MsSmart

This is an interesting post by far... The problem as I see it is one of balance with other ATs, why should a blaster attack be as good status effect mag level as those of a controller? I can support the notion it would help the blaster survive better if their status effect were more potent and could consistently hold minions and LTs in one shot, even controllers can't lock down bosses in one shot, so why should blasters. I have an issue as well with blaster ranges not being so great, the original excuse by the developers to deny them status effect protections, and lots of opportunities to boost defense and resistance was that they had mega damage and range. When you look at their range, they do not have the corner in this, their ranges are melee, 40', 80', and 150 snipe. Just about everything enjoys these ranges, in fact many mobs with status effect have ranges beyond 80' which does not strike me as appropriate. If you are going to help blasters survive better by having range, is that ranges have to be increased so it is a factor. First of all the blaster powers that are 40' need to be boosted to 100' and those at 80' boosted also to 100', so the blaster range as a defense can be actually significant. Since all others have a 150 base snipe, the blaster needs their snipe increased to say 180' which is especially important when fighting mobs with status effect powers that have near snipe or snipe ranges (The Rikti comes to mind) Now let's look at blaster damage, is it truly that high? I suggest, if you are an alto-o-holic like me, to benchmark performance, take a blaster, defender, scrapper, and tank and choose a mob type, say Rikti, Use a flashback to level 25 area and count how many attacks it took to defeat it which is the bottom line of dps. You may, to your horror, find the pragmatic statistics to show the blaster is not so great when realizing that a tank is essentially invulnerable, scrappers/stalkers, brutes are very very resilient and the defenders and blasters have laughable defenses and protections as a baseline. I know that there will be a few braggarts that are going to make claims of tanking defenders with blaster damage, but for argument sakes just go and collect the information and find out for yourself. Once you have the information, you can decide if the total lack of status effect protection the very limited amount of power choices available to the blaster to increase defense and resistance worth the so call damage increase a blaster have over a tanker and scrapper? Also ask yourself the question from a defender perspective, is their horrid lack of status protection, and limited chances to increase defense and resistance worth their pitiful damage? Lets try not to fall for the brainless position that blasters and defenders are supposed to be support and thus totally disposable and meant to be helpless when being attacked. Now the OP makes excellent points on how lame many of the dark powers are and really need to be made pragmatically useful, if one observes the powers their stated function is to give the blaster some sense of protection, and when used they fall short, other ways of surviving is their area effect powers to take down the mobs before they close in and lock down and murder the blaster and this powers are plagued with defects that prevents these powers from being effective. Now there is always a possibility that these viewed defects, are legacy designed characteristics to ensure challenge... Sue

Snowdaze, you have a point here, but not sure about how valid your point is currently. In the days of legacy design, the game was for profit, competing with other companies for the people's money, was trying to develop content/material that only comes with time. Think of any game when they started, they has few zones and missions, but as time passed, the selection grew by a lot. Today, there are no need for time-sinks, this game is not competing with other companies for the money, and does not have to create new content as a do or die situation. So in the spirit of removing pointless time sinks practice, look at the evidence, many of the TFs have been revamped and much of the stupid travel and repetitive missions were removed; look at our travel system (even after the change) is revolutionary and we still can travel about quite quickly, all costumes are unlocked, look at how early and easy it is to get travel powers; all of these are very good trends into making CoH the most player friendly and considerate game ever. So we get to badges, my suggestion is in line with the making the game more friendly with less time sinks. While as you aptly mentioned, there are work-around, band aid methods, they are just patches to symptoms from an old era that needs to be left behind and done away with. If you look at my suggestion, I merely look for ways to take away the need to go to the internet and read all the spoilers so you can complete the mission completely and get all the intended rewards. As I said, a bit of politeness extended to the player. Sue

Awesome, thank you, will check it out, really would love to have a way to tell what I am missing! Thank you Sue

Hi: If you read comic books, very often the hero will stumble on a situation while on patrol or on their way to a mission. It occurs to me, it would be exciting that players could simply try opening a door of a building, or the front of a enclosed cave, or an entrance in a ship and get a totally random mission upon entering. Think of this as a modified trick-or-treat door thing, but instead of spawning a mob it spawns a mission. I would find this exciting because in the present contact system, you know what you are up against, while in this one it luck of the draw. Missions can be made to make sense to the type of entrance, a cave would have 5th Column, Oranbenga CoT, Rikti, Knives of Artemis, Snakes, etc. A building door would have Crey, Carnival, Malta, Arachnos, etc. And according to the zone, these would also have the "local" groups as well among the mission choices but only if the team leader is of the appropriate level of the zone. What do you all think? Sue

Sounds good for you a level 50 in a 25 zone, but how awful it would be for a level 25 who actually has good reason to be there to be swarmed by a flock of level 50 baddies? Sue

