losing" is your server-based friends list, your Supergroup name/base, and possibly your character's name (if someone else is currently using it on the "new" server). And this is minor, but you also lose progress on any currently-running TFs, Ouro arcs, or anything else that locks your team for its duration.
  2. Gotta admit, I feel some guilt for being one of the first people to mention power creep in the Focused Feedback thread. To be honest, a lot of my concern with power creep has less to do with any individual changes and more to do with a general pattern that has developed over Homecoming's run. I'm starting to think the majority of the playerbase just fundamentally disagrees with me on what this game should be. Look, I don't want everything to be Super Duper Hard Mode. I don't want this game to "be Dark Souls." I love this game so much, and I just want it to feel like a balanced game. Not a freeform sandbox. Not a mindless faceroll on par with a phone game. Like I said in my initial post, I don't think this change is going to massively shift the game's difficulty by itself. But it's another inch down a slippery slope that we've been riding for years now. Almost every "Quality of Life change" on Homecoming makes everything easier and easier. I know a lot of people enjoy these changes, and whenever I express my dislike of said changes, I'm told to "stop telling [them] how to play." That argument would be valid in the vacuum of a single-player game. Problem is, CoX is an MMO, so it has a culture. Cultures outwardly express what they value. And we have created an in-game culture that values expediency and simplicity above all else. I have two pages of characters stuck in their 40s. I tend to lose interest around that level range because all it takes is two exemplared-down Incarnates to turn any team into an observational exercise: I watch them clear the entire map, knowing my character contributes nothing, knowing I could stand in a corner and /e boombox and nothing would change. I also don't join Task Forces anymore, because everyone by default just runs straight to the end of every mission, an army of invincible ninja speedrunners. This is now a game in which a significant portion of the community designs characters to stand unmoving in a single room and kill things while they're AFK -- literally not even playing the game -- then gets offended when you point this out. The dominant culture, cultivated by developers and maintained by players, no longer values strategy, communication, or exploration; it values XP/minute ratios, kill speed, and an absolute aversion to anything that disrupts that. I started noticing this over a year ago and was repeatedly told to form my own teams. Fine, I don't understand how instantly winning a game is fun, but to each their own, right? Unfortunately, I'm fighting an uphill battle against that existing culture. It takes a while to fill story arc teams, because the reward structure does not incentivize them. If my character is level 45+, I have to actively exclude a lot of level 50+ characters and feel like an asshole for doing so. People quit when they realize I actually want to run things like hunt missions instead of just auto-completing them. People quit when I allow my teammates time to enhance between levels. My point is, when PI radio steamrollers are the norm, what I'm offering is very niche. I'm sick of having to take all the initiative, do all this extra work, just to team up and play the game on anything other than Very Easy Mode. It's like @Yomo Kimyata mentioned earlier: Hard Mode is optional, but Easy Mode isn't. The culture has made it the norm. I know that most of what I just said has very little bearing on the power unlock change itself. I'm hoping that the lack of slots will balance it out for at-level characters, but the intersection with the exemplar system is still going to be an issue. Regardless, my gut reaction is that this is part of a trend I can't avoid noticing anymore, and I felt it was important to voice my thoughts in case others felt similarly. I just feel like most of the playerbase wants a very different game than I do. I'm thankful to the devs for bringing this game back, and I don't say any of this to antagonize them, but I do want them to know that players like me are feeling increasingly left out.
  3. As much as I appreciate the ability to pick either of the first two powers from one's Secondary at character creation, I'd like to echo the concerns @PeregrineFalcon mentioned earlier concerning power creep. The mid-40s have become my least favorite level range for team-play on Homecoming because it's simply too much of a mindless steamroller -- with all the exemplared-down Incarnates, set bonuses out the wazoo, etc. I enjoy running small teams in the 20s and 30s because the combat still has a nice "dance" to it, there's a good pace, you can really tell that your particular character is contributing to a fight, there's still the remotest possibility that you might fail and need to adjust your strategy. Getting Primary capstones 6 levels earlier and Secondary capstones 8 levels earlier is going to change that. Probably not much. I admit it will be very minor. But was anybody complaining that levels 20-30 were too difficult? I really just don't understand the logic behind this decision; I don't see what it accomplishes other than making the game even easier. I know it's not the end of the world, but little things like Blasters firing off nukes at level 26 strike me as another inch downhill on that slippery slope. EDIT: I see from @Faultline's post above that the goal is to smooth over those three awkward "gap" levels where you can't select any new powers, but my concern about slight power creep still stands.
