MHertz

I will admit that it is theoretically possible for someone to be PLed to 50 and have no working knowledge of the game or the zones or the locations of stuff. I have not yet, to my knowledge, ever met a player that I could be reasonably sure would fit this profile. So yes, you could be right. In theory. Lord willin’ an’ the crick don’t rise, with grace o’ God and a long-handled spoon. That’s not the problem people have with your position. There are tons of characters who PLed to 50 that lack those badges and accolades … but still know how to play. There are plenty of characters who played some non-PL way to 50, lack certain badges and accolades, and don’t know how to play. There are plenty of characters who played some non-PL way to 50, lack certain badges and accolades, and also know how to play. They just don’t care about badges and accolades. The problem is that you seem to want us to agree with certainty that a given set of symptoms (lack of badges, accolades, game knowledge) automatically means the player is an incapable neophyte with a PL baby. And we can’t. There are too many other reasons why someone could not know (or not care) about the things you think should be dispositive indicators of experience. And we obviously can’t be certain that the AE was the cause.

Really, that’s the only way to do witch hunts. You never hear of anyone going down the timid, accommodating pacifist witch hunt path.

The simplest way would seem to be repeating all-level content on a single kind of enemy, like joining a Trick-or-Treat league in PI. You wouldn’t get location badges, and you’d only get Defeat X badges for witches, werewolves, etc. Considering that Halloween just happened, I find it not unlikely that there may be a few 50s around who went up the ladder that way. Or, you know, doing all-Council radio missions in PI. Once players find a means for leveling up, I find they often stick with it. The new auto-sidekicking feature has made it much easier than on Live for a new player to team up outside his natural level, adhere to a narrow band of content, and skip whole swathes of missions and zones. It used to be that you had to know the minimum level for hazard zones and plan accordingly, and team mostly with people your level and play Mentor Tetris to get sidekicks in at an effective level. Now, I dare say most new players aren’t consciously aware of that sidekick system at all. It even allows players to participate in level 50 AE farms (or Trick-or-Treat) starting at level 1. That is what likely causes players do not know where Positron is. Blaming it all on AE is unwarranted, as it is not truly where the problem lies. In the Old Days, you couldn’t stick to one content faucet. You out-leveled that zone and you had to know where to go next. You had to slog through Steel Canyon and Skyway just to get to the Green Line. Now, you can just post “level 1 LFG” and buy a magic power to teleport you across the city right to the door. Or use someone else’s SG teleporters. AE has distorted the landscape of the game, sure, but other systems added for our convenience have done much more.

It can exist in pen-and-paper RPGs, too, where you adventure with the same party throughout the campaign. In an MMO there is no longitudinal character study with a fixed set of participants. That’s why playing it in an MMO presents different challenges.

Is now when I point out that I only have one character out of 40 with that accolade? I think you have a somewhat distorted idea of what people ought to have done by 50. The absence of certain badges (practically unavoidable location badges like Hero Corps Insider or inevitable X Damage Taken/Dealt badges) would be a better indicator … maybe you should’ve led with that. It’s perfectly possible to do radio missions through 20, or do the Hollows and then Skyway, and end up not knowing anything about Task Forces or Positron. At least on one’s first character. Do I think it’s common? No, I don’t. But I haven’t seen anybody like you describe, either.

If I’m leading a group, I have to set the mission, adjust settings for new team composition, and (depending on my AT) hand out buffs or summon pets. I have to keep communicating with the team so they don’t go in the door early. I really don’t want to have to constantly answer tells for 15 minutes while the mission is going on. I’ll gladly post to LFG that the team is full, as well as answer any stragglers that make it through before I get that message posted.

I have played this game for years, and have returned to Homecoming many months ago. I don’t know where all the task forces are located or what the common abbreviations are. The first time I participated in an ITF I didn’t know I had to have the Midnight Squad badge. The first time I ran the Winter Lord trial I didn’t know how to get there either. None of those things prove any of my characters were PLed. These things happen. Perfect knowledge of all maps, NPCs, mission content and lore should not required to prove one isn’t an AE baby.

