What fundamental structures, assumptions, etc should be reconsidered for CoX?

[DougGraves]

44 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Well, @DougGraves, one of the issues is the amount of players who think +4/X8 is somehow a "default" and get annoyed if you don't want to do that. 

 

That has a simple solution.  Those players just want max rewards.  So make the rewards the same for +0/x1 and +4/x8 and people will not care about being +4/x8 anymore

[Turric]

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?  Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

 

Should the game require you to go to contacts to get missions at all?  Should you just select them from a contact list and use a cellphone from the start?

 

Should you have to go to a trainer to train?

 

It already exists for Long Range Teleport to travel to all zones. Every single one of my toons can easily hop between red, blue and gold side without issue. I do not have an issue with this. Ease of travel is not a huge deal for a person doing content for the first time. But do it 40 times on different toons and it quickly becomes a must have. I am a big fan of the LR teleport changes they did in Issue 27.

 

Having run the Revenant Hero arc many, many times in the past 2 weeks, I would absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE to just call contacts on a cell phone. I would be ok with meeting them the very first time (which is how many, but not all, work). Perhaps they want to size you up face to face. But thereafter, yeah, cellphone calls please.

 

I am ambivalent about the trainer. I like the routine of it, but also feel that if it were abolished, I would not care much either.

 

[Turric]

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?  Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

 

Should the game require you to go to contacts to get missions at all?  Should you just select them from a contact list and use a cellphone from the start?

 

Should you have to go to a trainer to train?

 

It already exists for Long Range Teleport to travel to all zones. Every single one of my toons can easily hop between red, blue and gold side without issue. I do not have an issue with this. Ease of travel is not a huge deal for a person doing content for the first time. But do it 40 times on different toons and it quickly becomes a must have. I am a big fan of the LR teleport changes they did in Issue 27.

 

Having run the Revenant Hero arc many, many times in the past 2 weeks, I would absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE to just call contacts on a cell phone. I would be ok with meeting them the very first time (which is how many, but not all, work). Perhaps they want to size you up face to face. But thereafter, yeah, cellphone calls please.

 

I am ambivalent about the trainer. I like the routine of it, but also feel that if it were abolished, I would not care much either.

 

[Turric]

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?  Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

 

Should the game require you to go to contacts to get missions at all?  Should you just select them from a contact list and use a cellphone from the start?

 

Should you have to go to a trainer to train?

 

It already exists for Long Range Teleport to travel to all zones. Every single one of my toons can easily hop between red, blue and gold side without issue. I do not have an issue with this. Ease of travel is not a huge deal for a person doing content for the first time. But do it 40 times on different toons and it quickly becomes a must have. I am a big fan of the LR teleport changes they did in Issue 27.

 

Having run the Revenant Hero arc many, many times in the past 2 weeks, I would absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE to just call contacts on a cell phone. I would be ok with meeting them the very first time (which is how many, but not all, work). Perhaps they want to size you up face to face. But thereafter, yeah, cellphone calls please.

 

I am ambivalent about the trainer. I like the routine of it, but also feel that if it were abolished, I would not care much either.

 

[Turric]

Stupid triple post

[Gulbasaur]

/e stands on his soapbox and clears his throat.

 

The HC/SCORE devs made IOs much too cheap and this has caused a power bloat. I'm a bit torn about this because it really does make building a character more complex and more interesting, but also +4x8 should be a challenge, not the default for some archetypes.

 

Defence is too easy to stack from IOs. Blasters shouldn't be able to hit tanker numbers. Yes, I know that DDR is a thing but game mechanics are part of the game.

 

Global recharge should never have been a concept. The OG devs said that Hasten was too powerful and now everyone and their cow is rocking around with global recharge that makes Hasten look mild.

 

Mez duration should have been shorter to start with (with cooldowns shorter to compensate), suppressed toggles to start with and mez protection should never have been a thing. I'd rather see lots of short mezzes than 8-second gamestoppers.

 

Brutes need to go down a threat level to be parallel to scrappers, not tankers. Their inherent rewards bad tanking practices by providing a damage buff for jumping into a big group regardless of what the rest of your team is doing.

