DougGraves

I've never participated in a super team

What has caused the flurry of Kronos titans the past week? We would 2 or 3 showing up in Talos or Steel.

Was on a PuG yesterday. Everyone was nice and the team worked well together. Someone said CoH had the best community of any game. I commented that it was because we are old. Everyone started posting their age. I was tied for youngest at 51. The oldest was 71. Then we team wiped 3 times while chatting instead of fighting.

Prd is a producer. Dev is a developer. Prd: So, you have a tutorial for me in this current year of 2004? Dev: Yes, sir, I do! Although it's odd that you mention the year. Prd: So what's the tutorial about? Dev: Yesterday I was at a restaurant and there was a sick man coughing at the table next to me. I wanted to hit him. So I thought, let's do that. Prd: You want to have heroes beat up people because they are sick in public? Dev: That's what we're going with. Prd: And this is a plot in 2004? Dev: Yes, although again it's odd that you mention the current year. Would it help if we call them "thugs" and say the sickness is due to "drugs"? Prd: That works. So what do the heroes do? Dev: You talk to a police officer named Officer Flint who tells you there is a crisis due to a drug. Prd: Does he call it an outbreak? Dev: No Prd: But that's the name of the tutorial! Dev: He calls it a crisis. He says the situation is desperate, and he has you bring something to Dr. Miller who is nearby. Prd: Is the doctor in danger from thugs? Do you have to fight your way to him? Dev: No. Dr. Miller is just down the street. You just walk down the street and hand it to him. Prd: Why do they need a superhero do do that? Dev: Because. Prd: Alright. Tell me about Dr. Miller, what's his deal? Dev: I just told you. He's a doctor just down the street. You talk to him. Then you read a sign. Then you go back and talk to the Officer Flint who introduces you to Officer Parks who you go talk to. He tells you things are getting out of control. Prd: Out of control? Does he call it an outbreak? Dev: No. In this entire tutorial no one uses the word outbreak, so I'm going to need you to get all of the way off of my back about that. Prd: Alright, let me get off of that. So Officer Parks has you go after the thugs? Dev: Eventually. First he has you talk to a scientist who has you talk to another police officer who has you go back to Officer Parks. Prd: That may as well happen. Dev: Then Officer Parks has you fight two thugs. Prd: If the thug situation is so desperate, why are all of these police officers standing around waiting to talk to you? Dev: So the tutorial can happen. Prd: Well, okay then. After you defeat the two thugs, let me guess - you talk to another police officer? Dev: You talk to two more police officers. Then you fight four thugs. Prd: After that you talk to two more police officers? Dev: No, just one police officer but you talk to him twice and you read a sign. Prd: Is having characters talk to people and read signs the best way to get players hooked on a superhero game? Dev: I don't know. Prd: Fair enough. Dev: The police officer gives you an enhancement and the sign tells you how to put it into your enhancement slot. Prd: Putting things into your slot is tight. Dev: Oh my god! Never say that again. Prd: I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. Let's just move on. Dev: Then you talk to Coyote. He's a veteran superhero who sends the player on a mission to investigate the source of the drugs. Prd: And what's his deal? Dev: He's named after a pre-beta tester who was known for being helpful but died just after the game was released. Prd: Wow wow wow. Wow. Dev: So he sends you to the building he suspects the drugs came from. Prd: And do you have to fight a lot of thugs to get there? Dev: No, all of the thugs are behind a fence on the other side of the map. Prd: Very considerate thugs. Dev: In the building there are thugs and you have to rescue Flower Knight. Prd: Hey, she's from Ouroboros! Dev: She's not from Arugulas, whatver that is. I just made her up for this tutorial. Prd: Right, it's 2004. You just made her up. Dev: Why do you keep mentioning the year? Prd: Hey, shut up. So you have to rescue Flower Knight from the thugs. Rescuing her is going to be difficult. Dev: Actually, it's super easy, barely an inconvenience. She is guarded by two thugs just like you defeated earlier in the tutorial. Then you find the formula, defeat the other thugs, return to Coyote. He tells you the formula will let them reverse the Rikti mutation drug. Prd: Reversing the Rikti mutation drug, I bet that'll be a big deal in the rest of the game. Dev: No. In fact later on the characters will have another arc to create a formula to reverse the Rikti mutation drug as if the events of the tutorial never happened. Prd: Whoops Dev: Whoopsie. So then Coyote teleports you out of the area and the tutorial is over. Prd: What caused the outbreak? Dev: Unclear. Prd: Can we explain it in an online post? That way we can lure people onto forums to argue about lore and maybe make youtube videos about it? Dev: Sure. We'll just say the drugs were made by Crey Industries. Prd: And what reason would Crey have for making the drugs? Dev: Money. Prd: Money, you said money. Well, that certainly explains it. Dev: So what do you think? Prd: Well, it gives the players the chance to read a lot of text and run back and forth between people standing far apart from one another and has the players fight a few sick people. So it seems like the perfect tutorial for 2020. Dev: But it's 2004. There's basically no chance this game will still be around in 2020. Prd: It might be. There's literally no way for me to find out. I certainly did not arrive in your time with grave news of the future. But it feels like something is missing. Maybe a badge. Something you can get that is incredibly tedious. Dev: I'll add a secret badge players don't know about. If you defeat 100 of the thugs you get a badge. And there is no way back to the area to get the badge once you find out about it. Prd: There it is. Perfect.