I think what you're saying is "be realistic about your power level." As you say, if you are trying to RP as an ultrapowerful being, there ought to be a reason why you're not, in this exact moment, according to the game engine, as ultrapowerful as you want people to think. I don't think I ever said you have to play a level 1 as a total gosh-how-amazing! newbie every single time. I made a character named Techbonker. He dresses and talks exactly like Stickbonker, but instead of being a level 50 staff/WP brute, he's a low-level Robots Mastermind. I justify the fact that he's "weak" (he's not level 50) by saying he's trying to learn a new discipline but he's not good at it yet. I don't think I did try to dissuade anyone from being mysterious. There's a distinction to be drawn between being mysterious as a character and being a complete mystery to other players. You can play a character who has secrets, and even play one that refuses to discuss those secrets, but (as I said) the disadvantage to that approach is that you're either a) breaking character by constantly talking about the thing you claim you never talk about, or b) you have to wait for someone else to drag your secrets out of you. It can become repetitive for other players and for you. Other players may not want to participate in your story if you make it too difficult. One thing about the characters you mention — Black Widow, Dr. House, Batman, et al — they are all leads. That means the action always follows that character and the audience is slowly educated about each of them over a long stretch of time. You, as an RPer in an MMO, are not a lead except to yourself. Unlike with a TV show audience, it's unlikely that any player will be present to witness every moment of your long-haul story arc. You are a bit part in someone else's story. They might catch episode 5, then episode 22, then episode 24, then episode 60.* As such, you cannot expect everyone to be familiar with your backstory just because you told three dancers and one AFK dude in Pocket D. You're going to have to tell that story again and again. That means you have to figure out how to be both mysterious and communicative. I've seen players who lurk on the sidelines with those "I'm So Mysterious" bios filled with [redacted] and blank spaces and phrases like "name: unknown" and "he's watching you from the corner." I usually don't see anybody talking to them. I know I don't. But I think we're on the same page, pretty much, because you're saying to RP your character in a way that creates engagement despite the mysterious nature of the character. That's all I'm saying. Give your character handles. *This is why Stickbonker repeats himself often. If I want to make a running joke about his missing boot or his ongoing squabble with City Hall or his pretentions at being mayor, I have to keep bringing these things up when different people are online.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong, but I would love to see some numbers along those lines, particularly when it comes to street sweeping vs door missions. Street sweeping in a hazard zone (like Perez) may deal with spawns that often aren't the ideal level/size that you can get in a door mission, but there's no travel time. You wander around defeating everything that gets in your way. The lower-level mobs get steamrolled; the higher-level mobs take slightly more time. Compared to some door missions ("go talk to Genevieve Sanders, now go defeat 10 Skulls, now go talk to Shauna Stockwell, now go find the door mission") you spend almost no time looking for the next XP target. Other mission arcs ("here's another portal mission, and the portal is literally right here") have less travel time. In addition, some door missions ("hunt these 16 city blocks and try to locate 20 hostages, which are hiding under eaves and in alleys and behind fences and in doorways, and the last 20 minutes of the mission is wasted time because you can't find the last dude in the parking garage") are just irritating time-wasters. I would love for some of those door missions to have that slightly lower, but still steady, influx of XP. Farming is likewise a multi-headed best and can take many forms (including street-sweeping) so it's a little harder to pinpoint. Edit: Upon reflection, it's possible the devs killed street sweeping as a way to get people out of city zones and increase server performance. If so, it's understandable, but I'm sorry to see the zones much less busy as a consequence.

