gabrilend

Me too he fucking kinda sucks tbh. I saw the new movie because some friends wanted to go and it was just... endless gratuitous violence from beginning to end. It kinda made me sick? I felt like I was being hypnotized! It was weird and felt inhuman. No thank you.

Whoa, you're kidding! Me too! What are the odds.

Yeah, see, you get it. Super speed is meant to be faster than a human could be. Sprinting a football field in 3-5 seconds is super powered. And yet every character can do so with a power that every character is forced to get at level 2. Again, the "walk" power is painfully slow. It's slower than the civilians who walk around the city! When I am trying to position myself in a fight, it's often easier to do so when you have more minute control over your motion. Okay, here's an analogy. Think about when you're driving a car in a suburb - you make large turns by moving your wheels such that they are angled often at a 45 degree angle or more! Well, maybe not more, I guess I've never gotten out and looked. But try that on a highway, and you'll flip the car and die. When you are moving at slow speeds, like in a fight when you'd want to disable your sprint powers to save endurance, it's often better to be able to do so with more finely controlled movement sensitivity. Here's another analogy related to video games - when you're playing a first person shooter and you have a normal weapon, it's often easy to spin around and hit foes behind you. However, when you have a sniper rifle and you're zoomed in, the same physical motion made with your hand might only move your viewpoint 30 degrees or so. The reason is that finely tuned movement is important in those situations. I'm asking for RP reasons, but not just for RP reasons. In fact the RP is the least important, because I know that most people are so over the RP in this game, which breaks my heart because that's what originally drew me to it. BUT setting that aside, I want to focus on the mechanical reasons why providing a slower movement option is beneficial to players.

... Right, so you were just trying to be an asshole rude then. Great. Am I wrong? Okay, well, how about this: some characters can fly, but might be slow on the ground. Or maybe they can teleport. There's plenty of reasons why someone would want to walk slowly in this game. I haven't even touched on nostalgia! Frankly the world feels smaller when you can sprint the length of a football field in like 3-5 seconds. That's super-speed to me.

... I'm not sure I understand how a player is supposed to play the game without levelling up? Walk is painfully slow. It's like... tiptoe speed. Also, you can't use any attacks while in walking mode. There are many examples of superheroes who can't move faster than a human should be capable of but still can do superpowered things. I don't think that's wrong to hope for. I guess it's the difference between Kickass and Deadpool, right? Both are superheroes.

I already asked for Null the Gull support here: The reason I made this post is because I thought of another way to accomplish my goals which might be easier. Turns out, if what you say is true, that I was mistaken.

... It is not punishment to spend a resource. I'm an OG villain Mastermind. I know what my pets are. Those heroes in the audience who hear this and think "No! I could never! My pets are precious to me!" or some other junk are simply deluding themselves. Pets are to be spent toward achieving tactical and strategic goals. Such is the way of a cruel, calculating, mastermind.

I would adore this! I think it would massively increase the potential customization options. I have no idea how feasible it would be.

I see. Well, perhaps this solution would not work for the problem at hand, which is that inherent fitness powers are non negotiable. Do you have any ideas that might resolve the issue that are more feasible?

A buff is a reward for being undertuned for a while. A nerf is a punishment for being overpowered for a time. A change is when something is altered which makes the archetype more or less powerful. In order to compensate for this, a buff or a nerf must also be applied. These buffs and nerfs are NOT punishments or rewards, they are simply adjustments in order to let the new mechanics operate effectively without changing the meta too much. This particular change would be a net positive buff for Masterminds. So, to counter that change, a nerf must be applied. The easiest thing to nerf is the same mechanics that are touched by the change, so if you have any other ideas for nerfs to apply, please write them here and we can discuss them.

Some players want to run at normal human levels. "some players" being primarily me, if I remember correctly. By adding a 0% movement speed decrease effect to the inherent fitness powers, players would be able to customize how fast their character moves.

See title. If 1 pet is alive, refund 1/3rd of the cost for a t1 pet, and 1/2 the cost for a t2 pet. if 2 pets are alive, refund 2/3rds of the cost of a t1 pet. To balance this change, increase the endurance cost by 66% for the t1 summon and 50% for the t2 summon. (numbers tweakable) Currently, you can very quickly summon streams of pets to do your bidding. However, with this change in place, you'd still be ABLE to recharge-wise, but you would be punished for doing so endurance-wise, while rewarding players who manage to keep SOME of their pets alive.

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.