oedipus_tex

Solo at least, Sentinels have the low damage Controller problem, same problem Tankers and Defenders have had at various points in the past. Defeating enemies quickly is the key to generating inspirations. It's a huge setback when a character can't get a flow going. Combine this with not really having a lot to offer teams and I would agree Sentinels are a ripe place for some adjustments.

I used to main Ice/Fiery Dominator on live. Keep in mind it was a very different version of Fiery, the version other CoX mostly servers still have, with an outrageously overpowered +80% fire damage buff that lasted 30 seconds. IMO Fire still does Ice Control some favors. You're an endurance hog and that Endurance restore in Consume is great. Also, Fiery doesn't need to move around much to attack. This lets you center Arctic Air so that it strategically falls over as many enemies as possible. That said I have to say that although Ice Control is fun, its shortcomings on Dominators are really noticeable if you're used to sets that you can play more safely. Arctic Air doesn't Dominate. This mean it is robbed of 50% of the Confuse duration it should have and also that you have very few ways to shut down bosses. It's a fun power but I do wish its flaws would be resolved.

Assuming it's BM herself who summons the patches, they're summoned by a toggle power she has with 300ft radius, hitting 3 max targets every 15 seconds. She also has a clickable version of the power that's a 300ft radius, max 1 target. I assume the fight starts out with her just having the click version and later she has the toggle.

Plant/Poison/Earth Controller would be an interesting twist on this. Plant/Kinetics/Earth would be a literal farmer.

If this is the enemy I am thinking of, you can Confuse them and then not worry teammate AoEs will kill your special pet.

Don't take this as gospel, but from a quick look at what I think is Battle Maiden's blue patch attack (referred to as a "spear attack") players take a mix of resistible Lethal damage and unresistible Untyped damage. Pets also take damage, but only 1/8th what a player does, all of it resistable. Doesn't look like anyone can dodge the attack though. FWIW if I'm reading this right with BM specifically you have about 6 seconds to move before the patch lands and it lasts 14 seconds. Something I have never noticed about this fight and I may be dead wrong about what is happening, but it looks like BM herself has a self buff that recharges every 10 seconds that boosts her damage to all by +0.1, stackable. Each stack lasts 6000 seconds, so in theory she should be building a lot of stacks. But, I didn't look to see if she actually has this power in game, could just be a power that is unused or it may work differently than I'm reading it to. Anyone ever used a power analyzer on her? It's also possible the power is cast by a pseudo pet summoned by that mission and not BM herself.

The 802.5 missions are good change of pace from time to time. I do like the feel of it being more like a dungeon and some variation in the meta of the game. Running Dark Astoria as a natural 50 kind of has some of that feel, just with less total beat downs. It's actually really well done content that is solable for most builds at +0 and hard enough to challenge a team at +4 which is why its such a shame the game levels you out of being able to use it if you follow the progression.

We agree about the mechanics you listed being fun and cool. It's good to find some common ground. Battle Maiden in particular is one of my favorite fights. Adding BM mechanics to invasions would be nice. I'm not sure how difficult any of them would be to add. Ambushes are probably the easiest but even then still not really easy. On the other hand I couldn't quote you the number of hours it would take to build. The solution, to me, is to take the obvious path and reinterpret powers-for-cash items. The SCORE team had to make a call on what to do with these items when the game went to completely free. They interpreted it by making the items available to everyone. I don't think it's unreasonable to revisit aspects of that, especially in a case like this were no one loses out.

Sorry, I don't mean to misrepresent your comment. I usually just include just a portion of the post because the original is visible a few lines above. My apologies if the snip made was unfair. I will say that I agree with your second statement. Adding more content, I have no disagreements there. Where I think we disagree is the amount of resources it takes to add this new content. I don't know if any dev team has yet pulled it off. The process of building new stuff for the existing engine is intense. I made the change to Level Shifts in a few hours and resurrected some content that was otherwise not attractive. Doing that just required edits to power definitions. Editing maps or anything in the C code is a lot more intensive and risky. The Dark Astoria content is actually excellent for teaming when its played in the level range where everyone is fighting +4s. When Level Shifts get involved and some of the team is fighting +1s and others +5s it's very noticeable though. It just seems wasteful to have such great material and then not make it available, whatever the original intent might have been. If we had map engines to make loads of new stuff it wouldn't be as noticeable, but the situation being what it is it sticks out.

I am trying to understand because some people feel really passionate about this. But, I don't get what "feel less super" means. The difficulty is adjustable. If you were fighting at 50+4, you change to that to 50+3 so you are still fighting +3 enemies. This is exactly what you did before Level Shifts. It's level difference that matters, not absolute rank. The only thing that is affected by that change is street sweeping at level 50. If that is really a big deal, you can suggest making the level shift apply when outside. You can't adjust iTrials so the level shift still works there. If on the other hand it "makes players feel less super" just to know there is a +4 difficulty that exists but they are "only" running on +3 and that makes them feel inferior somehow, then IMO that's not an issue that's resolvable. More than anything I think this conversation is underserved when it is pushed to hyperbole. The game was built on a -1 to +4 scale. Players still use the scale from levels 1 to 49. That scale was used for level 50 players the majority of the game's life. At some stage it was decided to shift the level 50 game to a -2 to +3 scale for players who paid for a subscription while free players stuck to -1 to +4.

Mind/Psy Dominator is pretty close to this. There are some punch attacks but the AoEs are pretty hands off looking.

