Llewellyn Blackwell

Not to derail but talking so much about MM and pets and minion power as much as has been in this thread brings up something rather obvious to me as one who plays a wide variety of online games. In Path of Exile especially, the power of the Minion skill gems can vary widely especially with build investment in a characters passive enhancement tree. But the important thing is that those minions are never under powered against the games mobs if they are build well. They also have their minions in far better categories, such as the short duration cannon fodder types that do tons of damage, but die quickly, or the Golems that are damn near unkillable, and will almost always still be alive when aoe damage kills off your character standing around like ok take 5 rock and cliff. And a whole lot of inbetween types to choose from and work with. They tend to be a popular although not top end build in every league there because while they wont break records they can be built fairly well with only moderate gear investments and the tree is flexible enough to make sure even new comers can stumble their way to passive support skills to buff their minions so they dont fall behind the content power curve. Here in CoH nothing we can do really makes our actual pets hold their own against a lvl 54 GM or AV without constant support from us, because those who outright admit they dont play and basically hate the passive game play of minion summoners feel its like playing with bots, and that botters should be punished. Yet we all are familiar with the power of some of the more limited consumable pets like the Shivan Shard and War Wolf, both of whom are EB level strong and will last quite well against no few AVs even if all you are doing is beating on the AV to. Give them even modest healing and they last till the timer runs down on them just about every time ime. The reality is the strongest pet of a MM should be on par with an EB at of +4 to the players own level. Over in Guild Wars 1 a game that was kin and peer in the NC soft mmo circle had the necormancers elite flesh golem manifest at levels higher then the necromancer themself, and that game made it very easy to have such a strong minion while still having plenty of personal power in your characters skill selection. Rangers there to had an equal level pet that if it was raised as a tank could take a hell of a beating against even the biggest and baddest bosses if given abit of support. Here though, you see it in every threat talking about minion power, those who dont and wont ever play MM do not want minions to be stronger then player characters, even though that is exactly what a minion masters minions should be. A fine tuned MMs pets should be stronger then a team of SO slotted heroes. It should take the fine tuning of sets to let a player be stronger then summons. Summoning should be a new player friendly easy entry AT that allows them to easily get into high end content safely and swiftly as in just about every other MMO I have played uses them as. Only here in CoH do they seem to be basically hated on and held back by such a vocal opposition.

While I obviously cant say for sure, I have always been under the impression Praetoria was pretty close to our timeline until hamidon took over the world and cole took over the left overs and humanity. It seems so in a lot of ways and Ive never felt odd drawing from even history from the 1920s and 30s as part of praetorian characters background in some way. I have a praetorian who quite literally cites the gift from his grandfather of the first appearance of Batman, and the mark of zorro starring tyrone powers alongside the figure of Francis Marion the Swamp Fox as sources of inspiration for the heroic identity he took on there to fight back against Cole's empire. I call him the Black Flying Fox and his SG/base is called the Swamp of the Fox. Now maybe I am way off and there was no american revolution even in praetoria for all I really know.

That only works if you want the incarnate powers to actually be forced onto us in game mechanics in a way that takes away player agency. Many of us RP not being actual incarnates and that power being a natural part of our characters. Being forcibly turned evil is the kind of heavy handed game mastering that made us loathe JE so damn much.

My best theory is the presence of Hamidon is enough to drive the nictus and those they fight off of that Earth. Though what I have often thought would be a great incarnate level threat on our Earth would be Nictus infused DE. Imagine what might happen if Hamidon ate enough Shadow Cysts for example. Or could even make DE out of their dark crystal material?

Lucky for us space themed outdoor bases are one of the easier things to make. just set it to space for the sky and turn the bunker base solid and cover it up with rocks to make an asteroid, and go from there.

What makes you think we dont already? Statesman was as bad as Zeus ever was imo quite literally based on the lore that contains his actions and choices. Meanwhile what makes you think Recluse has not clever come up with a way to gather the worst in the world and punish them endlessly as the ultimate Dom?

Not possible because... GIRLS GET IT DONE! with Statesman and the FP down, the gloves come off of Countess Crey, Vanessa gives in fully to Giovanna then and there and uses the souls of any and all in range to fuel a blast of overwhelming power, Finally a young Alexis Cole Duncan invokes the full might of the being Hera giving herself over in full, and becoming a dark super girl equivalent. They still stopped the Rikti, but the earth is now ruled by some of the most wicked women on the globe.

