[Weekly Discussion 45: Favorite and Least Favorite Story Lines]

I think the original Vigilante Arc from The Major could be improved with a few things:

1. DO NOT make us drop off AND retrieve the orders from the Dead Drops, that is completely pointless and makes no sense what-so-ever. Either have us drop them off or pick them up (the latter making much more sense)
2. Make the first mission instead the last, possibly shuffle around other missions, but the one where you take on the shopkeeper using Freakshow feels very vigilante: you're murdering a guy who, while being an unlawful cutthroat, could just be tried and sentenced through conventional judicial systems but instead some unknown group called 'Void Sanction' decided they had no interest in waiting or going through proper channels. If the arc ended on that, especially after fighting Holoman and hearing his accusations it should make you think "oh, shoot, did I just go too far?"

[The Twinshot Trap]

On 9/9/2019 at 8:11 AM, Doc_Scorpion said:

And even at that they're massive fail.  By the time they teach you that stuff, your introductory contact has already sent you to other zones.  You've almost certainly died and been to the hospital.  Etc... etc...  The only people who need Twinshot's lame-as-(censored) "tutorials" are those who've powerleveled to 5-9...  And how many people are going to powerlevel only as far as "just barely not a complete n00b" and stop?

If the Twinshot arcs are to be of any use, then they should be the standard "first contact" and then the player is referred to an introductory origin contact.  Even then a lot of the lame-as-(censored) dialog needs to replaced...  all that krep about "cool kids" is meant to warm and inviting, but it's demeaning and insulting.

I do agree the dialogue could use some touch up and the level of the arcs (and difficulty, all those Arachnos boss spawns which can include two bosses to a mobs even on x1/+0 can be painful, especially to a controller and only marginally less-so to a Dom) lowered to a base introduction contact. But people could very well powerlevel past that stuff without setting foot in AE: it's called Death from Below Trial, something very popular to run even now, nevermind how easily you can outlevel twinshot or any of the Atlas arcs if you run the DFB more than once which many will. Especially on Live where getting the badges could be tricky because of new players not getting it. As for the 'cool kids' dialogue stuff feeling patronizing, do you consider that City of Heroes was ultimately imagined to be an MMO teens and young adults would play, even if it's done roughly through the filter of middle aged shut-ins like Matt Miller and Jack Emmert? Most of us even during live were a periphery demographic to the game, so yes 'cool kids'.

 

Also, the Twinshot finale is freaking worth it if you ask me. A bit moreso than the Dr. Graves arc (though I feel Doctor Graves was mechanically better done)

 

2 hours ago, MTeague said:

you mean weren't immediately hit by feellings of worry and concern to make sure that Blue Spectrum would be okay?  /sarc

 

seriously if I could just SHUT UP the voice acting in galaxy city tutorial it would be 80% less annoying.

Pretty sure there's actually a sound option to silence the voice over.

[Make Red Side Great Again]

Redside needs more content to make it great again. When heroside got the Kings Row arcs, I don't think Redside got anything, admittedly because a vast majority of Blueside content is far more antiquated and the leaders of the skulls originally were Marrowsnap and Marrow Drinker appearing as dialogue-less bone daddys in the Bonefire arc.

[Semi Petless masterminds]

I don't know about completely petless MMs, because that would just be kind of a neutered Defender. But an MM that can instead opt for making one super strong pet does sound awesome.

 

 

I would inevitably abuse this though and create my 'Demon' stand user [T H E  D E V I L  W E N T  D O W N  T O  G E O R G I A]!

[Eco-Friendly Powerset Recycling!]

On 3/12/2020 at 10:51 AM, Tyrannical said:

Earth Affinity

I kind of want to suggest throwing in DE Quartz or Cairn into this set no matter how stupidly broken it would be. (They grant about +50% to ToHit or Resistance respectively.)

[Mordernize Buffs]

I mean, I don't know if it's necessary, but for Sonic and Forcefield shields, as well as a few other powers, the answer as to how to do it would be to change it from a targeted power to a PBAoE affecting the caster. I know it's not that simple but it seems the most likely fix.

 

[[Shield Defense] Invisible Shield for Costumes]

I would kind of want an alt version that's 'shieldless' so we could pair it with katana, claws, and make it a sentinel secondary.

 

Though the problem there is that I think Shield Defense (and some future sets like titan weapons) were expressly balanced around the idea that they couldn't be paired. Imagine Titan Weapons/"Shield" on a scrapper.

 

[Eco-Friendly Powerset Recycling!]

23 hours ago, Tyrannical said:

Got another from recycling a bunch of the powers from Praetorian Clockwork to make a sort of 'robotic' themed blast set. it will likely not include the moving parts as seen on the clockwork, but would use the same animations and FX at least.

 

Arsenal Blast

You have an arsenal of munitions affixed to your body, allowing you to release blasts of energy from specially designed weaponry.

