Real Talk: Dear Devs, are you aiming to force Trinity Gaming?

[Uun]

FREEM! KB is resistible. It shows up in CoD as a 5% chance of mag 12, 13 or 14 KB on various Council powers. It's flagged to suppress KB for 10s and not to scale with enemy level, but it's not flagged to ignore resistance. Any armor set that includes KB resistance (anything except Dark, Fire and Electric) shouldn't be effected by it. In comparison, Sefu Tendaji (who you fight as an EB in Gaussian's arc) has Force Bolt with mag 18 KB thats flagged to ignore resistance. I was fighting him with rad armor (which has 10000% KB resistance) and still getting knocked. 

[Coyotedancer]

As other have said, they aren't pushing Trinity play, OP. They're all-in on Teams!Teams!Teams! 

 

Somewhere along the line, the Powers That Be pretty obviously settled on the specific type of player they wanted to attract and keep in the game, and that's been their priority. Those of us who solo? We're just NOT IT. I don't think they actively want to drive us all out of the game, but I don't think it's unfair to say that they really don't give much consideration to rather or not we want to stay. We're not their "core target demographic", so to speak.

 

That said, I doubt they'll ever manage to alienate all of us... Some of us are just too stubborn for that... But I'd also be shocked if they paid much attention to our concerns.  

 

RE: the faction revamps... Crey was, I think, an okay set of changes.  I actively like what they did with the Circle. I really do. My beloved and grumpy ghost-bois needed that variety, and it's actually fun to see all of the different flavors of magi at higher levels. Once the "doubled-up Tar Patch"-issue was dealt with, they were just fine.

 

Having had some time now to tinker with them in-the-wild, I think they over-did it with the Council, though. Like other players have pointed out, they aren't really that much harder to deal with now... They 're just a whole lot more ANNOYING to fight. Council goons, in any substantial numbers, are just tedious.  Between the rezzers and the runners (and the rezzing runners o_0)  they're like the combined worst traits of the Freaks and the War Wolves. 

 

I'm not sure we needed that...

 

I get that they wanted to make them less attractive to smash-teams, but... yeah. 'Maybe makin gthem the complete opposite of "fun" wasn't the best way to have done that. 😴

[PeregrineFalcon]

3 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

As other have said, they aren't pushing Trinity play, OP. They're all-in on Teams!Teams!Teams! 

 

Somewhere along the line, the Powers That Be pretty obviously settled on the specific type of player they wanted to attract and keep in the game, and that's been their priority. Those of us who solo? We're just NOT IT.

There's already plenty of end game content that can be soloed, but there's very little end game content that's a challenge for a full team. It appears to me that they're trying to create challenging end game team content. Not necessarily because that's their target demographic, but because it's where we have the least amount of content. Now if you talk with the devs and know differently then feel free to say that, otherwise my statement is just as likely to be correct as yours.

 

Also, the entire reason that this game requires an internet connection is because it was meant to be played primarily with other players. That being the case it makes sense that the devs would focus primarily on content that requires teaming.

 

I completely agree with you on The Council revamp and will add only that you don't have to chase the runners.

[Lazarillo]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

Well...  this thread does have at least one player that self-admits that they may have missed the difference.

...except for the fact that it had nothing to do with the "FREEM!" KB and everything to do with just stacking a whole bunch, as they admitted.  Rad won't be knocked by the "FREEM!" anyway.  And as @Uun mentioned it's irrelevant because it's really not even that high-mag of a Knock.  My /DA Brute (who relies on IOs) never gets knocked around when the poptext comes up.  Y'know what else said Brute does?  Tread really carefully around Fake Nemeses, 'cause their Force Bolt will put 'em right down on their backside.

 

46 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

RE: the faction revamps... Crey was, I think, an okay set of changes.  I actively like what they did with the Circle. I really do. My beloved and grumpy ghost-bois needed that variety, and it's actually fun to see all of the different flavors of magi at higher levels. Once the "doubled-up Tar Patch"-issue was dealt with, they were just fine.

Crey was awful because it carried over classic i0 "being annoyed = 'challenge'"-type game design.  Yes, make enemies invincible but who will still taunt-spam you... Also, aesthetically, I hate how Crey went from this rather impressive looking army of sleek uniformesque powersuits to clunky looking tech and random mooks mixed together.  They're a private army, and should look like such.  Not just a random hodgepodge of whatever happened to be handy.

Agree mostly on CoT, they needed the variety, and the new mobs feel strong but not irritating, although IMO, I wanted more mages and fewer demons and ghosts among the rank and file.