Then we would just of had another version of Tyrant.

My character who was a native of Paragon Heights would be a far happier character!

That we have not had a KU Dredd flick every year since that first one is a gawd damned crime to all humanity imo. And unlike Stalone, never took OFF THE HELMET!

First it is generally said to be one of the things about age of conan that has kept it alive at all and relevant in the MMO scene, being an adult rating is actually seen now as something companies may well have screwed up by not seeking to cater to during the golden age of MMO's. And saying this game is family friend is hilarious. The HC admin seem very lenient on people doing very graphic ERP in public chat channels and using the/e emote text function that the average text one sees in the D these days on everlasting would give a hustler editor a blush. And you ask these folks to keep it in private locations and tells and they act like you are assaulting them.

Oh I dont know, I think Xena Warrior Princess might feel differently what with it being he who had her crucified and her legs broken with mauls. Well his character anyways. Though maybe you are pro roman empire in your view of history.

Yep a certain blaster player who shall remain nameless was often praising how useful powers like PFF and Phase shift on a blaster could be as classic oh shit buttons, especially handy when things ike force of nature are on cd or when you get a bit of bad luck with something like drain psyche and are not regenerating at a rate almost on par with a regen scrapper. It also is an lotg mule which is nice. I have to be honest anyone who has to ask how to use such a power must be terrible at any game that requires tactical thought. Maybe try playing a game of chess every day against the computer at max dif setting. Might help sharpen up the ol strategy circuits and make you not need to ask such silly questions like what a force field that protects me from near all threat can be good for. If it worked as you foolishly seemed to think, it would be a most broken power indeed.

As someone who is his own personal Arch Nemesis, I concur that there seems to be a fair amount of that going on among the HC Devs and the META mindset types. HC would be far better served doing as you suggest and using in game messages and even polls in game rather than on these forums to garner vital player feedback. Every time I talk to a friend in Paragon about coming to these forums to add their voice to a topic, the response is a resounding hell no the kind of players who come to a games forums are always the worst of its population. Which is actually indeed the common view in most MMOs in game population about those who are active on the Forums of their game. Admitting I post on the forums tends to get me a why would you do that to yourself from most of my in game associates. That I find is one of the things a lot who think of themselves as vital forum posters never even think about the reality of, that in fact in mainstream MMO ingame communities Forumites have always been seen as a negative portion of the player community by the larger whole.

I am 100% behind this, I myself use self res powers purely as part of my RP concept builds, and it has always annoyed me that the game does not actually recognize and reward such build choices. I have seen a great many skip even raise other powers of late because so many seem to just hospital now days or just lay there dead piking because no one will raise. I was on a citadel run last night I joined as I saw a few old friends in it, and I was shocked to noticed my stalker using the day job raise ally power was the only one doing any ally rezzing. The tank trying to be on point ate dirt more then once and the entire party just left him behind, and I had to get him back on his feet every single time that happened during the hour run. Using powers to recover inside missions should be rewarded by no debt, and that is at the very least. avoiding travel time should not be the only reason we take them.

Nope as others point out the end cost of fly is high enough plenty of us do turn it off in a fight and just enjoy the fly speed boost on our hover from EM. taking speed from hover is a complete no go from me. The idea of the walk toggle or something like being added to it, I mean sure I guess, but I promise everyone here right now at least this ol berk will boot anyone from a TF who is actively choosing to not keep up with the pace I set as the leader. If folks can not play at speed, they likely should flower sniff solo, as has always been the rule of thumb for players in every single MMO I have ever played. Cant or wont keep up, play alone, dont ask others to slow down for you as that is genuinely rude.

Yeah right here that part you bold, that to me proves your entire position insanely unreasonable. You want a power just taken grant you a ton of passive protection, there is not one auto power in a defense set in the game that gives anything like that level of passive defense against KB and the like. Hover tanking is very powerful, and the ability to prevent being forcefully grounded also very powerful. You need to understand that being airborne is not some right you are promises to always enjoy having with no price paid. If anyone and anything is going to get a built in passive protection against -Fly it should be the Peace Bringer AT. They are the true king of the sky in CoH AT design as far as I am concerned and should always have advantages over other flyers of great significance.