 

Personally, I'd kind of like this if it took a little more from MM Robotics Pets. Okay, really I just want to fire swarm missiles, is that too much to ask?

[City of Heroes 2: elctricboogaloo]

My own idea for a "city of Heroes 2" wouldn't actually be a sequel so much as a reboot of the current game including changing up the timeline a bit and a bit of lore streamlining. Some key ideas I would have include:

• Paragon zones are parred down/mashed together into zones now, but they are bigger zones (averaging larger than Independence Port). War Walls would still exist for some (Though there'd be differences between human erected walls, rikti erected walls, and a few raised independent of the war, not to mention personalized touches like the combined Kings Row/IP turning their walls into memorial murals.), and other zones would take heroes and villains out of the Rogue Isles/Paragon with a big example being the Zig being relocated into a large zone set in the New Mexico. (Yes, it's basically stealing a page from Champions Online but I felt it was one of their better ones). Another big example being the Rikti War Zone being split between the Vanguard forward base being at the southernmost tip of Chile and the actual Rikti mothership crash (and their own strongholds) set up in Antarctica.
• Original Rikti Invasion instead began in October of 1999 instead and concluded in June of 2000 (Basically as a reference to the old New Millennium Doomsday  Predictions combined with a reference to War of The Worlds, this is all purely personal preference)
• More villain groups would circulate around the idea of operating as henchmen (so like Freakshow, a Skyraiders remade as generic paramiliary group, robotic servants, summoned demons and cultists, etc.) to more unique and powerful villains (like, say, Flambeaux.) It's not to say full villain groups would not necessarily return, just that they'd be treated as rarer, global threats (CoT, Rikti, Arachnos, Fifth Column, Nemesis)
• The Rogue Isles would now have an inter-island highway system going between them, and it would now be possible to swim to most islands in a similar manner of going from peregrine to talos), also Port Oakes and Cap Au would be properly connected together and oriented. However, certain zones would be set up such that trying to swim certain ways (which would geographically set you as fleeing from the rogue isles, like saying east off the coast of Port Oakes or north or east of Nerva) would basically have you suffer from effects similar to the Sonic Fences in Praetoria. Though graphically it would be Arachnos coastal patrols shooting the everloving @#$% out of you to keep you from leaving.
• Skyway city would instead be a sort of massive central hub zone with roads which could take you to every zone in paragon so it's freeways and highways could behavy like mother@#$%ing freeways and highways.
• I don't have much for mechanics, but I'd probably take the Incarnate Interface slot and break it into two things that you actually work on throughout your base playthrought to augment your damage with an element and additional effect. The point really being so players can have that cool lightning sword they always wanted.

And that's all I have off the top of my head for now.

[About incarnate lore...]

I sort of doubt it since several lore pets are ultimately canon NPC critters with their own animations and such (key example being robotic drones, IDF support orbs, IDF in general, Praetorian Clockwork, and probably a few others) and wouldn't be compatible with the human frame we're limited to. Though if it was not applicable to all lore pets, I could sort of see a possibility of something like what was done with Phantom Army where the lore pets just copy player immediate appearance.

[Remove the Gender-lock on Costume Pieces]

I mean, I could kind of get behind this but there's a lot of issues beyond just that texture distortion. There's modeling issues too, for example the victorian corsets would likely clip into and sink entirely into male chests. And some male chests are completely topless with nipples out and everything and that won't fly on a female model. Yeah it's a double standard but it's a double standard enforced by laws and such.

 

[Patch Notes for March 31st, 2020 - Issue 26, Page 5]

okay, like I said, I'm bummed about the nerf too, but I'm really upset now everyone is so focused on it and not all the other cool stuff we got.

 

I mean, hello, CHEMISTRY POWER POOL and COSTUME ASYMMETRY anyone?

 

[Patch Notes for March 31st, 2020 - Issue 26, Page 5]

Doom and gloom aside, the asymmetric costume pieces allowed me to realize and idea for a 'Clockwork' Hero, though in this case, the idea turned out as an Alternate Universe Clockwork King (or "Lord Clockwork" as he's known there) who's low-level technopathy, electrokinesis, and psychic powers allow him to rapidly assemble robots in the field and battle his Arch-Nemesis, and alternate Penelope Yin. Don't think I'll keep him as a character but the concept felt cool enough to share.

[Take Your Child to Work Contest! ONE DAY ONLY!!]

Do not speak to me or my son ever again.

 

Edit: amusing part is, the character of mine pictured is my stone/stone dom: Dadrock.

[Improving Task Forces/Strike Forces (Share ideas and thoughts)]

The Short and Dirty:

once the team has gotten down what they'd like with getting the code stable, I think for content they should look at revamping old Hero TFs (mostly Citadel, Synapse, Numina, and Manticore to a lesser extent) and adding new Villain SFs. And so I'd like to hear to open this thread to ideas on how to improve existing TFs/SFs and maybe come up with new Redside ones.

