I like the bag vendor and all his pockets, and how the biggest bag available is 22 slots instead of 18. I have to admit, though, that I kinda miss the old bags. Planar pockets and vests of holding had a little more personality than the satchel, the bigger satchel, the backpack, etc.
I'm liking what you've done with the vendor buildings. The old Arms building looks really awesome with all the questionite tech. It actually really does feel like a Questionite Exchange. I like how all three crafting schools are consolidated into one big crafting center, and the same for the vendors and their... I dunno... recognition marketplace? I kinda miss the NPC scientists and mages wandering around their respective shops talking about all the cool super-science/super-sorcery stuff they could buy, though.
One thing kind of bothers me, though. All the questionite vendors are cybernetic and stuff. Does that mean questionite, like, has a poisonous effect if you're around it too much, like Tiberium or something? If you're wanting me to go out and farm this stuff I'd like to know if the real reason you buy cyberpunk costume pieces with it is because the questionite melted off your skin.
actually hold on a second I got a comic series idea coming on
Oh come on! One of the freakin' Champions Recognition Vendors are using the /armscrossed emote that we the players can't use! Seriously! Why can't we have access to that emote?!
Can someone please explain why some upgrades - nonmoddable, and, well, they're not mods- have "when used in x core" in their text? Might be a bug; at least, I can't make any sense out of that being there.
Oh come on! One of the freakin' Champions Recognition Vendors are using the /armscrossed emote that we the players can't use! Seriously! Why can't we have access to that emote?!
It's very disappointing when an alert is finally ready, and then one queued person declines to join. It might just be the low population of the test server, but I do wonder if there's going to be anything in place to help prevent this in Live?
If the system just threw everyone in anyway, then the person that now declines would likely just leave - and so the team would be one man short for dealing with the alert.
I suppose what you could do is to set an escalating 'cooldown' for queueing into alert for someone who declines it when ready, which might partially lessen the possibility of someone simply griefing alerts by queueing and declining, but I don't know if there's much else.
I haven't actually experienced this anyway, does the alert go poof complitely, or does it just go back to waiting for a replacement to join? If it's the latter, then on live it probably isn't going to be a huge problem.. assuming there's enough people joining in.
Bug: The hero games pop up is missing for the "Join now" message
Hero Games are still giving out Acclaim instead of Hero Games Tokens.
When Switching to the search tab in the vendor, the tab you moved from will no longer have a graphic for it's tab.
If the system just threw everyone in anyway, then the person that now declines would likely just leave - and so the team would be one man short for dealing with the alert.
I suppose what you could do is to set an escalating 'cooldown' for queueing into alert for someone who declines it when ready, which might partially lessen the possibility of someone simply griefing alerts by queueing and declining, but I don't know if there's much else.
I haven't actually experienced this anyway, does the alert go poof complitely, or does it just go back to waiting for a replacement to join? If it's the latter, then on live it probably isn't going to be a huge problem.. assuming there's enough people joining in.
I had it happen several times in a row - when one person fails to respond, it seems like the alert just goes poof. I think the message said something like it had timed out or was no longer available. I'm hoping that a lot of the problem - long wait times, and queue abandoning - is due to the low PTS population. It could be that someone had queued for multiple things, had two pop at the same time, and went with playing the one I wasn't. Hopefully with the larger population on Live that won't happen so much anyway.
If the system just threw everyone in anyway, then the person that now declines would likely just leave - and so the team would be one man short for dealing with the alert.
That's pretty much a 'so what, do it anyway' situation. Alerts have to balanced for a no-show or deadweight on the team.
Overall the changes you guys have put into the game system-wise puts the game in a better place. It's just still not in a good place.
Alerts are still boring with very little mechanics or substance. Looks like the fights just last longer with more chances for players to die (higher damage mobs), be instantly respawned and put back into the fight. These things should have a 1 death limit. If you play like an idiot then it should hurt your group. Death should mean you get no loot, and hurt your group. Do that and guess what? Players will actually have to start paying attention to the only mechanic currently implemented: damage. But at least they will have to pay attention, which means when you get around to adding compelling gameplay mechanics, we'll be looking for them.
Get rid of the star system, it's terrible.
No one seems outraged about the chance to fail with the new crafting system, or the fact you can cstore success. /sad I hate it and it's the doom of the game bla bla bla. Doesn't matter what I think, it's clearly already in the game. Depressing to see this kind of thing come to CO.