It was a pain at first, but I found tvtropes had the catch phrases all listed and then it was easy. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/CatchPhrase/ScreenRantPitchMeetings

I liked it. But it will mean that in the MCU Kevin Bacon is an actor as well as being an X-Men villain in an alternative universe.

I have created a couple of AE arcs. They are level 1-10 with enemies you don't normally face blueside. My idea was to create new content for starting a character on blueside. They are not particularly hard - no AVs or anything. Each has its own story, they are not tied together. Snakes from the Isles (#41022) - Stop the Snake invasion of the city Infection from the Isles (40915) - Stop the Infected from being used to invade the city.

I was introduced to them on these forums. In a thread about superhero movies.

hey, shut up

Prd is a producer. Dev is a developer. Prd: So, you have a task force for me? Dev: Yes, sir, I do! Actually this is a trial not a task force. Prd: What's the difference? Dev: To be honest, I accidentally typed "trial" in my description and there's literally no way I can change it. Prd: Well okay then. What's it about? Dev: You know how players are organizing their new characters in teams to go into the sewers to fight Hellions, Vahzilok, and the Lost? Prd: Yes. Dev: So I decided - let's do that. Prd: So you're plan is to spend a bunch of developer time to create a task force... Dev: Trial Prd: trial that duplicates existing content that players are already doing and enjoying? Dev: That's what we're going with. Prd: Fair enough. Is there some sort of interesting mechanics that make this different from the existing sewer runs? Dev: Yes. I've added spots of fire and exploding barrels and electric things that just randomly damage and defeat characters. In a recent poll, randomly being defeated by things that give no XP or rewards was voted as the thing the players most wanted. Prd: Are you sure you're reading that poll correctly? I think it says that's what players dislike the most. Dev: Whoops Prd: Whoopsie Dev: And the final fight is against two large mucus sacs that don't move or attack but have a lot of hit points and regeneration, because according to the same poll beating down a big bag of hit points is the second most wanted thing by the players. Or the second thing they like the least. Prd: And is there any danger in beating up two large mucus sacks? Dev: Yes, I put in lots of randomly exploding pus that defeats the players and the big mucus sacks spawn a lot of little mucus sacks that attack the characters. Prd: It's going to be hard for characters to defeat the big mucus sacks if they are being attacked by a lot of little mucus sacks. Dev: Actually, it'll be super easy, barely an inconvenience. See the little mucus sacks barely do any damage so the characters can just ignore them. And the exploding pus bubbles for a long time so players know to move out of the way. Prd: Very considerate pus bubbles. Dev: And of course their will be an archvillain for each of the enemy groups. Prd: Tell me about the archvillains. Dev: The archvillain of the Hellions is named Tinder, because Tinder starts fires. Prd: That's a solid name for a fire Archvillain. There's no way that term will be a joke in a few years. Why are the fire wielding Hellions hanging out in sewers full of water? Dev: Unclear. The archvillain for the Vahzilok is named Dr. Meinst. To get a badge for defeating her you have to defeat her before defeating the minions with her who are super easy to defeat, and I've even put exploding bombs to make them die randomly and make the whole fight more frustrating and get the players to turn on each other. Prd: Wow wow wow. Wow. Dev: And the archvillain for the Lost is named Prophet. Prd: Oh, intriguing name. And what's his deal? Dev: I just told you. And you get a badge by defeating him after you defeat all of his minions, which is basically impossible to not do. Prd: That might as well happen. So how does the trial start? Dev: Positron sends the heroes into the sewers. Prd: Aren't these low level heroes? And isn't Positron one of the most powerful heroes in the the city? If Positron knows about this why doesn't he just clear out the sewers himself? Dev: The NPC superheroes are so powerful they can easily solve any problem the players can solve, so if you want the players to have anything to do I'm going to need you to get all the way off my back about why the NPC's don't just do it. Prd: Alright, let me get off that thing. You said Positron sends in the heroes. Can we make a copy of this for the villains without putting any additional thought or work into it? Dev: Already done. I have Arbiter Sands send the villain characters into the sewers to fight the villains. Prd: Why would Arachnos send villains to fight other villains? Dev: So the trial can happen. Prd: Looking over your Arbiter Sands dialog did you spell "shanty" correctly? Dev: There's literally no way for me to find out. Prd: Are there any bugs with the trial that might be a problem? Dev: Well, sometimes enemies will get stuck in the wall and prevent you from completing the trial. Prd: Getting stuck in the wall is tight. Dev: So what do you think? Prd: Well, you are spending a bunch of time recreating existing content that players already do but adding in random damage they don't like and a badge that will make them hate each other. Is there a way you can guarantee they do this content and ignore all of the other low level content we have put so much effort into adding over the years? Dev: I'll give it an extra XP bonus and bonus powers for doing this trial over and over again. Prd: Perfect