How can I stating a few kin users I personally know, and stating I cant know with any certainty how common that pov is, be hyperbolic? And if you have never had anyone take issue with you not sticking with a team and contributing good for you, but frankly when I lead TFs if I notice someone is basically always a room behind the team, then they are off as I loathe pikers with a passion. BTW in gaming talking about ones ability to play a game or lack there of is not an insult. If my post was deemed insulting by forum admin they would have removed it by now. There is an ability to use the controls and navigate a game that is skill based, not everyone has these skills equally, and just because someone lacks them does not mean the game needs to be altered so they can play it more easily. Take a game I play off and on called Warframe. There the ability to move quickly when pugging is not remotely optional, the speed players can move there using parkour abilities is quite significant, and those lacking these skills basically have to play solo because it is them seen as greifers and harrassing the community by trying to play with those more capable. I myself am not especially skilled at the parkour and often play solo. When I choose to pug I use the frame called Titania because she alone possesses a unique ability to shrink down and fly at high speeds like The Wasp of marvel comics. She is my go to for pugging so I am not holding a team back or piking by being unable to keep up with them. I adapt my gear and play style to not hinder other players, not demand they slow down or the game slows them down or anything else. I adapt, I try to play better, or use the tools the game gives me to keep up with those better players. Being bad at a game and being called out for being bad at playing a game is not an insult except to the fragile of ego who need to think they are always a great game player.

So tapping in my memory of the long long ago in the way back, I suddenly recalled short lived MMO and one of its more unique charms. Some here may have played or heard of the Matrix MMO, and yes it had a hello kitty of a lot of issues. Yet it had one thing that I have seen basically never in MMO, that some of the conversation in this thread kept stirring up. And that was that it had a group of always online live in game GMs in the form of iconic characters from the films. These GMs basically acted as real time admin/NPC directors for events they could trigger. Think in CoH here the GMs being made in the image of the iconic heroes, and having in game hang out spots players could reliably find them at for advice and help. If we did have that kind of active in game team here, I think we could without a lot of other tweaking, and an understanding that some pvp can turn into out right grief and harassment even if it began as mutual fun and that the GMs would need to be ready and willing to stop if it was clearly causing a players play time to turn negative. Some fun things we might be able to see a GM do( total spit balling no idea if it can actually be done with the code) could be a GM having the power to turn a player into a war wolf, with all of its abilities and flagged as a mob. Some kind of random mind control confusion effect causing mass chaos etc. These kind of random unexpected every fight or flee type GM caused pvp chaos events could be a lot of fun for some at least. You see for me PVP should be about creating a more immersive game and player experience first and foremost. If it cant do that, if it cant feel like its part of a characters actual life in however it gets adjusted and adapted for the modern community here, then I at least wont likely be interested in it. And as I have said I am not some oh PVP is evil type of MMO gamer, I enjoy PVP when it feels like both sides have a real chance of killing the other. I rather prefer quick and dead scenerios and frankly feel it is the survival ATs that need the biggest nerf in PVP. I do not think a player should ever be able to tank another players damage in any meaningful way. But then again I am the guy who as a teenager played 007 Golden Eye on the N64 on 1 shot kill dif so I could not ever allow myself to be hit,and could never afford to miss that first shot with my PPK when i went around a corner and ducked and put a roung in my opponents head as their round flew over mine. Ultimately though due to the nature of ATs I really dont know if any form of real parity can be achieved. Trollers want to troll, tankers want to tank, and blasters will want to blast foes to ash in moments. And none of these 3 play styles interests tend to align well in PVP wants ime.

It was as a GM spoke to me in person about it. As it was explained, a player on a TF has invested their play time toward the end reward, Another player taking action that denies them that reward very much can be deemed causing that player a negative experience. Yes if a player is doing something actually against the rules, use the kick function if you do not wish to wait on a GM, that is literally its function. But there is a difference between a player playing as they wish, and actively doing something to negatively impact the play experience. I can even use an example back from live on this. Dr. Todd in the Moonfire TF. if a player for example was to without being asked, or asking stealth to todd and free her to then let her get killed before the party could arrive, can indeed count as griefing even though it does not prevent the end of the TF, it can deny the party the missions completion XP. That would be something you could and should boot over, and also report to admin for. I find it very odd some around here think behaving in a genuinely negative manner is somehow not that. It really is starting to make me wonder what kind of people are even taking part in the HC forums. Just today i saw people actively naming and shaming in general, and tried to intercede on behalf of the player to get it to stop, and ended up having to get a GM to come around to get it to, because most of the general chat seemed to think HC is some private playground they can do anything they want in and treat people however they like.