It would be nice to have a selection of blouses, shirts, coats, dresses (1 piece from shoulder to ankle), etc. To be made available, more crowns and stuff that can be worn with hair and not go bold when wearing them. Better selection of shorts to include tighter and shorter, more shoe options, etc. Oh yeah, Cheerleader Pom Poms :<) Thank you Sue

As a badger, I can find lists in the internet of what badges of what type and by what alignment, which is a good start to figure what I am missing. The problem I have, is that the badges are not in alphabetical order and are placed in some strange grouping order that is not consistent to boot. Take for example the Bloody Bay exploration badges, the first 4 are grouped and placed where they would be expected to be, but alas the next 4 are elsewhere but fortunately grouped. If you have a few badges, it is not too bad, when you have several hundred; its a different story. What I am asking, is perhaps in the options menu, general tab, have a place you can check to have all badges by class in alphabetized order Thank you Sue Ps: I seen postings of web based badge trackers in which you manually have to click each and everyone which is impractical from my perspective, or sends data to a non homecoming server which I frankly do not trust.

Is there anything automated, not too keen at clicking every single badge I gotten, at this time it is 1,482, not fun... I did saw one where it sent the data to another site, which I am not comfortable with. Sue

That does clear things up

I been playing a Mastermind, who allegedly fights thru their pets. That sound all good, but the pets get no survival or damage benefits from IOs or the player unless in general they are within 40ft (which some melee attacks can reach), their ranged attacks are a miserable 40' and a second one at 80'. The Pv2 Vendor attacks tend to be 80' So as an improvement on MMs, can you make the IOs and player buffs that helps the pets have a range of 80', and all ranged attacks of them be 80', please? Otherwise, the game system forces the MM to go in with their pets, and lose the "protection" allegedly provided by range which is not very smart for a class devoid of status effect protection, very few opportunities to raise their defense and resistance. The concept that the pets share the damage with the MM is impractical, for they have to be in defensive mode; so much for quarterbacking, and dictating how they fight, so in practice this so called advantage is moot. In fact all ranged combat powers should be 80' with the exception of snipe. I can see an exception with Sentinels, whose range attacks should be 40 and hit as hard as a scraper, who does have reasonable status effect protections and opportunities to boost their defense and resistance. Sue

Mmm, not that I would be eager to see the merit values change, but it could make sense that the merit award not be fixed as they are, but be based on time, as noted above TFs 1 merit per 3 minutes, so if you do a fast TF, well it was fast, but you did not get as many merits as taking your time and killing everything. This could also be compensated by adding 25% merits for each handicap experienced during the mission such as no temps, etc. This could be a way to reward low level groups, really battling, versus 8 level 50 incarnates trashing everything on site. Sue

Hi: So the past few days I was doing the Mr. G arcs, and got a handful of badges, but later when I checked on wiki, I learned I was missing 2 badges Honorary Bro/Sis and Pyromaniac. When I did the Mr. G arcs it said nothing about Dean MacArthur, there is no mention that I should have previously completed his story Arc (me, myself, and my other selves), this is especially true if doing this via the flashback system. There is no clear instructions to go visit Dean between the 2nd and third mission of first arc, there is a cryptic caption at the beginning of the second arc that was not much a clue for getting a badge. Recommendation for this particular badge, when doing Mr. G, either do not let this arc be commenced until the Dean Macarthur Arc is done, or suspend the requirement of having the Dean MacArthur arc done in advance. Then add a mission between the second and third mission to actually go talk to Dean, this would be nice from the prospect of finding Dean since his icon is not on the map. Then on the third mission state as minimum as an option: Rescue Dean MacArthur, or add it to the mission requirements. In general badges should not have odd inter-arc requirements, beyond having previous arcs of same contact completed, to avid the issues stated above. The arcs, mission themselves need to be badge getting friendly, not ambiguous or missing it all together. For example in Pyromaniac you are supposed to set all 5 bombs before the Penelope's did their thing. It would have been polite to add in the mission description: Option: Set all 5 barrels before the two Penelope's finish their fight. I know that this could be a lot of work, especially identifying which arcs needs cleaning, perhaps a forum entry can be made for players to log them as they stumble upon them? Some for the books: The Thief of Midnight, specify that after talking to Ashley to take a side door not the main door next to her Keeper of the Coral Lore, Vincent Ross in the oro flashback never suggest to go get side support from Vince Dumbrowski or Lorenz Ansaldo, this requirement needs to be a mission proper where the player gets to talk to either of them, it also helps locating them since their icon is not on the map. Then each mission, must have the use radio to talk, and the glowie option besides the normal objectives These are a few for the books... Sue

I thought that the talon skirt was an option already Sue

Frankly, I do not care for prestige sprints, they are trash powers in my opinion, now if they could be slotted with IOs like sprint, it may change my mind. Sue

