AustinSmith
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Posts posted by AustinSmith
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This question goes out to any of the developers that want to answer:
* Having worked with City of Heroes as part of a professional company/business, there's obviously design decisions that get made to focus on making money for the company and its shareholders, and certain things can/can't be done as part of that. If you were in a position where you could make any change to the game you wanted, regardless of whether it would make money for the company or be popular or not, total creative freedom, what would that be?-
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Additional bug reports: Toroidal Bubble cannot be slotted for damage resistance; it looks like endurance modification was added twice to the list of enhancement sets
Another issue with Toroidal Bubble; I hear it making a bubble popping noise when you land, which I like, but the sfx gets really spammy when you're walking over uneven ground, like a caves map, can it be adjusted to not overlap and stack the sfx? -
I think the level availability on Defenders was accidentally copied over to other archetypes; I'm on a corruptor and I am 100% getting Marine Affinity powers at levels way earlier than I should
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Bug report: the powerset themes are named weirdly, don't seem set up correctly
Additional bug report: Toroidal Bubble is available at level 2, should be level 4
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I ran a GM team today on Brainstorm that was initially two Brutes, then a Brute/Crabbermind, then picked up a third and went Brute/Crabbermind/Corruptor.
In terms of difficulty, the duo brutes were able to take down Kraken, although it was a hard fight, and then when we turned to Babbage, did alright for the first half of his health, but then once Coil Pulse was online we couldn't get him down more; I was on a Savage/Fiery brute, so I couldn't resist the inverse repel and was constantly getting fully drained. Once the second Brute got traded for a Crabbermind, we were able to push through and take down Babbage; he definitely felt like the nastiest of the GMs we encountered from that point. After that we picked up our third for a 3-man team and took down Jurassik, Babbage, Eochai, Jack, Council War Walker, Adamastor, Lusca, Deathsurge, Caleb, and Ghost of Scrapyard no problem (Flyer didn't seem to be up in Grandville).
In terms of the reward payout, from all those defeats I got the Eochai mini recipe naturally, and enough unstable aether to craft another mini pet recipe and the 2 prismatic aether to craft each of them. All in all felt rewarding for one GM team run.
My two gripes not necessarily related to the changes but the GMs in general; the Arachnos Fliers in Mercy con enemy but aren't actually engageable, which is confusing; should they con ally to the villain player instead? And then Caleb is still incredibly annoying to spawn; we had to go to the wiki, and it looks like 100 nerva daemon defeats during specific hours of the day, and then you have to wait until nightfall for him to actually spawn. Can it be changed to either 100 daemons then spawn regardless of time of day, or just consistently spawn at dusk, no street sweeping gray mobs required?
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Running around in Atlas Park getting for a feel of some of the new sets + testing out sybil robes, I can say that the Tesla Knights I encountered were definitely using their Lightning Field, so that's working
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8 minutes ago, Dispari said:
Nope, the new system forces at least one draw at the start of combat regardless of circumstances. Katana was even changed away from the version you're describing to this new one. This also removes the "no redraw" option from all sets.Okay, yeah, hopped on Brainstorm and it looks like no redraw was changed since the last time I played with it; if I'm not in combat stance, I'll have to bring out the sword the very first time even if the power is already in melee range. This is a downgrade for sets that had straight up No Redraw before, but still an upgrade for VEATs/Spines characters over the course of the total fight that didn't have the option before.
To be honest, I don't see this affecting steamroller teams, or even moderately paced teams much, since you'll basically be in combat the whole time and 1 draw at the very start is negligible, even if it is a slight downgrade. It takes a while for my character to go from in combat stance to out of combat stance (about 30s of standing around idle) before I have to do another redraw.
IDK. I totally get the complaints around this implementation, but I'm still overall for it, bc the sets that were suffering with forced redraw were SUFFERING.-
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3 hours ago, Dispari said:
Agreed with all that. This new system is... acceptable, but I'd rather it just worked like katana works on live and I don't see a good reason why it shouldn't.
The design intention of this change I believe IS to make all the weapons sets like Katana. Katana worked this way on live; drawing the weapon while out of combat/out of range but instantaneous in-combat + in range
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Messing around with texturing the set in the creator, it looks like Enfeebling Lullaby still has this bright white blast vfx even though I have the power textured completely red.