I have not seen this epidemic of uninformed players created by AE farms. I’ve definitely seen some Tankers that like to herd, and some that don’t; I’ve seen Blasters that like to blap, and some that don’t; I’ve seen Controllers who take none of their team-friendly buff powers, and those who do. I would never assume that one group or the other only plays that way because they “don’t know better” or because “farming ruined them” or whatever. About the only thing I can point to about the effect of AE farming is that zones like Perez, which used to be fun, have turned empty and boring. Street sweeping is a lost art. You don’t see characters flying through zones as much, or super-speeding somewhere, because so many players have chosen to chain themselves inside a cage like experimental rats that can’t stop pushing the cocaine button. This is a game about being super. We’re all sitting inside at our computers for the opportunity to be super. I find it incredibly sad that instead of getting out into the city zones, people choose to play a video game inside the video game. But you know, to each his own. If the devs didn’t want it to happen they’d find a way to change the rules. So I figure it’s no big deal. Edit: If I were to rebuild AE from the ground up, I would do two things. First, AE missions provide XP, but no other rewards. Influence is supposed to be fame and fortune; enhancements and salvage are stuff you find. None should be available in a virtual world. But second, I would allow that AE provides superior training and grants a real-world buff against certain enemies. Fight a bunch of Vahz in AE and get a bonus vs Vahz in the real world, and so on. That would encourage AE users to diversify their taste in missions.

I can’t be the only one who wonders why a psionic controller can’t offer any psionic defense to her team. Or why illusions can’t more effectively fight other illusions. Or why electric control doesn’t shut down robots. Is there a way to build some kind of team defense into the Control/Domination sets that plays on these elemental themes? I mean, there really ought to be Origin-themed power trees too, for stuff like Counterspell and Hack Enemy Software, but one thing at a time.

Here are some ideas: Temp “powers” that put things in the hand: lunch pail, tool box, briefcase, hammer, screwdriver, monkey wrench, power drill, etc, even if these “powers” don’t do more than Brawling damage. Doors in bases that can be opened or accessed by all members of the SG, or by specific members: for bedrooms, offices, back rooms, or other personal/private spaces. A “turn to face” option in the menu that pops up when you click a name in chat. Sometimes when someone speaks in a crowded area it’s hard to see where that person was. A space in the bio for demographic data: given name, family name, age, pronouns, gender ID, and species. A “highlight these words” option in chat that automatically puts certain text in a different color, like your character’s name, the name of someone you’re talking to, or your character’s given name (as in demographics, above). Alternately, a “filter from local” button to remove a person’s local chat from your screen only, for about 5 minutes. Might be thought of as a time-limited and scope-limited ignore feature.

I agree that the Council need a buff in the late game, preferably something other than “transform into a new form with 60% resist all and Mag 9 immob resist.” People choose Council missions because they lag behind Carnival of Shadows and Circle of Thorns and Arachnos in those late levels. My opinion is that Council already get an XP buff by being lame. That’s the problem to fix.

Proposed testing protocol: 1. Tests will be run in pairs only (at first). Some tests will be two non-Sentinels, some will be one non-Sentinel paired with a Sentinel; I will also need some tests for 2 Sentinels. Both members of the duo should be actively played by separate players. This means a) no farming with door sitting because one character is deliberately drawing 0 aggro; also AFK farming is probably not good data either b) no dual-boxing with one character on follow, as this puts a character into melee and AOE range that might not otherwise play at that range 2. Tests will be conducted in an AE mission with a fixed level, where both members are set to the same level, so there is no noise coming from level differentials (eg, someone sidekicked and fighting at an additional +1, as can happen in regular missions). 3. Both players in the trial will send their combat logs to me so I can calculate the total amount of aggro accrued by the team. A solo combat log doesn’t tell me very much, nor does getting only half of the player data. 4. Tests will be conducted at a fixed difficulty. This difficulty will likely be +0/x2, to reduce the possibility of team wipeouts or player defeats (which would skew the figures for incoming aggro, as the remaining mob will turn all aggro on the surviving member). It may be that problems with Sentinels only become obvious at higher team sizes, due to the number of AOEs available to some ATs, but let’s start with something we can manage. 5. The combat log should not be modified except to trim out any personal conversations before, during and after the combat to be reviewed, or to remove non-essential log data before and after that combat. If you run multiple tests on the same day, please indicate this, or send separate log files (so the parser doesn’t combine them). 6. Please indicate the names, effective combat levels, ATs and power sets of your duo in the log file. You can do this by speaking in Team, or by adding a line preceding the combat log. 7. If one character is heavily twinked out and the other is not (eg, running mostly IO sets by level 20 while the other has –2 DOs) then indicate this as well.

