Luminara

Looking at this thread caused my latest respec to fail. I want a refund. And a ponicorn.

It's not about what might happen. It's not about being right, or proving someone else wrong. It's not about initiating change. It's about what is happening. It's about understanding, so we can approach discussions from an informed perspective. It's about bettering ourselves by asking questions and looking for answers. If the only thing that comes out of this thread is a little more knowledge, it's worth continuing indefinitely.

HOOP! There it is! HOOP! There it is! Also, I chase the ones that make squeaky noises. They're more fun to catch than the ones that just lie down and accept their fate.

Batman has Batsuits stashed all over the world, and keeps a suit in his briefcase, and in his Bentley, and in the Batmobile, and in the Batjet, and in his office in Wayne Tower, and... well, you get the point. The X-Men have suits stashed with their transportation. The Flash has a suit in his special ring. Hulk no wear boots! Puny footwear! Superman... is apparently always wearing his suit, but where does he hide his boots? Does he wear shoes a couple of sizes larger than he'd normally wear so he can wear his super suit boots all of the time (with socks over the super suit boots (wouldn't that force him to wear shoes three sizes too large (at this point, he's either running around with Rob Liefeld feet, or clown shoes)))? Are they hidden in the old prison wallet? Does he make new boots every time he changes, using his Super Cobbling power? I should've asked myself this question 40 years ago... but how often do you look at a man's shoes?

Wonder Woman and Legionette. Best super-team ever.

I'm attracted to desolation. Wandering the wasteland in the Fallout 3 and up games, looking inside the remnants of houses, scouring office buildings to see what little props and easter egg scenes the developers set up, walking the length and breadth of the sewers and subways, just taking it all in. I do this in reality, too. There are hundreds of abandoned homes scattered all over the counties near my cabin. I stop once in a while when I see one, go inside, see what kind of life someone had, try to figure out when the last time was that anyone lived there. I'm looking at the past, but I'm also looking at the future, because everything will fall down, eventually. Our impermanence sits all around us, hinting at what's to come. So Boomtown is my favorite map. It's the most desolate and ruined. I also hate Boomtown more than any other map, because I can't go inside any of those decrepit buildings. I can't explore. Unless I have a mission in that zone, I can't enter a single structure. It's a harsh reminder of how lacking some of the development in this game was. They could've echoed what Bethesda did with Fallout 3. Instead, it's just empty and unused, a waste of potential.

No. Make the same character, power-level it up if you prefer, enroll the new one in a different SG. Rinse, repeat as necessary to play the same character across multiple SGs. The only real difference, then, is the name.

Alts.

See, I would've assumed that it was either catgirls trying to cook, or someone's date night going well.

Fear of what? Seriously, how do you think the development team is going to frighten us? Tax audits? An in-game housing crunch? Forcing us to trade in our capes for aprons? We grew up. We're not frightened of arbitrary penalties in video games.

No mechanics in place to support that. If Containment triggered double damage for other players' attacks, that'd be teamwork. If taunted critters were more easily affected by status effects or debuffs, that'd be teamwork. If "damage dealer" archetypes left a lingering effect when they used their attacks, like a little Absorb PBAoE or -Res on targets other than the one they're attacking, which benefited teammates but not them, that'd be teamwork. We have powers which aid our teammates and provide some small interaction, typically in the form of "make X go down faster" and "make X less dangerous to us", but there's no actual teamwork built into them. There are a few mechanics which encourage teaming, like increased XP/inf rewards and shitty inherents like Vigilance and Cosmic Balance, but nothing that rewards teamwork. And there are only a handful of missions which require anything even remotely resembling teamwork. Pull the AV away from the cysts... send the <archetype> to <do thing only <archetype> can do>... keep this AV away from that AV so they don't do <thing>... yeah, that about covers the list. Missions weren't designed around teamwork. You don't pull the AV into a room, trigger a spiky death trap and fight off waves of allies attempting to release it. You don't hold off multiple AVs while half the team works on consoles to raise a barrier between them in order to cut off their links to one another. Almost everything in the game can be soloed because almost everything in the game was designed for solo players, including team content. That team content doesn't add mechanics to make teamwork necessary, it just buffs enemy levels. We face harder foes than +4 minions and lieutenants before we can even access decent enhancements, much less have anywhere to put them. Missions don't require or reward teamwork, any more than our characters do. You want teamwork? Build it into the game. Without the mechanics, it's just asking people to stand around, pointlessly and needlessly, waiting for... fucked if I know. A golden ticket? Leprechaun Hanukah? The Rapture?

Limits are limits. If you decided to stop adding Resistance when you hit 43%, it'd be functionally identical to the HC team capping your Resistance at 43%. But at least, in setting the limit for yourself, you're making a choice, rather than obeying a dictate. I'd rather be free to make that choice than a slave to someone else's decision. And choosing to impose our own limitations forces us to find alternative solutions, different approaches, which wouldn't exist at all if developer-imposed limits of a similar nature were in place. That makes us better players by expanding our knowledge and pushing us to work harder.

Stagnation engenders ennui.