Additionally, Melodic Binding and Aria of Stasis' swirly notes will be pretty much white no matter what color I set them to (I do notice there is a slight hue difference to them, but they still look white).
Since I know these powers were reused from Talons Sirens and I'm not sure how the vfx works, is it possible to get a dark color tintable customization option, or is color tintable/light currently the only possible availability?
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2 hours ago, Wavicle said:
Does THIS change any player Mind Control, Illusions, or Fortunata powers that didn't already use two attack types?
Can't speak for Illusions or Fortunatas, but Mind Control per the patch notes is intended to ignore positionals by the devs, so that won't have been changed for players, either.
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6 hours ago, Cidri said:
AustinSmith wrote:
Final conclusion: the changes to Sonic (on a defender at least) make little difference in engaging general mob spawns or clearing through missions, however, the -Res has dropped noticeably enough that the DPA cannot compensate to the degree the -Res was worth before against harder targets such as a pylon, and through inference, an ArchVillain.It is true that a solo Blaster's or Defender's effectiveness is not much changed, a Defender is usually in a team environment. A reduction in the -Res dramatically changes how much the Defender contributes to the team. This should be compared to other Defender secondaries and the effect of their debuff component - for example, Dark Blast gives a significant -ToHit and thus contributes to the entire team's survival.
The test was not solo; this was a sonic defender paired with a blaster in all of my test cases. Yeah, a duo is the smallest "team" size and barely is equivalent to the example of a full 8 person team, but I need more testers to be able to contribute to better data on live + Brainstorm.
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@Myrmidon and I spent a couple hours on Excelsior and Brainstorm with a Beam/Energy blaster and a Kinetic/Sonic defender in a variety of content to determine how the -Res for defenders has been affected, and whether the DPA increase was enough to make up for the loss in utility.
In each test case, a macro was used to mark a time in local chat and signal for us to engage, and when the map was cleared (or the pylon was destroyed), a second macro was used to mark another time in local chat (or in the case of the pylon, the time shown on death). Identical builds were used between the two environments; no incarnates were used other than alpha, so no destinies, no hybrids, no judgments.
Firstly, we tested +4/x8 Council PI radio mishes just to test trash mob clearing:
Live Times (Old Sonic):
4 minutes 5 seconds
4 minutes 7 seconds
7 minutes 2 seconds11 minutes 11 seconds
9 minutes 56 seconds
Average Time: 7 minutes 16 seconds
Brainstorm Times (New Sonic):
6 minutes 40 seconds9 minutes 23 seconds
7 minutes 43 seconds
7 minutes 14 seconds
7 minutes 7 seconds
Average Time: 7 minutes 37 seconds
Given that mish maps can vary, and that the shortest times and longest times overall belong to live, I'm going to conclude there isn't enough evidence to conclude in terms of general mish sweeping, that defender Sonic has been negatively affected by these changes.Then we tested killing pylons in RWZ to see how higher damage with lower -Res vs lower damage with higher -Res fares in a duo environment (and here's where the numbers are more interesting:
Live Times (Old Sonic):
1 minute 38 seconds2 minutes 11 seconds
1 minute 37 seconds
Average Time: 1 minute 49 seconds
Brainstorm Times (New Sonic):2 minutes 18 seconds
2 minutes
2 minutes 1 second
Average Time: 2 minutes 6 seconds
None of the Brainstorm times were below 2 minutes (although one was right on the mark), whereas Live tended to beat the Open Beta times by around 17 seconds. I'd consider that a fairly substantial gap, it's not like radio mishes with varied maps and encounters, this is a pylon that is engaged practically the same way every time (as the blaster, I was doing my best to keep my attack chain identical between all tests).
Final conclusion: the changes to Sonic (on a defender at least) make little difference in engaging general mob spawns or clearing through missions, however, the -Res has dropped noticeably enough that the DPA cannot compensate to the degree the -Res was worth before against harder targets such as a pylon, and through inference, an ArchVillain.-
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2 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:
Malta:
Yes, I total see how those bosses got nastier! Gunslinger powers link.
