gabrilend

no it's cool, I need to focus on work anyway. There's only really one other game I play right now, so maybe if I can get them to hate me then I'll really be able to focus haha 😄

I can't help it. But I don't want to be cremated, so I think I'm going to take a break from this game for a while. Might be back in 6 months or whatever. Sorry for bothering you.

Wow, I'm honored to have had the same thought as him 🥰 Genuinely that made my night EDIT: Maybe increasing the rate at which END recovers outside of fights? Idk probably a bad idea Ah, well, perhaps it's a bad idea for the melee archetypes. But I'm curious, do you think it would have the intended effect for the control archetypes? After reading what you said I don't think I'm in favor of the proposed idea anymore. But I can't help but wonder if it would have worked.

Most teams today operate by diving into a pile of mobs, obliterating them with AoE (or ST attacks if they're facing a giant monster or archvillain/hero) and then zooming to the next. It's certainly an efficient way to slaughter all in your path, but it lacks variety. I've noticed that most control characters seem to prioritize holds over immobilize, because there's little reason to deprive an enemy of movement. What, are they gonna run away? That's annoying at best. However I believe that immobilizes are incredibly useful, and I think that is desirable to emphasize the most interesting aspects of these control characters through balancing AT mechanics. They are, after all, one of City of X's most unique playstyles. As far as I know, every enemy in the game has both a ranged and a melee attack. However, each attack has a separate cooldown - an enemy afar can only attack half as many times as an enemy up close. I believe that properly utilizing immobilize effects would significantly reduce the amount of damage taken by a character, and would bring increased value to the control archetypes. Here is the proposed design change: double the endurance cost and double the effect of the toggled defensive powers on all melee archetypes. I believe this will encourage players to prioritize one or the other depending on the situation in a battle, and in addition I believe it will cause players to orient themselves around the immobilized enemies in a way that is not common in most teams. Most (all?) of these powers are split up into different damage types, and by thinking about which types the enemy is likely to use against them the melee character can switch between them in an optimal way. Should that be too much of a change for all archetypes, perhaps it would be a suitable change for Tankers specifically, since their powers are designed to be the most defensive. Here is the desired effect: melee characters will think about their defensive toggle abilities more, and will adapt their usage to the enemies that are currently attacking them. In addition, control powers (specifically immobilize effects) will become more useful, as they limit the types of damage that enemies can inflict on players. What do you think? Any ideas or alterations? Do you believe that the proposed change would produce the desired effect?

That idea sounds fun, but it also sounds like a lot of work to implement. Lots of content to create manually. Perhaps if there was a more programmatic way to create these random events? I like the idea of events, and we already have some of them (like oh no a building is on fire go put it out with your ice powers) but each of them had to be manually created. There's a lot of zones in the game. The idea presented in the original post would require significantly less content generation, basically zero in fact, but would require a lot of engine work. Different skillset, I think. So it really depends on what kinds of things the dev team wanted to work on. I'm a programmer so engine work sounds infinitely more fun to me than writing quests and placing invisible barrels in every map : )

You're right, and there's only so much we can imagine before seeing the design in the hands of the players. I guess... Maybe an extra-long period of time in the testing branch would be necessary? To identify all the various ways it can be abused. I had a thought back on page 2, but I didn't really see a good place to put it. I realized that with the proposed EXP distribution algorithm, there's a potential for abuse. The algorithm was stated as such: when a mob is defeated, 50% of the exp reward goes to any players present, and 50% is distributed to players who aren't present. I realized this is flawed. Imagine if there's a Mastermind soloing in one corner of the neighborhood, and 15 blasters and a tanker running around vaporizing anything that crosses their path. The 16 players would get 50% of the exp reward from any killed monsters, which would be duplicated for each of them since they were all present and accounted for. However, the Mastermind in the corner, being the only other player in the zone that is *not* present, would get 50% of the reward from each kill as well. This wouldn't work. If a Sentinel walked in to some third corner of the neighborhood, the Mastermind would get 25% of each kill the group of 16 made, but that's still far too much. I realized the algorithm needed to be adjusted, and I realized that in doing so it could be made simpler. Instead of segmenting the EXP distributed into 2 portions, 50% for the players present and 50% for the players not present, what if 50% went to players present for the kill and 50% was distributed to each player in the neighborhood? The distinction is subtle, but it negates the potential abuse by giving everyone in the neighborhood the same portion of the distributed EXP. I believe this would be a more fair system.

