[20th Anniversary Q&A - Question Submission Thread]

On behalf of the City of Heroes Rebirth Team and our players, I would like to thank the Homecoming Team for providing the community with this unique opportunity to speak to our beloved rednames of old.

 

Each of you has gained valuable insight into creating and managing experiences for  players across the world over the years. What nuggets of wisdom and advice can you pass on to all of the volunteer artists, writers, designers, programmers, QA, and community relation teams that steward this universe that you created?

[Prismatic Aether and locked costume items]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

That's a lot easier said than done. 
If there were an executable I could download, and fire it up as easily as HC CoH, I certainly would. Not saying I wouldn't play here, but I'd certainly do that. 

I can't imagine the size of such a file. And, I'm pretty sure no such file exists, but a collection of files. Requiring perhaps a dedicated machine. I've honestly no idea, but I know with certainty it's not that simple. 

https://wiki.ourodev.com/view/Volume_2_VMs_%26_Self_Installer

 

This has been around for about 2.5 years. It's an 8GB download that installs and sets up necessary databases with the click of a button once extracted. You can play it perfectly fine with most any machine released in the last 5 years. And, if you want to make changes, there's an entire community dedicated to helping you out.

[Design Formulas]

On 1/10/2020 at 10:50 PM, Alouu said:

So the conclusion I have to reach from this is that the first formula of the two options was the right one. However this just leads right into the question, what are leandro's pvp AT scalar numbers then? They don't produce correct results and arent needed at all in the formula which actually does, which uses the seemingly unrelated AdjustedATDamageMod values instead.

Quite frankly, I have no idea where those PVP scalars came from, but unless the SCORE team rebalanced PVP at some point, they do not appear to be correct.  The modifiers that I quoted come directly from the source spreadsheets available through Ourodev.  They have the values and formulas used by PS developers at the time of the shutdown.

[Design Formulas]

On 9/3/2019 at 6:40 AM, Alouu said:

Hi, ive been working on a formula for pvp damages based on the AT modifiers listed above. Here are two links that both have the inputs set to look at Archery's Aimed Shot for a Blaster:

One, Two.

 

S is the Scalar

C is the cast time of the power (so currently set to 1.67 for Aimed Shot),

R is the recharge of the power (6s for Aimed Shot)

A is the area divisor incase it ever proves useful.

 

Now you may have noticed that in these two formulas that what I multiply S with is different, with one using 56.1 and another using 42.27. The way I set up the formula multiplies the AT Modifier above with these numbers to create the true scalar. Now what I expected is that since here blaster melee damage scalar is listed as 1.000, and in this table the corresponding value is 56.10 (at level 50), doesnt this mean that a scalar of 1.000 = 56.10? If that is true then the above listed AT modifiers must be wrong, since as you see in order to correctly predict Aimed Shot's pvp damage value I had to change the blaster ranged AT modifier from it's listed 1.82 to 1.383. Alternately if im wrong, can someone explain why when using the listed AT Modifier of 1.82, I needed to multiply this by 42.27 in order to generate accurate* results, and where this number could come from?

 

*Multiple powers were tested using both formulas, not just Aimed shot. It does produce quite accurate values for the powers I tested that dont do extra funky effects like holds.

Ok, no one has deigned to answer your question in the last few months, so I'm going to give it a go…

 

Damage, as designed by the Paragon Studios staff, was a rather complex beast pulling from multiple tables with a host of variables, both logical and illogical.

 

It all starts by determining the base health of a generic entity at a given level.  From there, base damage for a generic entity is determined by the formula:

 

BaseDMG_Generic = (HP_Generic * 0.3) / 3

 

This is equal to the base damage for temporary powers for each archetype.

 

From there, the individual archetypes then undergo the formula:

 

BaseDMG_Class = ((BaseDMG_Generic * (1 - LevelModifier)) + (BaseDMG_Generic * ATModifier * LevelModifier)) * (UnspecializiedLevelEffectiveness/100)

 

Where: 

LevelModifier = 0.20 @ level 1; 1.00 @ level 20+

UnspecializiedLevelEffectiveness = 100 @ 1; 51.93 @ 50

Sounds like a lot?  Good thing I already did it for you.

 

This is then applied to the scale value derived from the RechargeTime and Endurance equations for PVE.

 

PVP damage undergoes an additional formula:

 

(CastTime*0.7+RechargeTime*0.04+0.4)*AdjustedATDamageMod*DamageType%*(1/3.25)

 

AdjustedATDamageMod

---

Tanker           1.267988141
Scrapper       1.147593307
Blaster           1.229564258
Defender       1.560600789
Controller      1.676678533
Brute              1.352520684
Stalker           1.014390513
Corrupter       1.352520684
Dominator     1.4
Mastermind  1.50901068
Kheldian        1.2
Veat                1.2
Pet                  1

 

Maybe that will help some?

 

[Startup Issues]

I've followed the instructions on how to install the game, however, I'm having trouble actually getting in. 

 

The game loads, but on full-screen I get a constant flickering that makes it impossible to navigate.  When I Alt+Enter for Windowed mode, I get a black screen and the sound stutters.

 

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?  I run Win7 OS, but I have tried the game in compatability mode for Vista SP2 (same compat as my GPU), and XP SP3 (which I know worked for my GPU and game prior to upgrading OS).

 

Is something in Catalyst 9.1 screwing with the game for some reason?