Council feels fine from a balance standpoint but the ideas for how they actually implemented stuff was considerably less-so (see also, the other thing I'm posting about how the "FREEM!" effect is just dumb implementation).  Warriors are kinda underused so I don't see much of them, but seem fine to me.

Edited August 12 by Lazarillo

[lemming]

41 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

They 're just a whole lot more ANNOYING to fight.

That was pointed out during testing and something I tend to bring up with other proposed changes.  They did dial back some annoyance things here and there.

 

From what understanding I get, they want to making teaming attractive, but except for certain content, not required.

 

I think it's a fine line between making it feasible for solo, and having a team curb stomp.   I do a lot solo and while I have found a couple arcs more annoying, unless I have the difficulty turned way up, it's doable.   For lower DPS chars, it can be tedious.

[Frosticus]

55 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

As other have said, they aren't pushing Trinity play, OP. They're all-in on Teams!Teams!Teams! 

 

Somewhere along the line, the Powers That Be pretty obviously settled on the specific type of player they wanted to attract and keep in the game, and that's been their priority. Those of us who solo? We're just NOT IT. I don't think they actively want to drive us all out of the game, but I don't think it's unfair to say that they really don't give much consideration to rather or not we want to stay. We're not their "core target demographic", so to speak.

As someone that almost exclusively solos I have a very different take on this.

 

Things like:

Starting all TFs with 1 player

Able to turn (most) down to 0x1

Able to run 1star at 0x1

Easy solo incarnate unlocks

Signature summons

Amplifiers

And more 

 

We've never had it better for solo play imo

 

Additionally both the 2 newest powersets are very solo friendly. Arsenal control is a solo-ist dream. And marine allows every power to work on the caster, even giving you an anchor for shifting tides.

 

Imo if we weren't considered then hardmode would start at 2 star.

 

 

 

 

 

[Coyotedancer]

Just now, Frosticus said:

As someone that almost exclusively solos I have a very different take on this.

 

Things like:

Starting all TFs with 1 player

Able to turn (most) down to 0x1

Able to run 1star at 0x1

Easy solo incarnate unlocks

Signature summons

Amplifiers

And more 

 

We've never had it better for solo play imo

 

Additionally both the 2 newest powersets are very solo friendly. Arsenal control is a solo-ist dream. And marine allows every power to work on the caster, even giving you an anchor for shifting tides.

 

Imo if we weren't considered then hardmode would start at 2 star.

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of which are things the current Homecoming devs did... 

[golstat2003]

21 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

None of which are things the current Homecoming devs did... 

 

Except for the new powersets, which are excelusively Homecoming. Was easy solo incarnate unlocks on live? I seemed to get the impression that too was pure homecoming.

[Coyotedancer]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Except for the new powersets, which are excelusively Homecoming. Was easy solo incarnate unlocks on live? I seemed to get the impression that too was pure homecoming.

 

The DA arcs were a Live thing, but time-gated pretty aggressively. The time gates were removed and the extra  arc completion bits were added by the SCoRE crew back before homecoming came along. Likewise the iBit rewards for post-50 levleing.

 

 

Edited August 12 by Coyotedancer

[golstat2003]

5 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

The DA arcs were a Live thing, but time-gated pretty aggressively. The time gates were removed and the extra common iBit salveage on arc completion were added by the SCoRE crew back before homecoming came along.

 

I mean getting 120 incarnate threads every level up after 50 and the 20 emp merits every 3 vet levels. I don't seem to remember that part on Live. I actually think the DA arcs are slower than that, especially in the age of AE and super farming.

 

And that there is one of the key reasons why incarnates are more solo friendly.

 

EDIT: I have entirely skipped doing ANY trials on some 50s just because of that.

 

EDIT2: And yes I know it slows down getting those at a certain vet level past 50. By the time my Incarnates reach that I pretty much have everything I need in the sytem unlocked via the earlier 120 per level/ 20 emps per 3 levels I mentioned.

Edited August 12 by golstat2003

[Coyotedancer]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 

I mean getting 120 incarnate threads every level up after 50 and the 20 emp merits every 3 vet levels. I don't seem to remember that part on Live.

 

And that there is one of the key reasons why incarnates are more solo friendly.

 

EDIT: I have entirely skipped doing ANY trials on some 50s just because of that.

 

Those were a pre-Homecoming thing added by the SCoRE devs. Mostly because with a small population on a private server it was tough to get iTrials together.  The iXP for all content after 50 was of the same vintage.

