Llewellyn Blackwell

I do get what your saying but the fact is game devs rarely cater to extreme niche issues. Hell even wide spread things like color blindness are generally not taken into account, and can be a truly crippling factor in gaming. A good example is in the game Warframe. A character in it Valkyr, maybe among the strongest frontline frames to choose from, to employ her literal invincible mode and super damage claws, gets a red tint added to the screen that is bad enough Ive known a few players who due to their red/green color blind issues, have their screen become impossible to make out anything on and thus can not use valkyr no matter how they tweak their visual settings. The answer from the company when asked if they could allow the tint shade to be changed was nope sorry, that is the red of rage, dont like how it works dont use the ability or the frame. And no few players sided with this choice, saying that any dev energy from any department was better spent on anything the majority of players would benefit from. Then there is the even meaner dev response. Over on DDO the blind spell actually blinds you as in blacks out your screen, this used to be perma until a remove blindness spell or potion was used to negate it, now it has a few min duration but still when your hit with it, and cant cure it, your only choice is to sit tight or stumble into a deadly trap or group blind. There is even darkness enough in that dungeon that there used to be a spell favored by players to act as a light source, those who didnt have access to the spell complained about the unjust advantage such players had, so they removed the light source aspect from the spell, making everyone have to stumble around in the dark rather than make something like a lantern or torch that everyone could use. Visual challenges are valid challenges, and while it sucks some with issues related to vision cant always play them without suffering, its not fair to the majority to take away or dumb down game play to cater to a minor niche population. Now while I doubt it would be any less work, what I wouldnt oppose is things like signs added in missions that made sense, like tunnel a1, junction B etc added to help highlight the branches and entrances better without a massive change to tunnel scale or visual appearance. Heck even mall like maps like you are here would be more of a in game approach Id approve of. But trying to beat content mastery challenges on the forums is something Ive always had issue with in MMO forums.

Now I am naught but a simple lad born in the U.S. of ol A. And even I know that the red menace was a product of fear mongering by politicians. Yes we understand that Stalin did some terrible things and killed more of his own people then both world wars combined. However and this is the part that will confuse most of my fellow citizens, in Russia then and now, That symbol is not seen in the way we see the confederate flag here in the U.S. The Stalin era is still held up by many as Russias last golden age. Many still tattoo his face on their bodies there. Basically your seeing it as bad because of the whole cold war rivalry thing. For many there it is as much a symbol of their national pride to a degree most putting the stars and stripes on their bumpers here could not even begin to imagine. And this may blow your mind further but the hammer and sickles meaning as a symbol has never changed, it is meant to represent the union, the natural need for the peasant or farming/ranching caste and the factory workers or to put it in more modern terms the urban manufacturing caste. That a society is built upon these 2 factions. That the wealthy elite that do not build, nor grow that which we live in or eat are not actually useful or needed by society, and should not be the ones to govern the people. The wall came down in 89, and the war was cold before that for decades. Let go of the red hate already.

Seeing as Ive posted previously and made my reasons clear in the very post you snipped a line from to quote, methinks its not me not reading others posts. Call it an annoyance all you want, it does not change the very real fact it counts as challenge in the form of content mastery, which is very valid game design. That alone is enough to justify it being left as is rather than letting that challenge be perma beaten here on the forums by dumbing it down or removing it out right.

Yeah they do seem to keep on the low key side of things, only stumbled upon them because I have a human form PB and that is part of their RP theme, which they seem to use just enough of the in game lore to basically defend their existence and even be tolerated. They basically borrow from the council/5th column and CoT. Wear white colored outfits they claim are based on the old robe wearing CoT mobs( their sg name without naming/shaming uses the word white, and a specific flower, and plant in the name. I mean I guess with 2 nazi factions in game it shouldnt surprise me, and almost be expected at this point that some who want to get away with acting like nazi will base their characters on the nazi and body snatching demon cult. Still when you see them all hooded up out in Perez Parks more remote regions it kinda makes you wish for open world pvp.

You have yet to provide a valid reason why content mastery based challenge should be removed imo. Any content that the meta is to memorize lay out, spawn locations, etc qualifies as this form of gaming challenge. How many times did you have to play that map before it was just a minor annoyance? Maybe you have a photographic memory and took just one time, but most it took no few to master that room. That is valid game design, one that yes annoys some gamers who do not like having to learn, and find the inherent speed bump such design represents to mass murder clear speed an intolerable thing to ever encounter most typically.