FF or AT's ruin the game, take your pick. PVE cant be balanced until AT and FF are on par together. Thats clearly never going to happen. Just get rid of FF already, and gate the powers youve designed behind sellable AT's. You get to sell us something thats ACTUALLY VALUABLE AND WORTH PURCHASING and you can PROPERLY TUNE PVE ENCOUNTERS. You'll lose some of your playerbase, but if the Alert Queues on PTS are any indication, then the opportunity to grow the game outweighs losing what's still sticking around.
Overall the changes you guys have put into the game system-wise puts the game in a better place. It's just still not in a good place.
Alerts are still boring with very little mechanics or substance. Looks like the fights just last longer with more chances for players to die (higher damage mobs), be instantly respawned and put back into the fight. These things should have a 1 death limit. If you play like an idiot then it should hurt your group. Death should mean you get no loot, and hurt your group. Do that and guess what? Players will actually have to start paying attention to the only mechanic currently implemented: damage. But at least they will have to pay attention, which means when you get around to adding compelling gameplay mechanics, we'll be looking for them.
Get rid of the star system, it's terrible.
No one seems outraged about the chance to fail with the new crafting system, or the fact you can cstore success. /sad I hate it and it's the doom of the game bla bla bla. Doesn't matter what I think, it's clearly already in the game. Depressing to see this kind of thing come to CO.
FF or AT's ruin the game, take your pick. PVE cant be balanced until AT and FF are on par together. Thats clearly never going to happen. Just get rid of FF already, and gate the powers youve designed behind sellable AT's. You get to sell us something thats ACTUALLY VALUABLE AND WORTH PURCHASING and you can PROPERLY TUNE PVE ENCOUNTERS. You'll lose some of your playerbase, but if the Alert Queues on PTS are any indication, then the opportunity to grow the game outweighs losing what's still sticking around.
UI looks a little better.
No-respawn might not be a bad idea for alerts. It would give resurrects a purpose in them, and it wouldn't be much different from how the boss fights play in lairs. Someone dies, they can't just respawn and step back in. Either they get resurrected, or everyone wipes and they start the fight from beginning.
With that in place, the time limits could be less hectic - and the success would depend more on if you can beat the boss without wiping, rather than if you can throw out enough damage, fast enough.
I don't like the fail system in the crafting either - it cumulates exponentially across the tiers. There's nothing 'fun' in fearing that all your work goes to waste because of RNG. Really it's just BS in a cumulative, grind-based 'crafting' system like this. If it's necessary to self crafting crap on c-store, then the better option would be to just sell straight up mods. Using fear tactics to sell 'crafting insurance' on c-store is just something I don't understand... do you honestly believe it improves people's enjoyment of the game?
What comes to FF and AT - yes, like I said before, elsewhere.. it's not possible to balance the game for both, when they have a distinct power difference. It's like having a normal class-based game system, except one of the classes can freely pick anything from any other class. Try to balance that? However, I can't agree with throwing away freeform characters.
Freeform was the reason I took lifetime sub, and the reason why I continue to play the game. Take that out of game, and it's over for me. It wouldn't be 'ragequit', it would simply mean that the game lost the part that held interest to me. I wouldn't mind freeforms opened to silver accounts though, and giving archetypes a serious facelift to bring them more in line with freeforms - but that whole AT/FF is it's own can of worms. I think there was some mention about attempts to narrow the gap between their strength.. but I guess that remains to be seen.
Overall the changes you guys have put into the game system-wise puts the game in a better place. It's just still not in a good place.
Alerts are still boring with very little mechanics or substance. Looks like the fights just last longer with more chances for players to die (higher damage mobs), be instantly respawned and put back into the fight. These things should have a 1 death limit. If you play like an idiot then it should hurt your group. Death should mean you get no loot, and hurt your group. Do that and guess what? Players will actually have to start paying attention to the only mechanic currently implemented: damage. But at least they will have to pay attention, which means when you get around to adding compelling gameplay mechanics, we'll be looking for them.
Get rid of the star system, it's terrible.
No one seems outraged about the chance to fail with the new crafting system, or the fact you can cstore success. /sad I hate it and it's the doom of the game bla bla bla. Doesn't matter what I think, it's clearly already in the game. Depressing to see this kind of thing come to CO.