What if any fury gained over the cap instead of being wasted is turned into temporary health?

The +25% healing bonus from Field Medic is significantly less useful to an archetype without healing powers. I can't help but wonder if that aspect of it could be changed somehow, to be more useful for every powerset. Maybe it could increase all healing done to targets within 30 yards by 10%? Thematically, you could be sharing tips about first aid or whatever. This would have a similar impact for healing powersets and non-healing powersets. However this power suddenly becomes significantly more useful if you have more than a few healers on your team, and significantly less if you don't. Maybe it could give a +regen aura? Similar idea, your character is sharing tips about first aid, or maybe even using your little healing gadget thing to produce a healthy aura of some kind. This would be just as useful to healing characters as to non-healing characters, and it is just as powerful on teams with other healers as teams without. If an aura isn't the right way to go, then maybe if there are any overheals from your aid-other or aid-self, they get turned into a temporary health shield? Could be a good way to start a fight, and also it would increase the utility of the power as suddenly you don't have to worry about a target's current health - you'd only have to pay attention to who's taking damage at the moment. Which is something that can be done by looking at the field, rather than the health bars in the UI, which I think is a more ergonomic way to play the game. Perhaps this is a non-issue, do you think Field Medic is fine? Or if not, is there a different way you'd alter it's behavior?

Gaining Infamy and Influence in AE doesn't make a lot of sense thematically either. Like, is the simulation you're engaging with being live-streamed on the internet or something? Isn't this game set in 2004? "Watch out for The Punchinator, he's really good at playing video games" uh-huh yeah

That's a good point, and I think that in order to address that issue there would need to be a way to heal that all Brute powersets had access to. So, an inherent AT power, or possibly a replacement to the build-up power which provided some kind of healing. See this comment for an proposed idea I had. It's a little convoluted, which doesn't really fit well with Brutes, but in essence it boils down to giving them a toggle power which converts fury into health, while causing any damage taken to be dealt to their endurance bar instead of their health bar. I believe this would allow Brutes to heal themselves when out of danger, thus giving them the ability to survive after falling into the 0-10% hp state.

CoH is a sandbox to me : )

I don't understand how they could get infinite merits quickly and easily - can you clarify? The archvillains/heroes wouldn't spawn very often, and when they do they're in a random place that wouldn't necessarily be noticed right away. And once it is, they're only one step above bosses, so it's unlikely that people would be able to swarm them before being defeated. It'd be more like, a nice surprise sometimes for people who are dispersed away from everyone else. Or for groups who got lucky, I guess. If you're concerned about the fact that reward merits are being given out in general, do you have another idea? I figured a single merit was a small enough reward that was still valuable that it would work out. Maybe a salvage drop or extra INF? That feels a little too much like "the same things you were getting from street sweeping, just more of it" which kinda defeats the purpose of having a valuable reward given out for hunting down the archvillain/heroes.