  4. So I’ve been playing on Excelsior for the past few years, but it’s getting to a point that I solo most of the time because fewer and fewer people on that shard seem to play the game the way I do. I’m considering moving my characters over to Everlasting, but I had some questions about the “vibe” over here. Does the “unofficial RP server” have more creativity? My favorite part of this game is reading other people’s bios and looking at their costumes. Used to be, there would be at least two or three people on every team whose character concept was funny, clever, or otherwise interesting. Lately it seems every team I join has more people whose names are just blatant copyright infringements, chat handle names, all-caps misspellings, or random strings of numbers/letters, instead of actual character concepts. Is this shard more open to “classic,” sub-50 story missions? I rarely team on Excelsior anymore because the farm-begging in LFG is incessant, TFs are usually speedy zerg-rushes unless stated otherwise, and the few “traditional” teams are usually Incarnate-level steamrolls. Nothing against the people who enjoy this content, but I don’t get how it’s fun to sit at a door, ghost everything, or get carried through a thousand PI Council radios in a row. I used to form my own teams to run the story arcs I like, but it seems like that’s getting harder and harder to do. This week I tried on three separate evenings to form a story mission team, got a grand total of zero bites on LFG each time, and eventually just gave up. Is it different over here? I was getting the sense that the “culture” of the game has shifted, but I wonder if maybe the shard culture has just solidified — Excelsior for the powergamers, speedrunners, and farmers; Everlasting for the roleplayers, altoholics, and badgers — and I’m just hanging out in the wrong place for my particular playstyle. [And yes, I know server transfers are abundant, so I can check out Everlasting for myself. I’m doing so right now on one of my alts! But I thought this might be an interesting topic for the forumgoers to discuss.]
  5. The alternate MA animations look like they were designed by an alien who has no arms or hands and has only ever read about this whole "punching" thing from an old book. They're so awkward that I can't use them without laughing. If you want a martial artist who uses his fists, either complement MA's original animations with the Fighting pool, or just go Street Justice to begin with.
  6. Maybe this is just me, but I wish there were alternate animations for Poison Trap. It clashes with the theming of the set's other powers. If my character is the type to tactically deploy high-tech gizmos, does it make sense that he also spits and barfs on people? Every other animation in the set seems designed for the concept of a filthy monster, not a gadgeteer.
  7. As per my namesake, a Hero Corps member in tokusatsu (Japanese transforming hero) style: HC Toku.costume
  8. The Warriors are one of my favorite enemy groups. They tie into the Greek mythology motifs of Talos Island, and the idea of a modern street gang using antiquated weaponry is just so charmingly silly. I also play a lot of Natural characters who don't have any real "superpowers" beyond training and willpower, for which the Warriors are a fitting enemy, RP-wise. And as mentioned above, their melee attacks can hit hard, which teaches new players distancing and fluid movement in combat. I just wish they had a little more presence in the game.
  9. The original devs clearly learned over time what the players wanted out of TFs. Several of the old Freedom Phalanx / Task Force Commander TFs really show their age these days, particularly with Positron and Sister Psyche having been revamped. Most obviously, Citadel and Synapse are rather miserable. They feel tedious, even when a team clears them quickly. Just the exact same objectives and enemy groups over and over and over, culminating with an AV who melts in seconds. I wager that if you polled the community on which TFs most desperately need a revamp, those two would come out on top. The other Freedom Phalanx TFs are fine, in my opinion. I still enjoy Manticore -- it has slightly fewer missions than Citadel or Synapse, a good mix of glowies / defeat alls / defeat bosses / hunts, and a fun boss fight at the end. And it's kind of lame that most of the missions in Numina are just streetsweeping mobs that con gray to you, but I honestly enjoy the coordination required to pull one off in a reasonable amount of time. There could probably be some discussion on revamping the Shadow Shard TFs, but I think that's best saved for a future conversation about the Shadow Shard as a whole. All of those maps are complete ghost towns, and it's due to a lot of more than just "all the TFs here are too long."