FF or AT's ruin the game, take your pick. PVE cant be balanced until AT and FF are on par together. Thats clearly never going to happen. Just get rid of FF already, and gate the powers youve designed behind sellable AT's. You get to sell us something thats ACTUALLY VALUABLE AND WORTH PURCHASING and you can PROPERLY TUNE PVE ENCOUNTERS. You'll lose some of your playerbase, but if the Alert Queues on PTS are any indication, then the opportunity to grow the game outweighs losing what's still sticking around.
UI looks a little better.
Heh, and I thought I was the only person able to see the truth. I agree with the fact that AT and FF can never be balanced content. But I think the better things is to is get rid of subs and set everyone on equal grounds. Allow for people to pay for free content up to a certain time period. So the customer pays a fee to gain any content to be released in a determined time frame for free. Don't strip the current lifers though until the time they have paid for ($300 equals 20 months) has expired. Keep AT for new players or people new to the framework, but allow them to switch powers at trainers for a resource cost when they feel comfortable.
Don't strip the current lifers though until the time they have paid for ($300 equals 20 months) has expired.
This could cause Cryptic some problems.
It would work if they closed the servers down, wiped all existing accounts (including all micro-transaction purchases) and then relaunched CO under a different name.
Of course selling AT's and other C-Store options in the future mihgt be difficult after something of this sort.
FF or AT's ruin the game, take your pick. PVE cant be balanced until AT and FF are on par together. Thats clearly never going to happen. Just get rid of FF already, and gate the powers youve designed behind sellable AT's. You get to sell us something thats ACTUALLY VALUABLE AND WORTH PURCHASING and you can PROPERLY TUNE PVE ENCOUNTERS. You'll lose some of your playerbase, but if the Alert Queues on PTS are any indication, then the opportunity to grow the game outweighs losing what's still sticking around.
UI looks a little better.
wow just wow, its players like you that give free to play a bad name. We pay a monthly sub for what we get and continually support the game every month regardless of something new coming out or not. You remove freeform and they will lose every subbing player to the game. your idea is not thought out at all. you have the view of someone who 1 has never tried freeform and has no clue about how awesome having a sub is, or 2 only tried it long enough to be confused and was unwilling to put the time and effort into learning how to play.
Ideas like this will do nothing for the game. they will hurt it far more than they will help. someone tried being nice in explaining why this is stupid i figured id be the bad guy.
Removing subs completely is also stupid i don't understand why free players feel so entitled as to try and destroy what others who are willing to pay a monthly sub or drop 300 on a life time. you want equality then pay for a sub and learn to play :{
Well it's my understanding that only subscribers can get to PTS forums.
LOL
I just want to be clear I am not in the same camp for removing FF. I think FF should be for everyone and AT should remain as skeletons or newbie friendly frameworks that can be fully edited through trainers when the player feels comfortable.
Removing subs completely is also stupid i don't understand why free players feel so entitled as to try and destroy what others who are willing to pay a monthly sub or drop 300 on a life time. you want equality then pay for a sub and learn to play :{
Have a nice day.
Don't have to pay for sub. I committed to this game during beta with a lifetime account. The time I payed for is long gone. I am a fan for life.
And as a fan for life I am saying kill the subs and go full free to play. That is my solution to the balancing nightmare that is on the horizon for the lair reviews. So, now Mr. Bigger Fan, what's yours?
Oh! And noooo YOU have a nice day!!
Back on track,
I like the new fly over for the tutorial. More heroic by showing the struggling champs and I like how it makes the player feel called on by Defender.
I just want to be clear I am not in the same camp for removing FF. I think FF should be for everyone and AT should remain as skeletons or newbie friendly frameworks that can be fully edited through trainers when the player feels comfortable.
Well they didn't strip subscriptions in STO (where I also have lifetime sub) but they did pretty good job in making them obsolate. Pretty much the only reason to subscribe there is to get 400 c-store points monthly. Of course you could instead just buy double that directly, and save while doing so. :rolleyes:
I don't mind though - I'm glad they went that road, it puts silvers on same line, instead of makiing them second class citizens. And on long run I think everyone wins, because the game can be planned around one set of players, not two.
The recent bugged Sentinel Aura (that could revive dead players...) got me thinking.