The very first task you have as a villain is to decide which path your future will take. Do you work with Kalinda, and align yourself with Arachnos, do you work with Burke, as a mercenary? Or will you strike out on your own and street sweep your way to Port Oakes, where you can start doing newspaper missions (if you want) and picking your battles more carefully, thus defining your story on your own terms. I think that the first two options are for players who enjoy missions. The third option is for people who want to make their own story, and for that option the justification becomes more important. Because like you said, those who are working for Arachnos or Mercenaries probably wouldn't care about joining patrol teams. But renegade villains might. Hence, why I offered a potential explanation. If you'd like to come up with other reasons why this type of villain might join a street sweeping mission, feel free, but there isn't really a point to arguing that Arachnos lackeys or Mercenary villains wouldn't street sweep. Because you're right, they wouldn't. Rudra: Not really, no. My point there is that the opportunity to learn the lore is one of the rewards players get for doing instance missions. it is just one of the rewards though. And no rewards are currently available for street sweeping, which is why players don't typically do it. Add rewards to street sweeping and it becomes more enticing to players. So... How do you feel about the proposed rewards that would be added to street sweeping? Specifically, awarding a reward merit for every defeated archvillain/hero which is hostile to both the players and the local mobs, which spawns every time (100 * number of players in zone) enemies are defeated in a neighborhood. Rudra: And that is a problem. That is why teams work the way they do. And even if your suggestion were to be implemented, you will want to maintain that team dynamic or you will wind up with a whole lot of angry players complaining about being 'punished' for doing the implemented street sweep content. The last thing you want is team members being arbitrarily dismissed from a given team they just joined by any means because they changed zones or neighborhoods. Look at the Bug Reports forum for some examples there from players complaining that going into their SG base while a Rogue hero side or a Vigilante villain side and finding themselves dismissed from their team automatically. I think this is a clear demonstration of why it wouldn't be a good idea to implement both street sweeping missions *and* the proposed system changes. They would each accomplish certain goals in isolation, but in tandem they would conflict with one another. And I believe that the proposed idea would be more successful at addressing more of the stated goals than street sweeping missions.

Yes exactly! A "passive league" is a decent way to think about it. Though for most neighborhoods it'd never grow larger than a team, as there's seldom more than 8 players in one area at a time. I'm not sure if we should prevent it from being farmable. I mean, farming is the entire point of grinding mobs! However, if there's a large amount of players in an area and they *are* placed in a league, the current mechanics of the game already reduces the EXP gained. Perhaps that would be sufficient, perhaps not, I don't know... If not, then we can come up with another solution ^_^