I would like to test Sentinels under live in-game conditions to see what kind of team contribution they are making — in specific, the amount of aggro taken versus the amount of damage dealt. The plan is to run the same AE mission with pairs of characters at a fixed level, say around level 25. I want to compare how much aggro a Blaster gets when teamed with a Sentinel and compare it to being teamed with a Controller, a Defender, etc. I have written a combat log parser that will analyze the log file and calculate the number of attacks (for and against), number of hits, and how much damage. If I can get volunteers to send me combat logs (you can just send the combat part, not the whole file), that would greatly speed data collection. Is there anybody out there willing to run these tests? It shouldn’t be much harder than running a single mission on AE and emailing the log to me. When I have some volunteers we can talk about testing protocol and control tests, number of trials, which AR mission to run, and so on.

That is a more reasonable figure. If that is the case, then on that 6-person team, the Sentinel would be taking 21.3% of team aggro. I still find it odd. I don’t feel like the Sentinels I play are getting that much of a workout, defensively. There are probably factors (other than debuffs and taunts) that I’m missing — like how quickly each AT can generate threat and among how many separate targets. If Blasters and Controllers have better AOE capability, that might make a difference. Time to get some actual data and then refit the model.

I decided to use the same calculations to examine a full team: 1 of each Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, Tanker, and Sentinel. Blaster takes 11% of team aggro Controller takes 5.6% Defender takes 5.6% Scrapper takes 34.7% Tanker takes 32.9% (remember, Taunt is not accounted for here, just damage and threat) Sentinel takes 9.8% This is the problem I was talking about earlier. If these figures are correct, Sentinels have armor that is being under-leveraged by the game mechanics compared to other ATs with similar armor. They could take at least 3x, possibly 4x as much heat as they do. They need a way to draw at least a little more aggro, and in a productive way.