Rez powers suck. They're a waste of a slot unless something bad has happened, and the characters that would accept the power tax to cart one around are the ones who are likely to feel a sense of failure if they ever have to use them. And yet if they don't have one, they're letting their team down.
I propose you make all the energy-costing heal-other powers able to revive a dead teammate with whatever HP the heal would give. This would exclude bubbles, Palliate and Iniquity, but would include:
-Psionic Healing
-Empathic Healing
-Celestial Conduit
-Rebuke
-Arcane Vitality
-Vala's Light
-Medical Nanites (if the person equipped with it gets within melee range of the corpse)
Most dedicated healers/support characters currently use either Iniquity, bubbles or a combination of those two, with a few outliers (or those that don't have access to others) running stuff like Celestial Conduit or Empathic Healing.
Making the heals I mentioned able to revive a teammate would lessen the penalty on healers, and enable players who may not want to waste an entire power slot on a power used maybe 10% of the time to have an option to help out their teammates if need be with both occasional spot healing (on themselves or others) and a clutch rez if needed.
And not having it on the two/three most commonly-used heals (Iniquity and bubbles) means it's still a sacrifice to take, but not nearly as much as a power that sits useless 90% of the time (as current rezzes do now).
Plus, if revives are more accessible, you can feel better about making harder Content, as even all-AT teams running a Grimoire, Mind or Inventor healer would be able to have a rez available without you having to retool their powers.
Thoughts? I'm somewhat influenced by Guild Wars 2 in this, but also from seeing the Sentinel Aura bug. And I'm tired of having to cart around a useless power for most of the game, but being unable to do my duty as a support character if I don't waste that slot for lairs with lockouts.
I just want to be clear I am not in the same camp for removing FF. I think FF should be for everyone and AT should remain as skeletons or newbie friendly frameworks that can be fully edited through trainers when the player feels comfortable.
See to me the problem with AT's is simple. IF the AT has two frameworks in it, you should be able to (At 40) go back and grab things out of those two Frameworks. IF it only contains one, you should be allowed to pick a second framework to work from.
However, things like Super Stats, Innate Talents, Color choice, and the limit on the Number of skills would remain the same.
*stuff about ditching pointless rez powers and giving rez functions to regular heal powers*
Thoughts?
/Signed!!!!
Seriously, rezzes are pointless in this game. There's hardly any penalties for death, characters rarely ever die, and when they do, you have to wait till the end of the fight to use it because they need a full charge and can get interrumpted. So dead team members are better off respaning and running back to where they were. And most of the content can be soloed anyway so spending a power pick on a weak power that's hardly every going to see any use is a waste.
Its better to simply let certain heal-other powers to the rezzing. This would make support toons more efficient and let rezzing have a point.
I propose you make all the energy-costing heal-other powers able to revive a dead teammate with whatever HP the heal would give.
(SNIP)
Thoughts? I'm somewhat influenced by Guild Wars 2 in this, but also from seeing the Sentinel Aura bug. And I'm tired of having to cart around a useless power for most of the game, but being unable to do my duty as a support character if I don't waste that slot for lairs with lockouts.
/signed
Well anything influenced by GW2 can't be a bad idea
Yes, I think it's a good idea. Support characters are already making quite a big sacrifice by.. well, being support characters. Easing their burden a bit would be good. If the old functionality was to be saved (interrupted by damage and such), they could simply be dual powers similar to how celestial powers change between friend/enemy targeting - if you target a defeated (huh.. I really said 'defeated') player, the power would turn into chargeable resurrect power.
Either way making healers sacrifice one power slot to take resurrect power is a bit meh (since I think it IS important power for healers, even though you hope you never need to use it).
It probably wouldn't cause any problems to implement a 'revive' system either - so that when someone goes down, you can simply move to melee range, and use the normal 'interact' system to revive them with, say, 20% health. Make it have something like 4 second interact time, interrupted by damage.
Don't have to pay for sub. I committed to this game during beta with a lifetime account. The time I payed for is long gone. I am a fan for life.
And as a fan for life I am saying kill the subs and go full free to play. That is my solution to the balancing nightmare that is on the horizon for the lair reviews. So, now Mr. Bigger Fan, what's yours?
Oh! And noooo YOU have a nice day!!
Back on track,
I like the new fly over for the tutorial. More heroic by showing the struggling champs and I like how it makes the player feel called on by Defender.