Great list of suggestions... The stealth thing is not treated with consistency, in some missions an NPC can not deal with stealth powers and follow, on others the NPC has no problem at all following a character that has stealth on and at very high levels. So it seems to me, it may not be a complex enterprise to make the game consistent, in fact I would suggest if your character has area stealth giving powers (steamy mist for instance) it also provides for the guest NPC, it only makes sense. And the door thing, seems to be a game wide issue, would be nice if once the door is open, you click and go through without having to open the door. I am not going to make guesses if it is a lot of work or not to fix, that is a dev's decision based that they actually know the code, but it is a nice QoL. Sue

Mmm... Portal corps has no problem sending folks across time, dimensions and space, so why not make a portal corps "Gate" available to be installed in a base, and this portal provides for the Ouro, all echos, and Cimerora? These gates can be made to fit the various types of sources (magical, and technological), after all magical has its own built in justification: "it's magic" Sue

You got it! People fall in love with a character concept, they enjoy playing, why limit the class to an either or? Level the playing across all arch types, let them all solo and group effectively.

I don't recall saying weaker buffs, but good way to deflect leveling the playing field... And back to the selfish way of thinking...

This is the frame of mind, I been talking about, a frame where solo is essentially for melee while support is the whatever, look how easily is to over state the effectiveness of a controller and justify the denial of protection in any way form or manner. If the game is going to evolve, the frame of mind that only some classes can have it all, is simply wrong. The challenge is that all classes should be able to both solo and group effectively.

This is a QoL As mentioned in another suggestion, I am a badge hunter, and of course responding to zone events means acquiring badges. The problem I have is that I have no idea when any given zone event happens, until the alarm goes off, making it very hard to organize groups in anticipation. It would be nice, if I could just go to the zone, and an event timer pops of to the side telling me how soon for the alarm event to happen in that zone, something similar to Paladin in KR when you enter the area it spawns. Or go to an information booth, and get the timing there. Thank you Sue

Hi: I freely admit to be a badge-a-holic, that said, I think it would be nice for our display to not only show those badges we are working to complete, but to also show those we have not done anything all towards getting it, like it was done for LRT where it showed locked or unlocked destinations. I think, this QoL would be very nice so as I approach the 1547 mark it would help me figure which ones I am missing. Thank you Sue Ps: I know the anniversary badges only come out once a year, could it be made possible to be available for purchase year around, I point out to null the gull sending us to other locations which allows us to achieve the same for certain seasons, maybe something similar could be done.

Hi: I had a very pleasant chat with GM_Lines over my loosing the Hero Zone Event chat channel from both my Global and Chat channels, I noticed this happening for the past 2 days. GM_Lines told me he has been investigating the issue, and told me if I use Null the Gull to change alignment it removes the hero zone alert channel, this does not happen with the other channels, which I also verified. For now it is good for us to know of this bug and the work around. Thank you GM_Lines Sue