 

The Big, Long, Reasoning:

So, the recent NoEXP option nerf got me thinking a bit, and long story short, I think one way people might be a bit cooler about that sort of thing is if Merit Rewards were a bit more plentiful (from which we could buy a lot of our needed IO sets but not all, which is important), which in turn led to my initial idea that perhaps what should be done to help with this is expand the Weekly TF/SF to include a second TF/SF for both sides as well as even a storyarc (done through ouroboros) to help increase flow of Reward merits. The problem I realized with that is that Blueside has 16 Task Forces to draw from without coop stuff like Lady Grey, Imperious, etc. Meanwhile Redside doesn't even have half of that at only 7 Strike Forces unique to redside*. And while I have no doubt the Redside ones are mechanically and narraively superior, it doesn't make up for the fact that if you want to do a TF where you're a villain with friends, you only have seven stories to choose from. But Blueside should not be left out in the cold either, especially since, as mentioned, of those 16 TFs, only 6 or so have a decent narrative and structure and most are extremely repetitive in their design, and in Manticore's case had only the most minimal of updates to it (the end fight), and even some of the ones updated could use a fix (mostly Penelope Yin's because there's no noise tanks, which is a damn shame)

 

*I am also discounting the Ouroboros 'TFs/SFs' as those feel more like precursors to Signature Story Arcs than a proper TF.

 

The actual discussion point:

So with that said, how about some ideas for new Strike Forces for redside or even improvements to existing SFs and ideas on how you would like to see existing TFs improved both writing and mechanically.

 

• For blueside in general, one thing I'd like to see improved upon with the likes of Citadel, Manticore, Synapse, Moonfire, and Hess is the inclusion of more than one enemy group to break mob monotony and inject a bit more excitement into the story such as what they're doing there. Positron is ultimately a prime example though Numina could be seen as an example of how it can go wrong (why the hell were we even fighting half these guys anyway when we knew only two groups in Paragon would be able to give the spirit of Woodsman trouble?). For example I could see Citadel's TF be improved with the additional pressure of both the Fifth Column and Arachnos getting involved for their own reasons and perhaps by dealing with them they inadvertently help us get closer to solving the case. For Manticore it'd be easy to see them hiring our Freakshow thugs to try to stop the players or 'release' some test subjects of captured devouring earth to fight us, or even have Malta swoop in at one point (being higher than the TF's level range) and force us to make a hasty retreat. 

[Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence]

random thought that comes to mind is that if inf inflation is an issue, maybe a nice inf sink could be adding in some of the NPC costume powers to the Pay 2 Win vendor? I mean the halloween vendor has all of the halloween costume, but nothing like the Rikti Mentalist or Mark-VI "Victoria" costumes and I kind of miss mine from Live and don't think there's been an introduced way to get them on this server. Make them 10,000,000 a piece and should give a somewhat decent stave off of economic issues.

 

Can't really say much more since i was kind of a casual farmer and I only just barely had enough to build my second character who wasn't my farmer and kind of hoped to have my staff/nin scrapper turn out equally awesome. So I have some massive biases here, Plus, others note that determined inf gatherers will find a way.

[Would Dual Pistols benefit from a "Sniper Shot" attack?]

slightly off topic but I'd honestly settle for Bullet Rain to not have a stupid animation that rips off an even dumber movie.

[Please don't make AE arcs unplayable for non-CharOpers?]

Honestly, even with farming, I'm still generally opposed to arbitrarily ramping difficulty, especially if they aren't going to change EXP values for powers. I want to make custom NPCs at low levels who have the same number of attacks normal NPCs would have at those levels. Instead they end up being valued as giving out as little as 30% the EXP for a level 5 Lt. having one attack. This kind of thing honestly discourages me from trying to make AE arcs knowing if I want my players to get full rewards I can't really afford to stray from pre-made NPCs and and the powers my NPCs get made with will also be highly limited (why doesn't assault rifle have snipe even? There's no traps powerset even though NPCs in-game have been able to make use of it's powers, and the AE devices is gutted)

[Please add new difficulty levels]

2 hours ago, reib said:

Please add some difficulty levels like +6/10 because game Is really TOO EASY and many AT's become useless. Toggle debuffs didnt count, control didnt count, tankers didnt count, healers are useless. Everyone have too much defence and damage. Game Is not fun no more because NO challenge. How Is possibile with my Blaster i can farm +4/8 map?! This make no sense. Please we Need challenge. Many ppl quit the game for that. It Is a Easy change to do but Is something. Please DO IT! THX for your work.

in theory, if you want a real challenge for this game, you basically just need to 'unlock' hardmode by reaching the appropriate levels. Then you can run the ouroboros arcs with the enemies buffed and possible you yourself debuffed among other limiters. Have you tried that?