I’ve been thinking about the whole aggro position — that due to their weak damage, Sentinels don’t generate enough of it. Until I get a chance to run copious tests in AE with a fixed set of testing characters, I’ll make do with numbers we know of and try to predict what I think the data would say. What I tried to calculate was the total amount of Threat generated by each AT over the course of a single fight. This meant coming up with a formula: Melee_DPS = Base_Dam * AT_Melee_Dam_Scale * AT_%Melee Ranged_DPS = Base_Dam * AT_Ranged_Dam_Mod * AT_%Ranged Avg_DPS = Melee_DPS + Range_DPS ((where Base_DPS is 50, for the sake of argument; AT_Melee_Dam_Scale is B 1, C 0.55, D 0.55, Scr 1.125, T 0.8, Sent 0.95; AT_Ranged_Dam_Scale is B 1.125, C 0.55, D 0.65, Scr 0.5, T 0.5, Sent 0.95; AT_%Melee is the proportion of time spent using melee powers: B 0.4, C 0, D 0, Scr 1, T 1, Sent 0 AT_%Ranged is B 0.6, C 1, D 1, Scr 0, T 0, Sent 1)) Dam_Output = Avg_DPS * AT_%Att ((where AT_%Att is the proportion of time the AT spends attacking and not managing their secondary set, as follows: B 1, C 0.8, D 0.6, Scr 0.9, T 0.8, Sent 0.9)) Time_to_Defeat (solo) = Crowd_HP / Dam_Output ((the ideal number of seconds it takes to defeat a group of enemies, not accounting for overkill DPS; where Crowd_XP is the total HP of a group of enemies; for the sake of argument, there are 3 enemies X 120 HP for 360 total; the actual number here isn’t essential because all we care about is the percent of damage each AT contributes)) Time to Defeat (duo) = Crowd_HP / (member1_Dam_Output + member2_Dam_Output) ((the time to defeat a group of enemies on a duo, with each member bringing their respective damage outputs)) Threat_Gen = Time_to_Defeat (duo) * Dam_Output (member1) * AT_Threat (member1) ((the amount of Threat generated by each member, discounting Taunt and any applied debuffs — just imagine all attacks are Fire, and have no secondary effect; where AT_Threat is assumed as follows: B 1, C 1, D 1, Scr 3, T 4, Sent 1. Edit: I could not find a figure for Sentinel AT Threat, so I am going with 1. If the real figure is closer to 2 or 3 that would help manage group aggro, but it doesn’t seem to match with what I’m seeing.)) %_Threat = divide total Threat_Gen of the team by the Threat_Gen of the individual So yeah. What I got was this: Estimated Amount of Damage-Based Aggro of Given AT Based on AT of Teammate: Blaster. C 66.2%, D 66.2%, Scr 24.2%, T 25.1%, Sent 53.1% Controller. B 33.8%, D 45.8%, Scr 14.0%, T 14.7%, Sent 36.7% Defender. B 33.8%, C 54.2%, Scr 16.1%, T 16.9%, Sent 40.6% Scrapper: B 75.8%, C 86.0%, D 83.9%, T 51.3%, Sent 78.0% Tanker: B 74.8%, C 85.3%, D 83.1%, Scr 48.7%, Sent 77.1% Sentinel: B 46.9%, C 63.3%, D 59.4%, Scr 22.0%, T 22.9% I think these calculations are pretty close. It shows Blasters get lots of aggro when teamed with another squishy; but they benefit when there’s a meat shield around. When there’s a Sentinel on the team, the Sent takes some aggro off the Blaster’s shoulders, taking about half of the total — but that still means the Blaster takes the other half of the aggro without armor. Controllers grab more aggro when teamed with Defenders. They get about as much aggro teamed with either a Blaster or a Sentinel; and of course they benefit from melee guys. A Controller’s secondary set doesn’t do much good when paired with a Sentinel; the Controller can’t protect herself and the Sent doesn’t need much. Defenders take the most aggro when teamed with Controllers (54.2%), and second most with Sentinels (40.6%). Defenders can also protect the Sentinel, who doesn’t need it; but the Sentinel doesn’t do much for protecting the Defender, whose self-protection is often minimal. Scrappers and Tankers are not significantly assisted by the presence of a Sentinel over any other AT, because Sentinels are incapable of peeling away aggro from either of them. Despite having very good armor, Sentinels rarely take anything like Scrapper or Tanker levels of aggro. The most aggro Sentinels take is when paired with Controllers or Defenders who can offer even more protection to them. If these calculations hold up when debuffs are accounted for, then it doesn’t seem like most ATs benefit (in the survivability/aggro sense) from having a Sentinel around. Only a Blaster does better with a Sentinel, but is still splitting the aggro evenly with an armored ally, despite having no armor themselves. So, you might ask, what happens if we increase the damage scale for Sentinels? You could scale Sentinel damage as high as 1.08 before it matches Blaster aggro generation (at least by this crude calculation). This would mean the Blaster gets 49.9% of aggro when paired with a Sentinel (and still has no armor, so a modest improvement at best). This is the break even point, at which Sentinels become as good as Blasters at dealing damage and siphoning aggro from teammates, while being much more durable. That, to me, is the problem with Sentinels. They can withstand more damage than they naturally attract, so their team presence is a wash at best. Now to do actual in-game testing to see if this model is borne out by the data.

Most of my characters are ready with a quip — not always joking about the same things, but definitely trying to be funny on purpose. Most of my characters are intelligent (or at least they’d like to think they are). Most of my characters are polite to others, good teammates, and non-confrontational. I don’t want to be unpleasant to other people, even in character. I’ve got characters that are male, female, and in between; I have characters that are rich and poor, confident and hesitant, extroverted and introverted, egotistical and humble. But they nearly all have an obsession that is the core of their banter, the lens through which they see Paragon City.