I believe the devs in Homecoming are doing an outstanding job! The game is free, so pragmatically speaking, I can't complain nor inclined to look at a gift horse in the mouth. Yet politely suggesting how to make it better... CoH has an advantage over all other games in the industry today, it is free and has a super loyal player base. With the above in mind, CoH developers can have different game development attitudes, after all they do not have to make content that is focused in bringing the company more revenue. In the old days, when quantity of players was money, there were many practices used to retain and acquire new players, a common method was the good ole "time sink" which gives the illusion to the player they are doing a lot, but really they spent it traveling by doing missions with the mandatory not in the same zone ever, with mission entry points at the farthest points of the map, and stupid repetitive missions that were identical with a slight change; for example take the very much despised Citadel TF, it is a Ping Pong TF that bounces you between Talos and IP, always at remote mission entry sites, and then the foolish kill all's often with the same identical map! with the only change being Kill all get 1 computer, followed by kill all get 2 computers, all the way to Kill all and get 4 computers. To me a big retention booster, is get rid of the time-sinks, and watch people from other games get to know CoH is a no time-sink game, and watch our numbers grow. To fix Citadel for example, Citadel is in Talos, right, so change all the missions but maybe 1 or 2 to be in Talos, stop the inter-zone travel. With this in mind, go through the entire game and thoroughly limit how many zone changes a TF or mission requiries, say the maximum for a big TF is 3. Location of mission entrances, why so much Sky, Talos and IP and at really remote locations often the farthest border? Limit mission entrances from base porters to not exceed 1 mile, when changing zones. Change the time sink of kill and boss and guards, and the boss is placed in a room that is 80% of the map, and it turns out to be a near kill all, kill all is the time sink! Get rid of kill all's, or at least no more than 3 in long TFs! and please, make the story justify it. A good example of a dumb kill all, is in synapse, right at the beginning, go to a warehouse and find the abnormality, as I enter I see a place infested with clockwork. Hate to tell you guys, but I found the abnormality duh! Why do I need to go in and kill all? Maybe change the building to a hospital and say, you got to get rid of all the clockwork in the building, people are dying! Lastly it is a long look at arch type balance, the game has evolved... During live days, the developers mindset was pretty much along the lines of D&D, you have the tank to soak the damage, to allow the rest to their job, you have the cleric to keep folks alive, the mage to blow away the opposition and the sneaky thief for all other needs. That has been the recipe that is mostly used in just about every MMO today. What went wrong with this? NCSOFT made the variations too broad, and too brutal. A Tank that is virtually indestructible with modest damage, and a blaster that is totally vulnerable but kicks like a mule. In time the game broke down into 2 classes the melee and support. The balance worked well in groups, but when it it got to the "solo" area, the very same balance was anathema because the melee - support divide was too brutal. Take a tank with MAG 12 status effect protection, other melee had 8 and then the brutal contrast the support had "zero", this aberration worked ok in groups because it forced support to support the melee, they had no other choice. Because melee were so well made across the board it was particularly difficult to find challenge to be thrown at them specifically, and since support was totally vulnerable, challenge came at the sole expense of support. Look at a group fight at say mid levels, and watch who does the dying. So challenge were brutal, we now see Status Effect attacks being without mercy spammed with many having snipe range, and of course the support classes have "0" mag protection! to the melee the status effect attacks are of little threat to them. There was resistances to Status Effects, but at a 90% cap, the best you could hope as to be in la la land for half the time; which became irrelevant for you were being chain stunned, held, etc. Till you were murdered. Because the arch type balance is defective, it is nearly impossible to have increased challenge that is fair across all arch types evenly. During live, the devs began to feel the pressure of a defective infrastructure, and looked for band aids instead of fixing it. So we see the entry of the IO system, which allowed all the arch types to begin to balance their protections and abilities better, but notice the dogmatic abuse of status effects on support remained, also even in the IO world there was a remarkable bias in favor of melee; for the only true survival method for support was defense, avoid being struck. But note that defense versus range is almost always in the 6th IO combo; while the first 3 or 4 has all a melee would need as a whole. The IOs being a partial success, was now supplemented by the incarnate system; which provided the means for support to close the protection gap in part Clarion finally gave support a means to be protected against the abusive use of status effects., but once again it favored melee who became even more powerful and devastating, because they did not have to buy incarnate powers to make up for protective abilities that had been freely given to them and thus increased their self reliability and damage. With this done, challenge is "now" a major issue; and as usual it is the support staff that is getting the short end of the stick, for now lots of mobs have defense debuff, that does not even need to hit to do its dirty deed. So much for fair application of challenge. I do not see the same focus on mobs with resistance debuffs for example. So the tough part in this last piece, how to achieve fair balance and increase challenge? I would look at viewing a game were solo activity is the baseline, what all classes must have to be truly successful and as capable as each other. The biggest discrepancy is status effect protection, Tanks get 12, really? hey need that much for soloing? other Melee gets 8 mag protection, once again they need that much for soloing? and the rest get zero, really? are you kidding me? Obviously the tank does need 12 and the scraper 8 when in a group, but why are we giving this classes the group protection values when soloing? Of course, I am no fan or desire to return to the age where groups were forced to have a certain composition! That was terrible! So what is needed is to upgrade the support classes with better protections, and in some cases DPS. I would start by asking that all the support classes be given a MAG 4 protection ability, still inferior to the tank's 12, and scraper types 8, but sufficient to allow reasonable survival both solo and in groups. For all their weaknesses many of the support folks do not have the corresponding high dps. A controller for example if they try to area hold, they become an aggroe magnet, and lets face it they have an awful time locking a boss or better, and their DPS is laughable. A defender is even sadder they are the only arch type whose powers can't affect themselves, and then their dps is nurfed to be as bad as a tank, I fail to see the balance here, they have no protections, as the tank does and have the same DPS? really? Seems to me, the defenders should be able to affect themselves, maybe all those powers they have need to be PBAOEs, which support wise would be group wise much more valuable, and their dps should not be nurfed at all. Incidentally when the arch types are capability leveled, you may find that PvP becomes more practical too. Of course for PvP to work, the arch types rally need to be balanced, such as all have the same status effect protection since we are talking solo stuff. Sue

I hate to tell you this... But your real enemy is the defective number generator or so called range excuse used, so no matter how good your accuracy is, you going to miss far more than the so called 5% chance of missing from time to time, it seems to appear the number generator gets stuck rolling high at times, and at others it is just fine. I truly wish, there was a way for the player to nudge the random generator when it is stuck rolling high. In Dark Age of Camelot, they listened to the players, and set a command where they could change the "seed" that fed the random number generator, maybe that is what this game needs as well. Sue

Oh yeah, forgot about you guys... The game is perfectly dynamic