Mastermind pets should be sturdier and have a higher threat rating so they actually hold aggro. I read something around the CoV beta that masterminds were the counterpart to tankers, throwing their minions in to hold aggro. In actual gameplay, pets are mostly backline DPS.

 

Tanks should have to have a special tutorial titled "Line of Sight and the use of Corners: an idiot's guide to pulling". Appalling tanking is as much a problem as immobilisation spamming.

 

The aggro cap should have been in from beta. The "hundred enemies in a dumpster" tanking was never a good idea.

 

The aggro calculation is bizarre - taunt duration should not be one of the overriding stats. Taunt magnitude should be more relevant. It would enable things like very strong but very short taunts where you could effectively take over as an off-tank temporarily.

 

-Res and -DMG powers should be able to have that aspect enhanced, but I realise both stats are applied in bizarre ways. Some set bonuses would be nice.

 

Kheldians struggle to find a place in the current meta - they had a good place in the pre-IO game but the "blasters now have tanker defences" issue means that they are sort of sentinels with a slot problem. They're really fun so I'd love it if they need a bit of dev focus. The VEATs, conversely, are possibly slightly on the strong side.

 

Edit I thought of more

 

I liked having to unlock capes and auras. They made them feel like a rite of passage. I realise it's a bit of a "carry on where you left off" thing for a lot of players, so having them available is nice but also changes the meaning of them.... If they were an account unlock or something, that would be cool.

 

We should have to actually go to the auction house to use the auction house. Using /ah is too much of a cheat code.

 

Likewise, alignment changes with Null the Gull. It would be nice if that was an account unlock or something like the HEATs and VEATs were.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Gulbasaur

[Snarky]

nerf regen

[Snarky]

3 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Brutes need to go down a threat level to be parallel to scrappers, not tankers. Their inherent rewards bad tanking practices by providing a damage buff for jumping into a big group regardless of what the rest of your team is doing.

 

giggling madly.  roflmao.  no, wait, let me catch my breath.    nope, here it comes again roflmao.

 

*a few minutes later

 

so....  Yoou would change Brutes because you do not like the evolution of ROFLSTOMP leapfrog tactics and prefer the staid, orderly, Tank, Taunt, Gather, Kill.  AND people that thrive and enjoy cannonballing mobs and ROFLSTOMP tactics are 'bad' players?

 

Oh gawd, here it comes again.   rofl.   o no, roflmao

[Gulbasaur]

33 minutes ago, Snarky said:

people that thrive and enjoy cannonballing mobs and ROFLSTOMP tactics are 'bad' players?

 

I said bad tanks, not bad players.

 

Brutes are fun, but it's easy for forget that sidekicked up teammates probably can't cope with the two +4 bosses you left behind after jumping into a new group causing the aggro cap to overflow.

[First Player]

Free costume changes.

[DougGraves]

23 minutes ago, First Player said:

Free costume changes.

 

are you for or against?

[blue4333]

Costume clipping should not be an issue in providing us with new costume pieces. People already make jumbled messes so why limit creativity in the first place?

[oedipus_tex]

Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes should be more vulnerable to Sleep, Stun and Hold. The armor sets should be re-combed through, with some armor toggles set to not stop functioning during mezz so they don't get totally wrecked if a mezz does land. They could also possibly pop their T9 to break out of mezz. No more all-the-time Mag 10 mezz protection and immunity to everything being the standard for these classes. 

 

All the other classes and their relationship with mezz should be renegotiated from there. Tankers should be demonstrably better at handling mezz than other classes.

Edited April 5, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[DougGraves]

34 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes should be more vulnerable to Sleep, Stun and Hold.

 

I could see having them reduce the time they are held instead of just ignoring being held.  It would make the cc more of a feature of the game and not just something to be built to ignore.

[First Player]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

 

are you for or against?

Definitely for

[Heraclea]

At the risk of being mildly political, the 'war on drugs' has not aged well and will not be remembered fondly by history.  I would consider replacing all of the 2004 drug-warrior references with some different kind of hazard involving alien weapons and the like.  Make it clear that Superadine is some kind of bodybuilding hormone rather than a simple stimulant. 

[Darmian]

A Longbow version of VEATs.  Yes, WS & PB are HEATs, but they're NOT equivalent.  So obviously that would mean, I dunno, a Nictus arc on Redside allowing WS & PB to start there?  It's an assumption on my part of course that that would be simpler (ha!) than creating a new Kheld equivalent whole cloth.