I just wrote a basic combat log parser in Python that will track incoming damage (and % hit) along with outgoing damage (and % hit). I'm going to try to run control tests in teams of two as follows: blaster-controller blaster-defender blaster-scrapper blaster-tanker controller-defender controller-scrapper controller-tanker defender-scrapper defender-tanker scrapper-tanker sentinel-sentinel (in theory, each should get about 50% of the incoming threat) Then I will run tests pairing like this: blaster-sentinel controller-sentinel defender-sentinel scrapper-sentinel tanker-sentinel This should tell me a little bit about how each of the blue-side ATs attracts aggro in comparison with the Sentinel. Yes, a more thorough analysis would involve every AT in combination, like Brutes and Dominators; and it would include multiple powersets for each one, to smooth out results due to secondary effects (like Slow and KB). This is a start.

Professor Snipe Snipe, Crackle and Pop Snipes and Snails No Snipe For You

Well said. I should clarify that I am not opposed to raising damage output by Sentinels. The question is how this should be done. Tankers were given a buff to the radius of their AOEs and to the max number of targets. That is a way to buff total damage while, at the same time, encouraging a play style — use AOEs when surrounded by a whole bunch of enemies. Blasters were given a damage buff that enabled them to continue using Tier 1 and 2 blast powers during mezzes. Slapping an across-the-board damage increase onto Sentinels seems unlikely, in this light, especially If it doesn’t (as I suspect it won’t) solve the problem of the under-utilized secondary set. In short, figure out what Sentinels are supposed to be doing, and give them a damage buff when they do it. In my proposed Bodyguard scenario, you could give a damage bonus to the Sentinel that reflects how much aggro they’re peeling away from an ally. Or maybe a damage bonus based on that ally’s health bar. Or both. If I understand it correctly, in your proposed stacking debuff scenario, the Sentinel would be gaining the same damage bonus as everyone else (through -Def and -Res on the enemy), but only if he attacked. I suppose in theory you could just hang out and face the fight without engaging and passively indirectly buff your team — probably not a gameplay style you want to encourage. It would also not increase Sentinel damage relative to others on the team. P.S. I could write a combat log parser for this purpose in Python.

Other games have open-world PVP (including, yes, the ability to assassinate people during online weddings). Asking for auto-leveling isn’t a surprise, no. I am not opposed to the idea in principle, as I have said. The cost for doing so should reflect the severity of the real-world consequences of such a policy (eg, potentially 1000 max-level characters tying up names on every server). I already proposed an exchange: delete two existing 50s in exchange for the token to create a 50. No, they haven’t, but that isn’t my point. When someone throws out the freedom argument — that they should be able to play any way they want — I don’t want to commit to that as a design philosophy. They can play any way that they are allowed to.

I play sentinels too. They don’t draw nearly the same aggro on teams. I’m often the last one standing even when I’m trying to die. So yes, I get that your experience with Sentinels is valid for you, as mine is for me, but why don’t we gather data instead of anecdotes? How much aggro are they taking? If it is proportionately too low, then what consequence does their diminished aggro have on their teammates’ viability? If a Sentinel could do 95% of blaster damage but the Blaster is taking 80% of the aggro, could we agree that’s an imbalance, given that Sents have arnor? At what level would we say things are fair? If the developers are going to do a pass on Sentinels, I don’t want to throw a damage buff at them and call it a day, especially not if that means we can expect it to be re-nerfed down the line.

If armor for Sentinels is under-utilized because their aggro is too low, as I suspect is the case, you’d potentially end up with an entire archetype where every secondary power was skippable, and you could super-slot for all damage and power pools. Sentinels could team with most any other high-damage AT and they wouldn’t need to even turn armor on. I’d call that a balance issue. If Sentinels are generating insufficient aggro that they are rarely attacked, that’s a balance problem that must be solved. That’s one thing I would want to test for, to see if that is the case. Obviously that’s a worst-case scenario. I will make some Sentinels and try to run with and without armor on teams for comparison.