I see that Explosive TIp, Incendiary Round, and Liquid Nitrogen Round are using non s/l defense.
Calling @Cobalt Arachne One of the Malta bosses, who was no walkover before, might have gotten too nice a buff from this change.
Actually, Incendiary Round and Liquid Nitrogen Round have always been using exclusively Fire and exclusively Cold typed defense. The only one that got changed is Explosive Tip, which went from lethal/smashing to fire only typed defense.
It's also worth noting that the Malta ARs do -Defense that squishies don't have DDR to mitigate, AND Gunslinger pistol attacks all have always had 2.0x base accuracy.-
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5 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:
I'm fairly confident that that at least would be only for the damage, not the knockdown effect. Could be wrong given some of the changes in this patch in the wrong direction, but i would imagine it's only for the damage. Considering the damage I would imagine is from them falling though, seems like that should be autohit as well given it's minor.
Can confirm after doing some data digging the patch is still autohit and it's only the damage that's flagged to require a tohit roll.
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2 hours ago, Mezmera said:
I was playing around with the Dom assault and saw the 7.5% -resistance but nowhere was it stated about the other portion which would be the 12% like the Defender value. Is there somewhere to find that out?
What you're referring to is Sonic Assault, the dominator set; this thread is for Sonic Attack, the blaster/corruptor/defender set.
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2 hours ago, kingsmidgens said:
Slightly increased damage numbers here or there doesn't really make up for you not being able to double/triple stack the -RES from a specific power which was the entire point of the set.
"Slightly" increased the damage? I don't think you get what damage scales translate to. 0.2 to 2.28 is a 1,140% damage increase. That is anything but slight.
Yeah, the -Res in the set took a hit, and to be honest it may have been overnerfed. IMO, the 12% debuff is the part that should stack and the 8% debuff should be the replace effect.
All in all though, this is a massive upgrade to the set, even if it doesn't play quite the same way it used to. -
2 hours ago, Zappalina said:
I would recommend that it be possible to get a 'flashback' version of this task force set up or ready to go in the Ourborous without the nictus elements to their attacks, to the villain groups in this task force.
Original ITF isn't going away or changing, you just don't set it to a challenge mode when you talk to Imperious
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Y'all are straight up ignoring the massive DPA buffs to the set, huh?
Screech alone is a MASSIVE damage buff; 0.2 damage scale all the way up to 2.28s.-
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2 hours ago, dom9630 said:
This still doesn't correct the issue mentioned above.
Why would I do a 1-star at all if I'm still going to get what I would have the first time by making it a 2 star?
Has in part to do with evaluating the power level of your team. Some teams compositions are simply not capable of completing 4-star mode for instance, if they don't have all their incarnates maxed or completed builds. The lower difficulties allow characters that aren't fully built to still have access to accruing rewards even if they can't handle the higher difficulties.
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1 hour ago, brattycommissar2 said:
drats, this is going to mess up my tommy gun beam rifle character i got going on by not having the munitions rifle replace the beam rifle-- any hope of having proliferation of ar to br skins? or will i just have to never touch my costumes again else i lose my weapon to something i don't want?
I believe there will eventually be plans to port models to BR; I just know there were some animations bugs that needed to be resolved first related to BR
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2 hours ago, Super Atom said:
because there's no reason to have it be this way really. I don't even care about a daily cap, but actively encouraging people not to join a low level TF while you can get a higher reward from the same TF but on a high difficulty should probably be avoided at all costs.
The only low level task forces that will even award Aether are the weekly strike targets. The only exclusive part is different hardmode difficulties within the same task force. You can do a 2 star ASF and then go right to 3 star ITF and get the full rewards from both.
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2 hours ago, Jaguaratron said:
Really happy to see the classic COT costumes, I dont mind updating but I loathe wiping out the previous.
The existing CoT mob costumes aren't getting changed, this is exclusively a costume reward for players. Same goes for the Rikti and Skulls.