Rudra: You are misunderstanding, so let me attempt to clarify. Using just myself as an example because I can't speak for others, the reason why I would not join a street sweeping team on my street sweeping only characters is because I do not want anything other than my chosen targets. My Croatoa street sweeper for example, which no longer does so for having out-leveled the zone, would only take down Red Cap bosses. And that was the only mobs I wanted to be involved in my character's progression. No minions. No lieutenants. No Cabal. (Though I was hunting Tuatha and Firbolg until I was high enough level to go after the Red Caps.) Because of my character's focus, I did not want any xp or inf' coming from other sources. I did this on another character where I was explicitly hunting Family bosses in Independence Port. Or a red sider that only hunted Longbow in Nerva Archipelago. Don't want anything from other sources. Yes, this is extremely niche. However, it is just one example of why a street sweeping character could choose to not join a street sweeping team. Because now their theme is out the window as the other team members go after what they prefer, even if that preference is everything within render distance. I see. Well, the benefit to an opt-in system is that players who have needs like yours would be able to opt-out by not opting in. So all you'd have to do is refrain from selecting the "looking for patrol" option in the team finder and you would not be placed on these teams and you would not receive the distributed EXP gains. Rudra: Poor example. I get your point, but poor example, because in Gotham, the city is very much divided up into specific gang controlled territories. They just don't spend as much time visibly shaking down the citizenry as in CoX. Most of their crimes are hidden in the back alley shadows, boardrooms, and political offices. In comics, villains most often band together to be able to defeat the heroes they know are going to come after them during their heists, but only after the heroes have previously prevented those criminals from successfully completing their crimes multiple times. Or they share an ideology, other belief system, or shared trait; so they band together into a set villain group. They don't band together just because. And often, their encounters with each other, at least during their crimes, are violent as they view each other as a threat to their own goals. That's part of the problem. While a patrol works well from a heroic stand point, it all but fails under a villainous one. Ah my bad, sorry. I don't really read comics, they never really grabbed me. And the marvel and D/C movies weren't my jam either. I think the reason CoX appeals to me so much is because of the inherent collectivist spirit in it? It's essentially the only non-American superhero piece of media that I can think of, and while American culture is very individualistic and I like it for what it is, I don't much like the idea of individualist supers because it glorifies the concept of centralizing power within a few choice individuals. I mean, Batman is literally a billionaire, there can only be so many of him. CoX however is different. In this world, anyone who works hard enough can be a superhero (see the "Origin of Power" contact mission chain in Cap au Diable when playing a natural character) and not only that, but there are SO MANY of them! They all work together for the common good of protecting Paragon City, and the villains are given the interesting moral choice of working for or against Arachnos, which is so much more interesting to me than deciding to be "good" or "evil". My characters tend to lean more toward "Kickass" and less "spandex", but that's just a personal preference. Also lots of magic and robots, because robots can be built and magic can be learned. But I digress. My point was that I don't know enough about comics to be able to tell. Oh, you mean like... Arachnos? We are "Destined Ones", after all. 😉 But not every hero wants to work with Arachnos. I usually don't. However, I do often team up with other villains. What in-game explanation currently exists for that behavior? Whatever it is, it would apply equally to mission teams as to street sweeping, I believe. Rudra: Because the story is told in the instanced missions, and because instanced missions give better rewards for giving mission completion rewards whereas just moving around a zone smacking down down random mobs doesn't, if the devs want players to spend time out and about in the various zones, they need to include street sweep missions. Players are going to gravitate to rewards. That reward can be discovered lore about the game, it can be xp and inf', it can be whatever. I believe the reason why street sweeping is so unpopular is because it lacks a reward system. You can't just award bonus rewards if there isn't a trigger to award those bonus rewards. So instanced missions get mission completion rewards. (Which means street sweep missions should too, but they don't.) Delving through the missions and reading the clues, briefings, debriefings, and enemy chatter reveals a massive story behind the game, which is itself also a reward. Just moving around a zone and randomly smacking down various mobs can't do that, though at least we do have explores that also give game lore. Because of that, yes, players need to be told to go to King's Row and search the roof tops and back alleys because the CoT are sacrificing people. Because otherwise there is no real incentive to do so. The rewards are found in the instanced missions. Now from a lore/comic perspective? You're correct, supers should be out there patrolling their home turf for multiple reasons. PR being one. Home security being another. (Bear in mind though, that from a realism point of view, most of those criminals the patrolling hero is beating up to save the day? Are just down on their luck regular people trying to get something to live on. Not a concern in something Like CoX where everyone mugging someone is a gang member running wild, but if you were to get down to it, at least in comics, that's what your patrolling heroes have to confront. That not everyone committing a crime does so because they are evil.) I don't think they *need* to include street sweeping missions, they only need to include street sweeping *rewards*. And, as already suggested, the rewards could be a single reward merit after defeating an archvillain/hero that spawns every ~100 kills (per hero). I believe this would be enough of a reward for people to seek to engage with the content. It seems like your concern here is primarily about the lore that is unread when players don't do contact missions. Well, I think street sweeping has always attracted the kinds of players who value creating their own story over reading the story of others. I mean I'm clearly a huge advocate of street sweeping, and I don't even read comics! Part of what pulls me to City of Heroes is the idea that these criminals we're fighting actually *are* evil. I wouldn't really want to play a game set in a modern day city because yeah, you're right, most petty criminals are just people trying to get by. They don't deserve to be beaten into a paste by "superheroes". However, in CoX, the enemies you fight are overwhelmingly members of organized gangs that take over territory and oppress and harass the people who live there. They are violent and cruel and the closest thing to evil that a human can be, in this century. That's the only reason I can stomach fighting them. I like playing villains though because people live on the Rogue Isles too, and I'd never hurt them. If the territory was in my hands, they'd be safe from harm. At least, until I moved on of course, but what can you do, I'm playing a villain teehee >: ) Missions are chosen by the team leader and are active for all members of the team. When hunting Hellions in Hyperion Way, the player is on the "Hyperion Way" team. When they cross the street, they are removed from the Hyperion Way team and placed on the Promenade team, which has a different mission active. Therefore, they can no longer gain progress on the old mission which was attached to the team, not the player. Check out this comment for more discussion on the motivations behind the auto-generated team system.