 

Yeah, I know lots of people don't like Longbow.  Lots of people also don't like Arachnos.  Whatever. 

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

At the risk of being mildly political, the 'war on drugs' has not aged well and will not be remembered fondly by history.  I would consider replacing all of the 2004 drug-warrior references with some different kind of hazard involving alien weapons and the like.  Make it clear that Superadine is some kind of bodybuilding hormone rather than a simple stimulant. 

I mean, I guess?  But my understanding of game lore, is if you use enough 'dyne, you mutate into a Troll.

That's not exactly on part par with Gandalf smoking some pipeweed at Bilbo's birthday.

 

I don't think it's inappropriate to have some harmless stoner NPC's though, as well as having the game highlight that same things, like Crystal Meth, will do Very Bad Things.

Edited April 6, 2021 by MTeague

[Darmian]

I always read the drug war thing in CO* to be more like "Venom" from Batman, than say real world drugs. And that seems reinforced by the Gold side equivalent, Fixadine, since it seems to work like that for the Destroyers.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Darmian

[UltraAlt]

23 minutes ago, Darmian said:

that seems reinforced by the Gold side equivalent, Fixadine

 

Doesn't that help older characters keep their dentures in place?

[Darmian]

Just now, UltraAlt said:

 

Doesn't that help older characters keep their dentures in place?

Have you seen the state of the Destroyers' teeth?  I would not be surprised!

[MTeague]

@Gulbasaur..... I get what you're saying to an extent. But.... "Get used to disappointment".

• Converters / Availablity of IO's / Power Creep:  You're not wrong. It HAS caused power creep. But that ship has sailed. In fact, I believe that ship has completed Magellan's Voyage seven times.  It's too late to change now. And even if you did? Wouldn't change any existing characters, and No Way In Hell do I see the devs doing anything about existing characters, nor do I see them wanting slash availabilty to new players while leaving existing players unaffected.
• Defense / Global Recharge. I sympathize and if IO's had not gone live yet, I'd be sounding a major warning for exactly the reasons you outline.  But do I expect it to change now? No. Not a chance. 
• Mezzes.  I like where you're going and I'm willing to talk turkey. But can we also say something about Purple Triangles?  "Everyone can solo", well, that's a lot more true than not. But if my Mind Controller's only option to "solo" the Envoy of Pain is a Shivan and a Vanguard HVAS, it's hard to call that "soloing" anymore.  If we want to make mezzes shorter duration and make more AT's vulnerable to them, okay, but let's not give AV's a giant "Nope!" button, either.
• "Nerf Brutes".  No. "I Can't Get Behind That!"  (for bonus points, hear that in William Shatner voice)  They already have Poke-Voke instead of Punch-Voke. They already have a lower AE target cap. They do still need something to distinguish them a bit from Scrappers. And whether or not the Issue 6 Devs intended for MM's to be "Villain Tankers", I never saw it play out that way past lvl 15. Even on Live. Brutes tanked redside for anything past a certain threshold. At least in any redside teams *I* was ever in after Cap Au Diable back prior to Going Rogue
• Aggro Cap. Here I'll largely agree with you. Dumpster tanking / zone herding was dumb. But it's gone, has been gone, so not worried about it coming back. 
• Kheldians to me, aren't MEANT to have a specific niche as such. They're Jack-Of-All Trades. Need a Tank? They can tank. Need ranged blasting? They can do that. want more Sentinel-like Durable-Midrange Blapping? They can do that too.  They're like WoW Druids. They specialty is the flexibility.
• Capes / Auras.  Ain't no one stopping you from refusing to don a cape or use an aura until you do the unlocks. The missions are still in the game. Other players, quite frankly, aren't your business how they setup their costume. Their character, their choice. And what would it really change? Force someone to have a costume they didn't like, so they powerlevel and bang out the rush mission to get a costume they do like?  And you never see them do it, soooooo what really would you gain? What would be the point of changing it? No, I can't get on board with that one. 
• Use of /ah.  I still visit the AH in person over 80% of the time, because I do it by habit before I even remember the command exists.  But really again, what's the big deal?  So someone posts some salvage from the middle of Striga or Eden instead of Talos. Woo woo. How is that impacting you?  If they were forced to run to Talos (or Cap or wherever...) you'd never know, you'd never see where the vast majority of players are at any moment. So what would the restriction really GAIN for you?
• Null The Gull:  I do not use Null. I will never use Null. But I do not want Null take away.  Taking Null away wouldn't suddenly pump up redside population. All you would accomplish is have people who want to blueside with VEATS and villain types to AE powerlevel to 20, run 10 missions, and bamph, they'd still poof out of redside and you woulnt' see them again. All you'd do by removing null is annoy the CRAP out of them, and gain nothing in the doing. So no. Let the bird be.  If you prefer tip missions, GOOD!!  There's excellent writing on many of them!  They're among my favorite missions, second only to Goldside missions!  But let the bird be. 