Ill be honest Id actually love to see variants on the cosmetic rocket boots, rocket packs, and wings that also acted as temp flight powers we could charge up. I mean I get that some hate em but they are a decent inf sink and we need more of those not less.

After pondering this one and wanting to approach it without having to bring in RL pollywog tongue waggin here is my 2 inf on the top hat here. Statesman for good and bad is the old school golden age era icon of this games multiverse. And he does not wear any direct symbol denoting his fealty to any nation, and in fact its far more the other way as Statesmans word was basically law to all the civilized nations of Earth more or less. This was by no accident and went hand in hand with J.E.s pov on the subject of supermen like beings ( let me put it this way he likely loves the DCU movies and the ego trip that is superman in them). This is why Statesman garbs himself in the colors of the leader of the free world, but is not beholden to it. States really is only a few years behind Emperor Cole, or one major world wrecking disaster from the deep end when he thankfully bites the big one. Ironically ol Wade may have saved the world a far greater threat in the long run. As such I think it far more fitting with the game setting to not have heroes wear actual flags. I think Heroes considering themselves first and foremost servants of any faction political, religious, cultural rather than a hero to all that chooses to wear colors or bear a name that denotes their faction of origin is more then enough. Someone in this thread I saw who seemed unhappy with the lack of flags showed a screenie of their outfit that imo was actually quite a good homage to the flag they wanted while keeping far more akin to statesmans own design. So yeah Id have to say its best to keep such things to a client side visual mod, so people can look like walking political propaganda if they want without bothering anyone else. Its bad enough there is an actual KKK rpsg on everlasting in full on white hoods/robes with torches.

Aiming? WTF is aiming? I use a mixture of telekinesis to guide my rounds and psychic ability to know where my target will moving to so I just have to fire where they will be going or at least in that general direction. Then there are the tech types with self guiding smart bullets. Aiming is what non hero cops and soldiers who do not rate at the same level of ability as Meta's rate. Aiming is for those detectives we help out.

We really just need a side arm pool with 5 good single pistol attacks. So that those who want a sidearm for short to medium range can have it no matter what super power themes we want via primary/2ndary.

No one is saying remove the current animations. So even if you like the current ones, having at least 1 alt animation set for every set seems like something all players should be able to side with.

While I cnt say for certain, I do seem to recall a few early conversations here last year around this time, asking about the idea of updating all city zones like AP got face lifted back on live, as well as fleshing out Khallsiti wharf, and the HC team seemed to express that npc placement/spawns/behavior, and map creation and alteration was some of the most difficult work they could begin to undertake and for their small team would demand basically all their time for quite a while to come if that was to become their focus. AE p building is basically just connecting tile sets( anyone who place pen and paper D&D is likely familiar with the pre made boxes of dungeon tiles you can buy), and to me I think that is what is causing this disconnect for some here. They see AE and how we just pick a map for a mish in it, and think hm well thats easy I could create a hundred new missions a day like this. But being the artist that creates those dungeon tiles is a whole different level then the DM who uses them even if creatively to create a random dungeon for his players game session. And again its not even the work for me thats the reason not to. I do not consider maps that confuse and disorient players some annoyance to remove, but a challenge that should if anything be the standard for new maps going forward. I was one of those that never used some map ui overlay to cheat my way through the maze of the perez park forest. You see in gaming there is a type of gaming skill referred to as content mastery. It dates back to the original days of video games like the first Mario Brothers. Remember how to reach the final boss you had to take a very specific path on each screen and if you didnt ever stop to think, who could run on until time ran out. Learning the ins and outs of a room like the pancake room isnt all that hard. Yes as someone who has hover on the majority of his characters its challenge is heavily negated, and that is as it should be. If terrain never made slow hover the optimal solution few would ever bother with it. Since citadel is a regular TF for my namesake to lead folks through, ran it countless times on live and likely a few hundred now on HC. Its a a favored daily for me. All I can say is you want to stop being challenged by content, master said content. But beating the challenge by demanding it removed or lessened on the forums, well yeah nope, fact is folks like that have a pretty derogatory term for them on most other MMO forums, and is one of the few Ive never seen forum moderators remove or infract for using because such gamers who QQ for the game being easier in any way so they dont have to use their ol grey matter are not held up in very high regard by the gaming community in general. Now do I not get were players are coming from here? No, because I really do. Im 40 years old now, my eyes and twitch reflexes are not what they once were. I enjoy a game galled Warframe, it is very fast paced, and not being able to keep up with the younger gamers can lead to real issues. To that end one of my favorite frames in that game is Titania. her main ability is to turn into a small flying fairy form. Between her flight speed and small size turning every tight tunnel into a canyon I am able to keep up and even out run plenty of the parkour speed running younglings on that game. I had tried other speedy and stealthy frames as well, all to find ways to compensate for my lack rather than demand the tight tunnels made wider, or the long maps made shorter. When I want to play slower frames I solo or only play with RL friends so as to not impact puggles with my slow pokery.