I only play lower levels so my power is not much. And I like the tactics of a larger fight rather than the slog of more hit points. So I normally run on +0/x1 but once my character can take it I play +0/x2 for larger spawns.

Is that the hate with the really wide brim?

For me it's being able to set the costume change emote for a character and have it stick past the session. You can go into the costume selection and pick an emote and it saves that setting until you log out. Then it loses it. I would be so happy if I could set a costume change emote for all of my characters.

I spend a lot of time on costumes. I have 50+ characters and each has 6 costumes - although most are slight modifications that I then choose in play which I like best. The editor is great. My biggest complaints are: Not being able to adjust the "material" of a piece. Some are shiny, some are matte, etc. Its easy to have 2 pieces that would look good but they don't match in finish. So they are not seamless but look like 2 different colors. Not being able to to put different patterns on skin under "clothes". If you want to make a cat character their bottom has to be tiger striped. You cannot choose barbarian shorts with bare legs and make their bare legs tiger striped. So you cannot put spectrum, animal fur, mummy wrappings, or other "skins" on the items that are "something + skin". You are stuck with normal human skin.

Yes, there are definitely rooms where I stand back and prepare to deal with the adds or the deaths because I know it will go badly.

I respec'd my dark/sonic defender and added a second build. One is support with darkest night 3 slotted for ToHitDebuff and the other is for damage with Howl and tar patch. I wanted to try them out and a PI team was advertising. They took a council mission, of course. It was the big outdoor map with the ramps going up a tower in the middle. We went around the outside of the map and just blew through each spawn. The council would just melt as we hit them. Then we went into the inner area where there are council all around. And we aggro'd the council all around. Including above us. And we had multiple controllers/dominators so the council would be immediately mobilized in place widely scattered. I've never had to use howling twilight to rez people twice in the same fight. That happened multiple times as we cleared the map. The players would just run in random directions and aggro whatever they saw. We would be fighting 4 or 5 spawns until enough players had been defeated they couldn't aggro any more. Then we would slowly whittle down the council and rez the players. It was pure chaos but fun once I abandoned my self to the idiocy (like watching Legends of Tomorrow).

controller ice/time Almost no solid controls but lots of END cost for your ice toggle + time toggle The enemies will attack very slowly and you will slowly do a little bit of damage to them.