 

 

Edited August 12 by Coyotedancer

[Frosticus]

53 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

None of which are things the current Homecoming devs did... 

If new power sets and 1star hardmode aren't solo friendly to you then I dunno what to suggest. 

 

I don't give a hoot which dev introduced what between live and now. All I care is that I can play almost every corner of this game solo now. 

[WindDemon21]

7 hours ago, Uun said:

FREEM! KB is resistible. It shows up in CoD as a 5% chance of mag 12, 13 or 14 KB on various Council powers. It's flagged to suppress KB for 10s and not to scale with enemy level, but it's not flagged to ignore resistance. Any armor set that includes KB resistance (anything except Dark, Fire and Electric) shouldn't be effected by it. In comparison, Sefu Tendaji (who you fight as an EB in Gaussian's arc) has Force Bolt with mag 18 KB thats flagged to ignore resistance. I was fighting him with rad armor (which has 10000% KB resistance) and still getting knocked. 

This is false though. On more than one occasion my willpower tanker with Indomitable will would keep getting knocked. IW has mag 10 protection and 10,000% resistance. Literally the second I engaged the mob I was knocked back with it on. You can see him knocked back (not even just down, but back) and you can see in the icons there he has IW on. It's honestly quite absurd.

[Uun]

43 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

This is false though. On more than one occasion my willpower tanker with Indomitable will would keep getting knocked. IW has mag 10 protection and 10,000% resistance. Literally the second I engaged the mob I was knocked back with it on. You can see him knocked back (not even just down, but back) and you can see in the icons there he has IW on. It's honestly quite absurd.

You're not showing the combat log, so can't confirm which foe(s) knocked you. The Mk I Zenith Warcry has 3 attacks, none of which has unresistible KB. None of the Vampyrs have attacks with high KB. That leaves the soldier with the grenade launcher. Assuming he was a boss, both his Missile Launcher attacks are flagged to ignore resistance. Not sure if this is by design or a bug, but this seems to be the only Council entity (along with the lvl 30-40 version) to have this flag. Not sure who might be able to confirm the dev's intention here.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=council_vortex_cor_leonis_boss_high

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=council_vortex_cor_leonis_boss_low

[WindDemon21]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

You're not showing the combat log, so can't confirm which foe(s) knocked you. The Mk I Zenith Warcry has 3 attacks, none of which has unresistible KB. None of the Vampyrs have attacks with high KB. That leaves the soldier with the grenade launcher. Assuming he was a boss, both his Missile Launcher attacks are flagged to ignore resistance. Not sure if this is by design or a bug, but this seems to be the only Council entity (along with the lvl 30-40 version) to have this flag. Not sure who might be able to confirm the dev's intention here.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=council_vortex_cor_leonis_boss_high

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=council_vortex_cor_leonis_boss_low

Ah ok, there wasn't a boss cor leonis in that mob though i can say that, outside of that not sure which it was that kb'd me, but i know for sure it wasn't a boss cor leonis. Regardless none of them should be able to kb armor level protection IMO.

[Uun]

13 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

Ah ok, there wasn't a boss cor leonis in that mob though i can say that, outside of that not sure which it was that kb'd me, but i know for sure it wasn't a boss cor leonis. Regardless none of them should be able to kb armor level protection IMO.

That was the only Council I found with the ignore resistance flag.  There may be more but there’s not an efficient to search for them.

[Rudra]

Vortex Cor Leonis Adjutants do as well with their grenade launchers.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=council_vortex_cor_leonis_lieutenant_high

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

Vortex Cor Leonis Adjutants do as well with their grenade launchers.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=council_vortex_cor_leonis_lieutenant_high

Good catch. I bet that's what's next to the robot. If a lieutenant has irresistible KB, it's got to be a bug.

[WindDemon21]

18 hours ago, Uun said:

That was the only Council I found with the ignore resistance flag.  There may be more but there’s not an efficient to search for them.

From what I saw i'm guessing it was the robot, if not then even the minnion rocketeers can do that.

 

Edit, yeah or the lt, so likely the lt, which, i mean is literally every mob except those full galaxy mobs which have their own so gets super annoying, especially when you already have tank level protection.

Edited August 13 by WindDemon21

[golstat2003]

8 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

From what I saw i'm guessing it was the robot, if not then even the minnion rocketeers can do that.

 

Edit, yeah or the lt, so likely the lt, which, i mean is literally every mob except those full galaxy mobs which have their own so gets super annoying, especially when you already have tank level protection.

 

yeah that sounds like a bug, if it's an LT