Well since you are gonna bring me into this whole rambling tirade of yours. Hard no vote on changing the cave maps. Adding new ones to the rotation sure, but I am a firm fan of things like the hated cake room, water storage council room, and in general the designs of all the current cave tile sets. Hell I can pretty much consider council cells my 2nd home after all these years. The entire burden of any suggestion to change or add is on the onus of the idea man. When others do not like or agree with your idea, digging in your heals, sticking your fingers in your ears, and yelling at the sky for the answer you want to hear from the source on high that likely has little interest in wasting their precious time getting drawn into your mad little world should tell you all you need to know about the value your idea holds to people at large.

Thanks for reminding me why your on ignore, My reply is aimed at, and obviously so, their saying brutes are somehow unfairly screwed over. Yes the larger topic is IO sets and their bonuses, but their post seems to imply that the Brute, due to their high dmg res cap, should be entitled to maxing those, and that IO dmg res bonuses should be higher to help them achieve that. Someone here is certainly being willfully obtuse but it isnt I methinks.

Hm interesting first post. what kind of group are you looking for? Role players, meta gamers, casuals, raiders, etc. I run a casual RPSG( as in sometimes we do take weeks or months off no biggie to us) The Midnight Club has a few rules like no shaming or dissing each other over costumes, kinks, etc. I think most SGs likely have that kind of basic rule hopefully. IMO most folks are pretty good natured in CoH, cept like a few specific RPSGs on everlasting that wear their politics openly and seem to live to use so called RP to harass others.

USe email for only emergency in map resupply, use /ah for a stash to resupply in between maps. I also want to say frankly, while the above has long been around, I do see this as far far more impacting to the game than the /base teleport command. Outside of cheating death on a master run, such only impacts the speed of our travel around the city. Being able to store extra insps in email and /ah to instant access its storage anywhere in the game world actually gives us extra power in combat. Personally I think anyone saying /base tp is game breaking, while never mentioning the above is not really being honest about which actually impacts the games balance worse.

Im afraid you have that backwards. Those who know how to make consumables work to negate challenge are the better strategists and players. What your referring to is typically seen as overpowering content usually by grinding out extra levels in random encounters. A very common approach on virtually all JRPGs( and the source of 1 character challenges in such games meant for groups) Batman is literally the best at what he does because he uses consumables liberally to negate the advantages of large groups, and meta beings. Example, classic Neverwinter nights by BioWare. Based on the D20 rules system I naturally excelled at that game as I know that set of rules from a wide range of D20 based PnP systems . Even at max dif I tear through the game, because I will leverage buff pots in a smart manner. Early example a fight with a little brain on legs called a thought devourer. Ive seen this fight wreck so many friends Ive watched play the game over the years. Yet one protection from evil potion, which makes you immune to charm and other such effects by evil creatures completely takes the fangs from the fight because he cant charm you or your companions to turn on each other, and in a pure beatdown the poor thing has no chance. Even here in CoH, those who keep up the use of reds for example will drastically out dps those who dont bother eating them constantly over the course of any mission. I myself always keep a stock of super insp in AH storage so that I can just /ah before a fresh map to reload if I need to. And will constantly eat insps even if not needed as I mass murder just to keep my tray having space for more. Hell its why I and no few I know have returned to classic street sweeping rather than farming AE. a blaster that can eat all the reds he wants to and keep his dmg buff at cap does levels of dmg blasters normally only dish out on raid teams.