  10. I ran a similar challenge. I have a character on Excelsior named Totally Boring Man who only uses "realistic" pool powers (i.e., things a normal human could theoretically do -- powers from Fighting, Speed, Leaping, Leadership, and Body Mastery, with no Primary or Secondary powers in use). He does use Acrobatics, and it does "work." But I agree with the point @Luminara made above: your biggest issue is probably going to be Stuns. That's the only mez that has ever noticeably annoyed me while playing Totally Boring Man. I ran a TinPex with him the other night and got Stunned twice, but he did recover quickly. If you get all the way to Incarnates with this challenge, you can always pick Clarion for your Destiny. I personally went for Barrier on my character, and it keeps his Defense high enough that a lot of mezzing attacks just miss anyway, but I suppose Clarion's another option if mez really bugs you. There's also Rune of Protection, but I can't speak for its effectiveness here. Totally Boring Man couldn't pick Sorcery... too interesting for him.
  11. Ah, I get what you're saying. I think we just disagree on design principles. I would never want complete 100% accuracy. The frustration of a miss is what makes the hits satisfying, and I like that it forces me to adapt and switch up my rotation. I really don't like how Energy Focus grants stacks even if you miss; it feels like I got something for nothing. I view the instant Assassin's Strike as a bonus (albeit a frequent one), so failing to secure 3 stacks of Assassin's Focus on one rotation doesn't feel like a "punishment" to me.
  12. Just pop a yellow or slot for more accuracy. Why should you get a bonus for failing to land an attack? Yeah, and that's fun! You actually have to adapt to the situation and change your attack sequence accordingly.
  13. It worries me a little when people talk about adding more Incarnate powers. Any such addition would need to be accompanied by a reassessment of the game's difficulty. The overpowered nature of Incarnates was somewhat justified back when they required a ludicrous amount of grinding in specific events, guaranteeing that only a portion of 50s would actually possess all the Incarnate powers. Nowadays, on Homecoming, with Veteran Level rewards and Incarnate XP/drops from normal content, anyone can become a literal god in a few extra days of playtime. The average level 50 team is already an automatic faceroll; more Incarnate powers will only worsen that. As far as how to rebalance the difficulty, adding in an actual Battalion storyline with new, super-tough enemies sounds great, but that's a lot to ask of a volunteer development team. Conversely, nerfing the existing Incarnate abilities would just piss people off. I'd like to see something like an extended difficulty slider, additional abilities for existing high-level enemies, increased rewards for non-steamroller content at 50, or other ideas that address the game's ever-lowering difficulty without giving the devs too much work or taking existing bonuses away from players. I'd also like if the devs balanced the existing Incarnate power choices before adding more powers or Incarnate Slots. Judgment and Lore are the only slots that give me any sense of deliberation ("Which one of these powers best fits my character's concept?"). All the other slots have one or two really OP selections I end up choosing every time.
  14. Eagle's Claw has always just been a Rider Kick. Now that it hits multiple targets, the obvious animation fix is to add a giant explosion at the end, like so. But seriously, just a little "shockwave" effect originating from the target would make the attack read more clearly as a cone.
  15. Not to mention the existence of Sentinels bringing the number of "basic archetypes" up to 11, anyway. There are several instances of the SCoRE or Homecoming devs changing something mechanically, but not reflecting it in the game's text. E.g., simultaneous-click glowies no longer exist, but the prompts in the nav bar don't reflect that (I've seen newbies get confused by this on the Penelope Yin Task Force). I would love an organized attempt to correct all these tiny errors, but that seems like a very large undertaking for an issue that only bothers those of us with OCD.
×
×
  • Create New...