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generic defeat Council missions from Lorenzo DiCosta contact in Skyway City; villains Archon Assunta and Archon Morricone are displayed in nav bar and in-mission as the enemy as "Archon Archon Assunta" and "Archon Archon Morricone"
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Saga of Lanaru (Faathim TF)
Pirates of the Skies (Mantis SF)
Praetorian Offensive (TinMage)
Faathim is my favorite TF in the game, full of diverse enemy groups, chock full of ArchVillains, set in the zone with the prettiest skybox, decent average length of an hour long, will never turn down a Faathim
Pirates of the Skies is a bit long as red tfs go, but again nice diversity of enemy groups, and every time I’ve done one of these with an RP villain group has been a standout enjoyable time
TinMage bc I suppose of Tinpex it’s slightly more interesting of the two with Malta and the culmination of four AVs? Idk, I find Lady Grey less memorable, and I dislike the concept of ITF even if has a reputation for good rewards
Focused Feedback: Regeneration Changes (All ATs)
in [Closed Beta] Focused Feedback
Posted
Spent some time testing Regeneration on Closed Beta vs Live, gonna provide some numbers, some in-action results, and overall feelings, while keeping in mind the primary goals for the set, specifically strength on SOs, leveling issues, click reliance and feast/famine feel.
All tests on Closed Beta and Open Beta/Live were made on a level 25 Claws/Regeneration scrapper, SOs only, insps allowed. Slotting is basically the same on live vs breakout, with the exception of some slot shuffling between Reconstruction, Dull Pain/Dismiss Pain, and Instant Healing, since IH became a toggle instead of a click, and Dismiss Pain an auto where Dull Pain is a click.
Important numbers:
Regeneration baseline Live:
14.54 HP/s
733.62 MaxHP
Regeneration Live (Dull Pain active):
22.57 HP/s
1138.57 MaxHP
Regeneration Live (Instant Healing active):
41.34 HP/s
733.6s MaxHP
Regeneration Live (Dull Pain + Instant Healing):
64.16 HP/s
1138.57 MaxHP
Regeneration baseline Breakout:
30.61 HP/s
976.59 MaxHP
So from a raw numbers perspective, since Dismiss Pain and Instant Healing are autos/toggles, there is zero variation to the level of MaxHP/regeneration I can have, I will always have survivability roughly comparable to Live - Dull Pain active, with slightly greater hit points regenerated per second, but slightly lower max hit points. So as a design goal, this successfully gets rid of the feast/famine feel, but ultimately sacrifices the highest possible performance for consistency. Let's see how that translates to actual gameplay.
I did a mix of running around Talos Island streetfighting, and doing radio missions. Multiple tiers of difficulty were tested until I could find the "ceiling" of difficulty at which the Live and Breakout versions of the sets could perform up to. As stated above, inspirations were allowed and used, but only from normal inspiration drops; no storing in emails or buying from the nurse in between hospital visits. All missions were tested an equal number of times on live/open beta as Breakout.
+0/x1 Live: 0 deaths
+0/x1 Breakout: 0 deaths
+1/x1 Live: 0 deaths
+1/x1 Breakout: 0 deaths
+0/x2 Live: 0 deaths
+0/x2 Breakout: 0 deaths
+1/x2 Live: 0 deaths
+1/x2 Breakout: 0 deaths
+0/x3 Live: 5 deaths
+0/x3 Breakout: 5 deaths
For whatever differences Regeneration has between Breakout and Live, it sure didn't change the performance of the set, for better or for worse. I was definitely hitting Reconstruction a lot at +1/x2 on both Breakout/Live, but ultimately was still able to survive on the skin of my teeth. I think the reason +0/x3 bumps up so hard is you start getting encounters with consistent, or duo bosses, which is definitely where I was going down the most. In any case, Regeneration doesn't really seem to be better or worse than it was before.
Ultimately, I think this rework is mostly a failure at solving most of the issues raised. It is exactly as survivable as it was before on SOs only, at midgame level. Numerically, it should be less feast/famine, but performance-wise, this doesn't actually translate to anything, as I'm still dying the same pre- and post-adjustments.
Numbers aside, just going off of set feeling; it just doesn't feel like Regeneration anymore. It feels like every armor set where you toggle on everything and have your one heal clickie for moments when you need it. I LIKED Regeneration because it was an involved set to play, it felt good to feast when you had everything lined up, and that gameplay feeling is lost now, for absolutely no compensation in terms of performance. I would much rather have Live Regeneration left as-is, than play this version of the set.