If your facing such tough odds, you likely should be using more tactical thought in where you engage your foes. For example in offices try to pull enemies up to ledges so should you be overwhelmed and downed, they wander away and your in a nice safe secure location. Likewise, in a team. a power like recall friend is very useful for getting a downed ally out of harms way. An insp after all shouldnt be better then the self rezzes in powers like Regen. Which takes timing, and MoG being used right as you activate to have any real chance of just getting right up in the middle of a fight and keep going.

Uhm brutes do dmg on an entirely different magnitude than tankers. Those caps are not something a build solo is entitled to reach just because. Defense in general as an all or nothing mechanic and via set bonuses is far less impactful on the game, since without debuff resistance soft defense fails rapidly were as even debuffed dmg res still mitigates some dmg. A brute is not screwed just because they cant cap a resistance. No more than people using soft defense are screwed because they dont have debuff resistance. To protect oneself from debuffing with soft def, if I recall a thread from lives years ago by a major number cruncher there, one would need to keep their def values at least into the 60%is range, and ideally more like 70% so that when attacks slip through with debuffs there is still enough over def to keep the mitigation high enough to counter act the debuff spiral. Hell its why even a pure def set like SR is well advised to shoot for as much def as possible so should they get caught up in a mass mob with tons of debuffs flying, it simply cant beat the def down fast enough.

Uhm what your talking about is as old as RPGs. In good old D&D on the table top with the dice. A wizard brings down a meteor swarm upon the village your trying to protect. A few make their reflex saves and while not moving an inch will take half dmg( or none if a rogue type with improved evasion) Those who do take the mixture of physical dmg and fire dmg, may well due to magical protections entirely negate the fire dmg, but there are very few means to entirely negate the physical dmg as completely as physical DR spells tend to top out around 30, while elemental immunity can be granted by magic spells and items. I mean they are games, they use mechanics, the mechanics are not always perfect for every possible encounter but thats what imagination is for. We have different damage types, we build to endure them based on our core AT and power sets best we can. None of us are entitled to reach certain levels of resistance or defense unless those numbers are part of our core power sets. Slashing and lethal are basically mundane dmg types, physical type dmg is typically seen as such in all RPGs. Hence why its typically on different scales and magnitudes than magical energy damage types. Hell want to know something really crazy, according to a response from the developers for D&D in an issue of Dragon years ago, they stated a magical source of flame burns at 1000 degrees per D6 of dmg dice, meaning a 10D6 fire ball burns at 10,000 degrees, hotter than the sun. Yet heat that should vaporize iron can be simply evaded by a highly skilled rogue,ranger, or monk when just having that heat with in any distance of you would be enough to burn you to nothingness. Like I said they are games first. trying to add logic to why a character can survive constant energy attacks especially on characters who are not superman will just make you start going HM batman should tear his shoulder out of his socket every time he uses his grapnel to stop himself after falling 20 stories.

Real challenge? Real Team mechanics? You seem to somehow be unaware how during its original official life CoH was routinely the most positively spoken of across MMO review sites, That CoH had a legendary retention rate for players unrivaled in MMOdom, and the primary reason being how easy it was to just team with people thanks to the side kick/ explar system. And yes a great many commented on how smartly CoHs tab targeting was compared to many other MMO then, and frankly most MMO made in the last 10 years are made to be cross platform app mmo so um yeah by their very nature they are more somple. For example CoHs tab target is very good at targeting the nearest foe first but cycles through those in range pretty well, I myself use a mix of tab and point click as needed. Compared to say DDO an mmo that has been going on like 15 or 16 years now, and still has one of the worst tab target systems in MMOdom, and suffers from extremely sensitive facing, so if your turned even a little bit too far in a direction your attacks and spells will whiff right by foes. Yet DDO players will state the same "FAACTS" as you do, that their MMO has the best combat system in any game ever and nothing else could ever rival it. Its actually very dull and repetitive hack and slash so actually only at best unique in MMOdom but not best. Now for a fun combat simulator game, Id say Playing Mount and Blade online pvp is about the "Best" from the perspective of needing real time skill and understanding the underlying mechanics of each weapons speed,reach, etc. Its got a simple to learn but truly difficult to master kind of control system for melee fighting I highly rec all pick up a copy of old mount and blade warband when it is on sale on steam to mess around with. Among modern online games Id personally hold up Warframe as the standard. In part because it is a true FTP title that boast some damn fine graphics, and incredibly fluid gameplay. Its basically a looter/shooter and hack and slash sci game in a 3d environment, not so much a real RPG though. Still if you want to reall appreciate the difference between characters with various super powers Warframe isa hell of a lotta fun. Became a game I mained after the end of coh on live because it gave me the best super power fix of any game option. And even now Im actively playing it during its events more than CoH here just because it is a very addictive in a fun way game loop. Finally if you dont play here anymore, why are you even posting? I mean there are other CoH servers, make your own private server as an option now. The community here isnt a bunch of nerf herders, every nerf suggestion gets plenty of push back. There have been plenty of buffs to things that needed them. And the HC team seems wise enough to go slow on such changes and use metrics and data more than players rambling on the forums to guide their ultimate actions which I think a good thing. So really if you indeed have left HC, then frankly I think thats best for you and all of us here. While your at it could you delete this forums web page from your favorites and stop acting like a cyber stalker?