Does fighting +4 enemies as actual +4s instead of +1s or +3s normally result in them operating like a Cath of Pain or launching nukes? Asking because what are you talking about.

To answer the literal part of the question, Sorcerous Blast is coded in Issue 24 power format, where Homecoming is in Issue 25 power format, so it wouldn't be a clean transfer. However, Sorcerous Blast is publicly available on GitHub for any server that wants to use it. Not sure about Arcane Affinity.

I still think Homecoming has some brilliant designers and they've shown at least a partial willingness to review old systems. I agree though that overall interest has waned a lot. I used to be a team player, just don't enjoy it with the way things work right now. I can solo of course, but would rather do it on a private server where I can adjust mechanics to my liking and no one can type back in all caps.

I mean, City of Heroes server and client code was not meant to snuck out of the original developer's studios and released to the internet with a .ReadMe that states, in part "F them all." But here we are, working with what we've got.

Semi-related, because of the way the incarnate powers are coded, it does look like there's a way to fire a death ray or whatever that depowers the target and prevents them from using their incarnate abilities. The system would work kinda like how Jolting Chain remembers not to double back on an enemy it just hit. You could use whatever arbitrary targeting system, e.g. hit anyone who decides to try to Fly. Now what kind of developer would do something like that? 😎

I confess the argument that no power is actually overpowered, because you can always just not click or use it, leaves me without a response.

The game is available on the internet for download by anyone so no one can make you do what you don't like. You can keep the Level Shifts and even mod it so all the enemies talk to you in ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS. We're here to discuss what shared ruleset the Homecoming server should use. It's a multiplayer game so not everyone is going to get their way. That includes me, you, and everyone else here posting. No one is "forcing" anyone to do anything.

Literally the third line of code in each of these powers is a check to make sure the player paid cash for it, so I would be careful what lessons you extract from the files.

BTW RE: the difficulty of adjusting the Level Shift mechanics, I think I pulled it off just since I made the comment last night on my private modded game. The Level Shift uses very straightforward Requirements mechanics. I'd just need to be sure to test this on an iTrial to make sure I didn't break something else. It involves adding one line of code to each Alpha slot (about 20 lines total, the same line copied and pasted from a modified version of Destiny) and removing a tiny snippet from Lore and Destiny that checks to see if you are in Dark Astoria. BTW yeah, Dark Astoria is literally coded into those powers by name, kinda surprised me. Of course I don't want to turn this into a strangle on the Homecoming team. I think they're brilliant and will decide for themselves what to do even if I hope to convince them. I'd really like them to follow this lead and make this adjustment. There's a reason I had the willpower to change it for myself, its bothered me since the Level Shift ability was released and especially since I realized that awesome scary zone that is Dark Astoria could be reduced to Universe of Lisa Frank just by following normal character progression.

That's not a bad idea for some pieces of content. All-boss spawns tend to screw Controllers though, so you need to have a balance. The minion-lt-boss balance exists in part because of how the Control sets are meant to play. That said, hurling the occasional all boss or even all EB spawn at the group isn't a bad idea on Task Forces. What I would like best is a mix up roughly equivalent to the ITF, which I think is designed pretty well. The ITF has some moments where you face all boss spawns, some with mostly easy enemies, some harder spots, etc. Specifically, I wish missions were more "dungeon like" and you could eyeball spawn groups and decide whether its worth tangling with or sneaking past them. The current mission randomizer mostly makes homogenized groups. You don't ever run up on, say, 16 Malta Sappers and have to deal with that or leave it alone.

I think sometimes folks underestimate how effective even a single Level Shift is. Level Shifts get better as enemies get higher than you. This happens in reverse of the Purple Patch (or rather, specifically because of the Purple Patch). Shifting a+4 enemy down to +3 rescales your damage up from dealing x0.48 to x0.68. To put that on scale for an attack chain dishing 1000 damage: 1000 x 0.48 = 480 damage 1000 x 0.65 = 650 damage 650 / 480 = ~ A 35% damage increase. This increase effects attack powers, damage procs, even unscaled abilities like Judgment. On top of that, all your debuffs are also 35% more effective. This is a "true" damage increase as well, not +Damage in the sense of a power like Build Up. It's actually a multiplier on top of that multiplier, increasing the final damage tally as last step in the calculation. No wonder we're blowing enemies away so quickly. As for what's going on in Dark Astoria when you fight +4s pushed down to +1: 1000 x 0.48 = 480 damage 1000 x 0.90 = 900 damage 900 / 480 = ~ 87% damage increase. I have nothing but love for the OG dev team and the amazing game they created, but I also think they made some missteps. I feel this was one of them. I haven't gotten to the fact that the Level Shift also reduces how much damage you take and how effective enemy debuffs are. And again this gets more effective as enemy level increases.

Yes, also no power actually does too much damage, you just slotted it with Damage enhancements, which are optional. 😛

You earned the right to fight at 50+4 when you could do the exact same thing fighting at 50+3? Again I just don't understand it. Is it a fear that some players or team could do better? A fear that teams might do better than soloists? The weirdest part of it being for me that that's how the game played for years and years without issue. If it was an actual power or ability I could understand it. But the right to run the exact same content at a higher level and not allow people to adjust difficulty above that. Just throws me completely.

Citadel isn't level 50 content. The ending place for the leveling path has you fighting +3s or+1s (in DA). I'm not angry about it, just confused. Why is it critical to keep the Level Shift? With it gone, you could fight the same content at Level 53 or Level 51 (in DA). Why do people fight so hard to make sure the game doesn't scale higher than that?