[[/Devices] Please Take the Taunt Aura off Gun Drone.]

3 hours ago, selfunconsciousness said:

Just checking in on this - was this change ever taken into consideration? Was wondering as I was trying to decide between /devices and /temp for a beam rifle blaster. 

Sadly, nothing that I've heard.

 

A bit late, but chipping in my own thoughts, if I had to improve gun drone meaningfully,* it'd probably look like:

• Gundrone keeps it's mez immunities, inability to be buffed, and +perception
• HP is reduced to Tier 3 MM pet levels (so around 937hp at level 50)
• Resistances are now 20% to all across the board (removing it's smashing and fire weakness though lowering it's psionic and lethal resistances)
• Gundrone speed increased to be capable of matching a player with fly and afterburn active
• Gun Drone's attack is now given two attacks. Suppression Fire (Targeted AoE, moderate damage, applies long duration -recharge, -tohit, -def, and 20% chance for mag 2 fear to affected enemies [overwhelming incoming fire]) and dual chain guns (Cone, moderate damage, -def, deals bonus damage to any enemies afflicted by sleep, fear, immobilize, stun, or hold)
• You now summon 2 gun drones

The rough idea is to work with Power House's suggestion of giving devices a group control power via two gun drones spitting out two AoE attacks with some good mitigation debuffs and a chance for stacking fear effects and an cone attack that synergizes with this new control as well as devices' other control powers. Overall, the gun drone is less survivable, but in exchange becomes much much more aggressively oriented.

[Ninja Mastermind Attack Power Update]

I don’t disagree with you but Genin USED to have archery when upgraded. This was removed later on and switched to staying with shiruken. I think it was because back on live Genin used to have more archery attacks and were functioning better as ranged pets and so they took an overall nerf.

 

that said, Shiruken, masterful throw or the chaining throw, and fistful of shiruken would be cool. Top it all off with a toxic DoT and/or -regen debuff to represent poisoned blades and we’re golden.

[Battle Axe 1.1 (numbers)]

Biggest issue with changing so many ST attacks into cones is that it's going to change IOset builds because while the damage calculations of narrow cones are treated as single targets, they are still recognized as AoE damage in terms of sets. I know this game isn't balanced around IOs, but IOs seem to be the core of what the live devs really meant with the Cottage Rule (do not take away the IO sets you can slot into something). Otherwise I don't disagree with buffing battle axe, just that it's not going to be possible making many single targets into small AoEs.

 

[Please allow explosive arrow to ignite oil slick]

On 3/8/2020 at 5:03 AM, Tyrannical said:

I think candidates for this change should be Explosive Arrow, Frag Grenade, M30 Grenade, LRM Rocket and weapon mastery's old version of Explosive Shuriken. So it's not like we're changing much for players, but NPCs potentially so.

 

Since this change would affect both players and NPCs, it wouldn't count as a 'free gimmie' either, so I guess there's that.

 

 

Actually, near as I can tell, when NPCs have a power that mirrors a player, it doesn't mean they actually have the powers of the powerset so much as possess a copy and pasted rendition of that power with numbers potentially adjusted. And changing it for NPCs is a lot of individual work. I'm not saying I don't approve but the changes will not just be changing values for players and it'll automatically apply to NPCs. AE is probably a great example of this as those are not actually the same powersets linked to the player character creator (see assault rifle, devices, or forcefield sets) and just rough copies of the files in a separate location in the data.

[Consolidated CoH difficulty thread (Includes Poll!)]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

Rularu should be in there. And the DA variations.

Rularuu, yes, but not DA stuff since I'm saying several of these mobs are not that difficult even on the base game SOs.

[Consolidated CoH difficulty thread (Includes Poll!)]

12 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Looks like designing / revamping existing enemies to add new content could be the way to go.

It's a valid path, albeit perhaps the hardest one, though one with the highest potential for reward. I think even the live devs vastly underestimated their players even before the launch of IOs, I feel like only three enemy groups lived up to being end-game difficulty: Malta, The Carnival, and Arachnos. You could argue Nemesis but Nemesis' entire difficulty circles around stacking vengeance. The Carnival, Malta, and Arachnos have multiple gimmicks which make you stop and figure out which you need to prioritize first, but all of them have some nasty tricks to deal with the players.

 

And other level 50 enemy groups are Freakshow who's best power is their self-rez which ends up making them reward pinatas more than a threat, Nemesis was covered, Council and Circle possess diverse damage type but lack any special debuffs or what-have-you that make them a real threat, KoA was so bland as a three critter faction with the exact same attacks through all tiers that they had to get possessed by the Talons to be vaguely interesting, and then the Rikti were honestly a poor threat the moment one could get SOs and shut down anything with mezzes. And it kind of goes on like that.