This is definitely the case. When fights become routine they are boring.

I slot the fear cone in dark for -toHitDebuffs. I use it every fight and the benefit of the small increase in the debuff across every foe in every fight is worth the slots. I also have the dark stealth power that gives def and maneuvers for extra def - but I don't slot those for def as the bonus to those is too small to matter.

I've been reviewing my characters and doing respecs. I have played little with symphony control but like it. One thing about symphony control is that many of its powers do damage that wouldn't do damage in a normal control set. Somehow I saw numbers that said that the single target confuse did good damage. Better than the first attack in my dominator secondary. Although the description says it does minor damage (not sure of the exact word) but we all know the descriptions are not very accurate. Realizing I could turn it into a meaningful damage power, I respec'd and 3 slotted the confuse for damage. Then playing with it, it didn't do much damage. I looked in the combat log and it did half the damage of the single target hold and less than half of my secondary attack. So I must have read the numbers wrong somewhere or looked at the wrong number. So I had to respec again to take the damage out of my confuse.

I did quit a DFB the other day but that was by group decision. We can't fill the team. We have only 5 people and wait about 10 minutes but get no more. So we start. Someone says "we won't be able to do the first badge with just 5". No one responds. No one says anything else about badges. So we get to the Vahz boss and I start taking out the abominations before taking on the boss. Someone says "Tomb you aren't supposed to attack the abominations." I point out someone said we wouldn't be able to do the badge. Two people drop. Leaving 3 of us. We have a quick discussion and all quit. Then one of the other 2 reforms dfb, we fill and run it - getting the badges.

The latest one the team suffered from various members immediately attacking the first foe they saw. We went into a room and within 5 seconds every spawn was aggro'd. Fortunately it mostly affected them. The same people would get defeated every room when they ran off solo. In the final mission someone ran straight to the door to trigger the ambush. At least 3 other people dragged other spawns to the doors, so it was a massive fight. We did surprisingly well and only a few people were defeated. Fortunately we were standing on a static field and a healing mushroom patch, so as long as we didn't move we did okay. The total run was only 38 minutes and 18 defeats. So awkward but not bad. A previous run we did at +2 difficulty - except the last mission was +0. The +2 difficulty missions were grinds. Tough but fun. Lots of deaths including some wipes. The last mission we entered was still +2. So we exited, changed the difficulty, logged out, logged back in. But only 5 of us logged back in. 3 players were just gone. We re-entered. It was now +4. We exited. The person who had gotten the star by logging in first was set to +4. Everyone set to +0. We logged out and back in again. +0 enemies we did the mission. It was tough with 5 but we did it. The total run was 48 minutes and 38 defeats. Time was not terrible but a ton of deaths. The run before that we had 3 stalkers and a scrapper plus some support. We had a player quit in the first mission. Then another player quit in the second mission. So we had me as a dominator and a defender who could not heal (I think they were level 10, so they couldn't do much). When we got to the last mission we wiped on the door ambush. Then we stood at the entrance and defeated the ambush as it charged us. But the ambush was not over. We had to clear 2/3 of the map before we finally got the message that we cleared the ambush. When we got to the shadows, the stalkers seemed to have no idea how to stalk. They all ran up and attacked a different mob - not AS. We wiped without taking out any foes. Got everyone back. I asked the stalkers to all assassinate the same shadow to take one out. Again they ran forward, broke stealth and just attacked. We defeated one shadow and wiped. It took 2 more attempts to take out the shadows. The total run was 139 minutes and 66 wipes. I was amazed that no one else quit.

I pay no attention to Valentines or really any other event. As far as I can tell, each event turns into one of two things: speed running a mission as fast as possible to get the reward, or farming an "invasion" to get XP and phat loot.

If you want frogs in D&D here is a whole collection of Bullywug variants I created. They are all CR 1/4 through CR 1 but add a lot of variety and flavor to Bullywug encounters. https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/igbLtDXlNN8I

But how will we know who is nicer and more mature if we can't insult each other?