[UltraAlt]

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should goldside, redside, and blue side be separate?  Should you be able to create a goldside character and be able to go to Atlas and pick up missions from contacts?

 

Yes. Heroes and Villains should be separate.

That's one of the core points of ANY superhero genre game. There are Heroes and Villains.

 

We don't need this to be gray morality world. That is not CITY OF HEROES.

 

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Have Long Range Teleport let you go between any zones in the game, ignoring sides?

 

No.

It is easy enough to go to Nul the Gull and change alignment if that is what you want to do.

Vigilantes and Rogues can already use teleporters to go to either side.

 

Again. This is CITY OF HEROES and not Gray Morality World. I know some players play it like it is Gray Morality World, but I'm here to play CIty of Heroes where there are heroes and villains ... an those other guys that are in that dystopian utopian thing that was tacked on at the end of the game before the sunset.

 

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should the game require you to go to contacts to get missions at all? 

 

Uh, yeah.

I think that's a standard for all MMO's.

 

I remember when more people thought it was more fun to race between missions and checking out the cool environment during travel.

If you don't want to go to contacts, you can run radio or newspaper missions through all your levels. 

 

On 4/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, DougGraves said:

Should you have to go to a trainer to train?

 

I have the feeling like you don't really want to play an MMO.

 

That's my point of view. You can play how you like, but I'm not for breaking City of Heroes for what other kind of game that you want to be playing because it isn't City of Heroes.

Maybe one of the other City of Heroes sites would be better suited for you. They may have done all of these things that you want already.

I prefer Homecoming the way that it is.

 

The DEVs here seem to be pretty even-handed and have made great decisions from my point of view. Of course, others are all looking from a different perspective.

[Gulbasaur]

2 hours ago, MTeague said:

Kheldians to me, aren't MEANT to have a specific niche as such. They're Jack-Of-All Trades. Need a Tank? They can tank. Need ranged blasting? They can do that. want more Sentinel-like Durable-Midrange Blapping? They can do that too.  They're like WoW Druids. They specialty is the flexibility.

My point was more that as character build progression is largely build from set bonuses, they are at a disadvantage because they have something like ten extra powers to deal with so slots are often quite thinly spread.

 

Kheldians remain stupidly good fun to play, but they plateau at about the same place that other AT's begin to broaden what they can do. They're very good for flashbacks, though.  

 

The rest was all "if I were designing the game from scratch" ideas. I still enjoy it and am less salty than my post implies.

[EmmySky]

I was always disappointed that villains and heroes were relegated to their own worlds.  Seems to be that villains should rightfully be trying to break stuff over in Paragon while the heroes are righting wrongs in the Rogue Isles.  Or better yet, everyone do everything everywhere.  I'm not advocated free world PvP, but I do think the two sides should be integrated better.  On the PvP note, I was somewhat disappointed when CoV came out and I kinda thought when you do a bank job, you'd be fighting an actual hero, someone from the game.  I thought it was going to be a fun little queued system to have minor PvP, the robbing, or saving, of the bank not a guaranteed outcome.  I am not, never have been, a PvPer, but I always thought that'd be cool.  But yeah, definitely let the villains into Paragon to work on their dastardly deeds and the heroes cleaning up the Rogue Isles.  Never made sense to me that the villains were relegated to the Isles when there is plenty of crime to be done in Paragon City!