While this will be abit rambly if I may I will express my in my dreams changes to CoH including PVP which if I could just snap my fingers would be made balanced enough to be enjoyable. For starters I would want as close to a full open world experience as possible I would do away with war walls, letting the zone changes be the entire border of maps. This would be a must for the open world rp pvp pve I would love to see. The biggest issue is that it would have to come at the cost of our current power over pve content, not nerfed exactly but altered, as in far more mobs would need to be at least Elite boss level, and the way we con to mobs would all have to be done in the way we currently do with GMs. This would make even so called trash in the low levels offer some modest threat to players of opposing factions. Speaking of factions, this would become a new almost replacement for the alignment system, I would have players gain reputation with the various factions in game by working for or against them, with opposing factions making it impossible to be in both camps at once. This would impact safe areas and allied NPC critters and would come with instead of the old frankly uninspired alignment powers, summoned ally charges from the factions, which would be strong enough to be a threat to players, and help buff players against effects their given AT was weaker to. Basically we would do away with one on one PVP in the sense of making sure it would always have a bit of pve in it as well and this would be how we would equalize ATs by giving them ally summons to have their backs. We have talked about some kind of side kick summon pool for a while, and this too should be given consideration again, as one of the biggest issues a given player has in pvp is being alone and caught by a foe in an AT that negates their owns best abilities too well. On top of all this I would remove the pvp bonuses from the pvp IOs entirely, and just make them normal IO sets. As always we dont want too much major power gap, So we would need the game to recognize gear score and treat those who prey on the weak and helpless in a negative way to discourage it. This could be as simple as making it so any allied factions of those who get ganked start actively ambushing the ganker for days or even weeks of play time to force them to stay logged off or in hiding. I know I know crazy dreams.

You know, actually you should of just used that last part as your entire argument, because that bit actually works fine for me, and I am gonna steal it for the future just FYI. The fact is you are 100% spot on there, the HC team are all doing this as a labor of love, so its very doubtful unless it is some emergency all hands on deck issue, that they get to choose what they spend most of their time on with the HC project. So if there is one or hell if by some madness the whole HC team wants to spend time, little or a lot on PVP well that is their call. I mean worst case you get a few like in this thread saying they would stop donating if such a focus became the new thing.

So this is one of those posts that ends up showing me how a person playing badly( not calling you bad, but your clearly playing the game in a manner that holds you back mechanically) ends up wanting the game altered to account for their play style. A flyer be they ranged or melee should in a fight be using tab+f to target on and close with their target quickly with no energy or thought spent on wasd movement, so your focus can be entirely on powers and if need be inspirations. When moving fast in tunnels, the skilled zoom into first person mode and basically move like they are in a racing car game. I am not trying to insult you, but it is clear that the way you play and use the controls is the actual issue imo, not the game needing some adjustment. give people this option, and expect them to get left behind on teams of quick movers. Something we already have seen plenty of friction with in our community. Sometimes adding options will actually lead to conflict, and in this case I suspect it would more often then not. For example I know a few in game who main on Kin users, and they actively put on ignore anyone who uses Null to negate their speed boosting as they will not play with anyone who is a slow mover. While they are just a few personal accounts of this behavior, I do not imagine they are that unique. Cliques and in game factions are becoming the default more and more I am finding. Even i who used to lead pug tf's daily am far more prone to just solo now days as the community has fractured and fragmented into such conflicting attitudes.