In sense of stepping on each others' toes and curb-stomping the archetype barriers people imagined, perhaps. The archetypes weren't designed like classes in EQ/WoW, to complement one another and work together cooperatively, they were designed to be completely self-contained and independent units which were capable of filling multiple roles when teamed. Every one of the original archetypes infringed on every one of the other originals from the beta stage, in multiple ways, and that was both a deliberate design choice, to ensure that this game never fell into the holy trinity model; and encouraged post-release to attract the players who liked the MMORPG model but didn't want to be dependent on others for basic progression. The release of CoV, with five "new" archetypes that turned out to be variations and/or hybrids of the existing archetypes, didn't move the game away from that, not by a single micrometer. Nor has anything that's been added since then. Not Praetorian content, not Inventions, not Incarnates, nothing. Every archetype ran roughshod over every other archetype's bailiwick, from the beta stage onward, and people have bitched about feeling useless when in teams since the game went live, despite embracing the game for the very same quality that made that "problem" exist, the solo-friendly design of every archetype. So yes, I tell you, it absolutely has been this way since 2003. Teaming has never been about working together to overcome long odds in Co*, it's always been about socialization, because the design of the game was centered on the individual, not the group. We teamed then because we wanted to team, not because we had to, and we still do it for the same reason today. The only difference between then and now is that more people have realized that teaming in this game is just throwing a bunch of soloers into a room together and letting them run wild, because it was designed that way. The only purpose you, or I, or anyone else has ever brought to any team has been the purpose we created for ourselves.

Wombats? Sugar gliders? PORCUPINES?! ARE THEY PORCUPINES?! *squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

We'd have to remove defenders, corruptors, controllers and masterminds entirely, all power pools, most of the powers in the remaining primaries and secondaries, and inspirations... most of the controls would also have to go, so dominators would take a hike, too, and the majority of the buffs and debuffs attached to individual powers. Those are the things that are actually causing some people to feel discontent with how teaming plays out, not IOs, Incarnates or *PPs.

The game was designed to ensure that no archetype was necessary on a team. Concurrent with that design choice, content couldn't provide more challenge than any random collection of individuals could complete, and that included the possibility of eight petless masterminds with no enhancements. The challenge that you feel is missing, isn't, because it never existed outside our own personal preconceptions. You're seeing it differently now because you have the benefit of previous experience and easier access to certain resources, but that's a change in perception, not in the game's level of challenge. It's been like this since 2003. There's no problem to fix, as far as balance, power or teaming. If you're not feeling challenged, or necessary, or entertained when you're on a team, then you need to say so. Talk to your teammates. That's really the only reason they're there. Posting about it doesn't resolve your issue with that team, or future teams. Speak up when the problem is at hand, not hours later, and you just might find your team experience to be more in line with what you prefer.

You're part of that. No communication? Speak up. Feeling useless? Speak up. Bored? Speak up. IOs don't prevent you, or anyone on your team, from typing, or speaking into a microphone. If you're dissatisfied with anything on a team, speak up. That's the purpose of teams, to provide a social experience.

I remember those. Wasn't there another placeholder that popped up once in a while? Can't remember seeing that one, but I know it happened to more than a few people.

👍

I'm not seeing anything, since I can't download the beta files due to my limited Internet capability. That's why I asked. That's always been the case, yes. But the case was previously half, not three quarters. Assuming that everyone reads the beta forums, goes to Brainstorm to test and stays up to date with changes is a mistake. If the power doesn't specifically tell players that they lose most of the Defense, the older players who think they know how the power works based on previous experience and/or comparison to other powers with similar effects are going to be unpleasantly surprised, the new players who don't know how the power works are going to be unpleasantly surprised, and both groups are going to raise a ruckus. Don't expect a nebulously worded patch note and word of mouth to do the job. The description needs to be clear on what's happening. We don't need a 75 page thread of complaints and arguments about Stealth three days after P2 goes live.

That should be specified in the description. "If, however, you attack while using this power, you will be discovered and will lose your Stealth and 75% of the Defense bonus."

Well, if no-one's going to address the questions, I'll go ahead and raise some potential issues anyway. Presuming the in combat Defense totals in this version of Stealth are half of the out of combat totals, the power is now better than Superior Invisibility. That's a first tier pool power out-performing a controller primary power. As it stands, it's also better than Weave, a fourth tier pool power, since it offers twice as much out of combat Defense and total invisibility to boot. That doesn't strike me as appropriate. If, however, the added Defense is all out of combat, and all lost when the character clicks a glowie/is hit/whatever, then it should be noted that the in-combat Defense buff is only the original amount. That kind of information that needs to be front and center. If the Defense only suppresses to half, you're going to have Illusion controllers and a hell of a lot of people who invested in Fighting to get to Weave shitting themselves with rage; and if the Defense suppresses to a fourth, and it's not clearly and directly noted in the power's description, you're going to have an angry mob shouting about bait and switch tactics. Neither is desirable. And regarding Infiltration, I think the Defense portion is a poor choice. As a means of preventing foes from hitting the character during travel, it's too low to make any difference, especially considering the Stealth component of the power. The total is too low to have any appreciable combat value, either, presuming half of it is retained when engaging in combat activities. 0.875% Defense, even with archetype modifiers, isn't going to be worth slotting. This gives the impression that the Defense is only there to allow for slotting certain global/unique IOs, which, in turn, suggests that we're taking the first step away from SOs as the baseline. I think +Perception or +Sleep protection would be more befitting, to reflect the preternatural alertness of someone moving rapidly but stealthily. I'm not going to pitch a hissy fit if these powers go live without change, obviously, but I do think they'll come back to bite you (the HC team) on the asses if these points aren't addressed.