Necro much?

No we just all have a very different PoV and your stating a very personal opinion as if its some fact. A great many people enjoy the pace and approach CoH takes for combat myself among them. Is it the only kind of game I play? Ofcourse not, I play different games for different gaming itches. If I want fast paced hack and slash game play I go to Path of Exile or Warframe. If I want a tactical challenge I play something like Silent Storm 2, If I want a good non turn based RPG I play CoH. Because its approach is just slow enough it takes only abit of active attention, but is fast enough I cant just tab and hit a attack chain macro while net flixing. I mean I probably could, but since I actually enjoy the game play I dont.

Guys guys guys how do you not see the brilliant security features inherent in the design. The single story elevators help reduce the risk to people should the elevators be knocked out by a super powered battle going on outside, one large emp burst could easily send nearby elevators offline, and one could explosion or impact to the building could cause it to start falling. Consider the design from the perspective of a lone hero trying to defend the building from invasion. Many good choke points that a lone hero could hold the line at while waiting for back up. After that very issue costing many lone heroes lives during the rikti invasion, Such as Nebula who fell in Perez park cut off and alone with no good place to rally the civvies to and set up a defensive position, that noble young hero gave her life fighting out in the wide open as people scattered in every direction. If anything this brings up a much needed thing, armored shelters for civvies in every zone! Crey got a hold of rikti teleport and phasing tech back in 03. Its very likely by now they have fine tuned that tech and seeing as they basically own nearly every business on Earth via front companies and mind control via the countess, it stands to reason valued employees have access to something like mediport and emergency phase devices like the temp power we can use. Likely why we actually see so few people in said offices when we go in to clear out the baddies. Speaking of crey it would actually be pretty cool to see Paragon Protectors actually well protect as they do in the Lore about them during the rikti war. I bet it would make it far easier to swallow the whole crey manages to keep a good face on the company for the world if their trade marked blue and gold meta soldiers popped up doing good things for PR. Maybe even stop having them be outdoor baddies at all and instead use them like cops around the prison in BR and even out fighting the other vil vactions( keep them as baddies for indoor mishes obviously So really when you think about it the design of offices make sense in cohverse.

You do understand that its not an early teir pool attack right? that it should be roughly on par with something like the attack added to the end of the jump pool. And even then you can make bloody brawl hit harder if one wanted to slot it actually. I mean is that ever ok, for a power we spend a pick on to be inferior to brawl?

Again, considering we have a very small volunteer team, do you think a set that is basically not adding anything truly new as far as actual in game power effects since you seem to basically want to just take the best attacks from BR, and give more to this theoretical set, that I say again would require all new animations which would likely be a lengthy bit of time at the least to make happen even if they can do it. Why should hand beams be the sole focus of whoever is doing that work for this team if any are, for likely months? Id personally much rather see a true throwing primary ranged set added. Your inability to be happy with any of the current unarmed energy projection options sounds a lot more like a you problem then a city of heroes player in general problem, Because at this point it sounds more like a lack of imagination and unwillingness to work with the many many energy projector sets out there.