Base stuff does not sound at all minor considering it was something even the live dev team shelved as not worth their time. HC has given us amazing outdoor base building for RP, and I am pretty sure I recall a year or two back on a thread like this, it was basically said by the HC team they would have to remove that entirely if they wanted to bring back base pvp raiding or end up bogged down in endless issues with bases bugging out As all of us know the outdoor bases do not have actual game frame work underneath like pathing for pets. Something I doubt could be changed without a hell of a lot of work. Granted I am far from some expert, but in my very very minimal experience with modding games, textures, layers,and the wire meshing game worlds need to function are not even close to a quick job. And as for balance tweaks, well again if lets be honest here maybe at best 1% of the HC community actively spends most of their time in pvp as I think i am frankly being generous to suggest that much of a%, it again sounds like asking dev energy to be spent for the benefit of a very small part of the community, one that lets be frank as is seen in threads like this, is not one even particularly liked or even wanted here by the larger community. Its not unique to this game at all btw. Go check out a modern popular game like Warframe, its PVP is also basically and always has been a dead bit of development, as once it was clear not enough took active part in it, it was seen as a major blunder and even cost people careers for the mistake of putting it into the game. Look I love a good PVP experience. I just dont think CoH ever can give one, and even trying to is a waste of time.

So rather then engage with anyone directly on such a topic prone to vitriol and conflict, I shall speak of the kinds of PVP experiences I have had across games that I enjoyed and why. Like many I have dabbled at times in MOBA style games, from fps to isometrics like LoL. So I can very much enjoy a pvp fight when i know both sides are basically evenly matched in raw power. I tend to not be as big a fan of shooters that use ranked gear in pvp to let the grinders have a mechanical advantage. This is why in MMO I rarely do PVP with a few exceptions. Exception 1. Guild Wars 1: The classic born of NC soft not long after CoH was, a common game many of us on live had an account on and would go to when needing a break from coh. While that game was built to be a pvp game its expansive rich story campaigns thick with actual strategic challenge has kept it an active game and community all these years along side its amazing PVP system. Because gear in GW does not have a wide margin for its power, even if you are a casual using a sword with only a 18% sunder and +20 health rather than a perfect and pricey 20% sunder and +30 health, as you can see the numbers are so small, the advantage is also very small, and most of a player and their character's ability to win in pvp will be born of the skill choices on their bar and their ability to use them actively and react with them in a strategic way. I rate random arena 4 on 4 GW pvp as some of the best and most enjoyable casual pvp in MMOdom. I still after all these years pop on a few times a month to jump in the random arena with one of my flavor character builds and still manage to give a decent accounting of myself unless I have the bad luck to cross paths with some korean pro. Seriously do not fuck around with Koreans in GW, they will eat your soul. Exception 2( with circumstantial reasons) Age of Conan, the mmo when it launched I joined an open world pve/pvp RP server, and you know what? It was amazing. No characters with stupid names, and at this time no actual rewards for pvp, and gear balance much more like GW so even BIS gear was not much stronger then more common stuff. In the first few months after launch the games open world pvp was almost as perfect as I have ever seen. Players treated each other exactly like we treated any other NPC in the wild. We all would stalk in stealth mode, all be wary when we approached locations in the world that tended to attract a lot of traffic outside of the 3 safe city hubs. And yes we used in game racism to help faction off in general. A barbarian from cimmeria would always back another against some demonic scum bag from Stygia. When you wandered in Stygia as an Aquilonian you would actually want to put on desert garb to hide your fair hair and skin or risk being stalked and attacked by every black hearted stygian. But to do all that turned out to take a fairly active GM team, that as the game waned and it lost funding, the GMs for the RP server got the axe first. It was until that time about as close to being on an MMO with a team of active GMs akin to having a living dungeon master, doing their best to keep things immersive and fun for all on the server. There was even a famous multi gaming MMO called Invictus on the server that Role Played as a active form of peace keeper, traveling in force to areas under strife due to chaotic player on player behavior and force order back into the region at sword point. It was all very good fun really and felt much as you might imagine living in the world of Conan. I did have fun now and then on Champions online pvp in its first year before they made many changes to the game in general that made it not worth playing at all. It wasnt great but it was fast paced and good fun action. IMO a game like COH just does not really lend itself to pvp in large part because of its old school design. sticking when using powers, longer cool downs, and wide range of power in builds. Unless any AT has a real fair chance one on one with every other AT, then pvp in coh cant really work. And we know that is just not possible due to the nature of power sets and arch type design. Trollers do not want to even see a set with a CC protection like scrappers etc all have. Melee non flyers do not want to ever see a flying blaster with a max range snipe etc etc. So frankly I would say any bit of HC dev energy spent on PVP for HC when I suspect the number of players who spend the majority of their game time in pvp are in a very very small minority would be a terrible waste.