Full f2p is nice and will certainly be able to gain more players and also easier to balance. However there is still a need to justify to players who are life subbers like you and me. There are quite a few games atm which are full f2p but that means they probably earn from players paying for gear or devices and so on but to ensure that it is really f2p, those gear should be available via grinding instead of paying. However what amount of grinding is appropriate will be hard to set. Sometimes excessive grinding will lose the players while grinding which is too low will result in players not willing to pay.
(SNIP)
but to ensure that it is really f2p, those gear should be available via grinding instead of paying.
(SNIP)
I think you're kind of missing the meaning of F2P. F2P is marketing hype. The reality of the F2P model is generally that you can play the free demo as long as you like, but to get the full content you need to pay progressive amounts of cash to get access.
Some titles - notably some of the Perfect World games - introduce a system on top of that, where you basically have to pay a 'subscription fee' by means of making consumable items from cash shop necessary in order to complete higher level content.
F2P is really closer to 'Free to Pay' than 'Free to Play'. There are some exceptions like for example LoTRO where you truly are able to get anything and everything for free if you grind long enough - although mostly the investment is somewhere around, grinding for ten hours will net you store points worth approximately $1.. which means for the most part you don't want to grind.. but rather take the shortcut.
Most of the so called F2P games you could also categorize as P2W (Pay-To-Win) in that the more real cash you spend, the more advantage you can get in-game. In CO for example the sidekicks, premium archetypes, and various healing/buffing consumables in c-store are examples of this.
I just want to be clear I am not in the same camp for removing FF. I think FF should be for everyone and AT should remain as skeletons or newbie friendly frameworks that can be fully edited through trainers when the player feels comfortable.
Soon, my young padawan, soon...
-waves hand towards the FreeForm slot-
This is the slot you're looking for.
Oh, and what Ashen said about the LTS.
The product purchased is (server-)lifetime access to the game.
They can mess around with our vet rewards, strip all the exclusive stuff, but they must still let us access the game for as long as it exists.
Well they didn't strip subscriptions in STO (where I also have lifetime sub) but they did pretty good job in making them obsolate. Pretty much the only reason to subscribe there is to get 400 c-store points monthly.
Thoughts? I'm somewhat influenced by Guild Wars 2 in this, but also from seeing the Sentinel Aura bug. And I'm tired of having to cart around a useless power for most of the game, but being unable to do my duty as a support character if I don't waste that slot for lairs with lockouts.
Sage, I like this, but...
WHERE IS REGEN?????
XD
Sorry, but that passive already needs love so bad, and you don't mention it as a healing method...
If it works for Med Nanites, I DEMAND it works for Regen :-p
FF or AT's ruin the game, take your pick. PVE cant be balanced until AT and FF are on par together. Thats clearly never going to happen. Just get rid of FF already, and gate the powers youve designed behind sellable AT's. You get to sell us something thats ACTUALLY VALUABLE AND WORTH PURCHASING and you can PROPERLY TUNE PVE ENCOUNTERS. You'll lose some of your playerbase, but if the Alert Queues on PTS are any indication, then the opportunity to grow the game outweighs losing what's still sticking around.
In other words, get rid of the main (if not only) mechanics advantage that C.O. has over its competitors?
But I think the better things is to is get rid of subs and set everyone on equal grounds. Allow for people to pay for free content up to a certain time period. So the customer pays a fee to gain any content to be released in a determined time frame for free. Don't strip the current lifers though until the time they have paid for ($300 equals 20 months) has expired. Keep AT for new players or people new to the framework, but allow them to switch powers at trainers for a resource cost when they feel comfortable.
I paid for full access for server-lifetime.
Where is the problem?
Oh, nowhere, if you like visiting Sodom and Gomorrah...
Don't strip the current lifers though until the time they have paid for ($300 equals 20 months) has expired.
That'd be a violation of the terms. Lifetime was expressly sold as for the life of the game not for a couple of months. Only way to "strip it" without any legal ramifications is to shut the game down.
Sorry, but that passive already needs love so bad, and you don't mention it as a healing method...
If it works for Med Nanites, I DEMAND it works for Regen :-p
(SNIP)
Well... um. Since regen only affects yourself, you're basically asking for regen to automagically resurrect yourself every time you get ganked.
Yeah, I admit that would be a buff for regen
I'm getting flashbacks from Highlander.. you know, that drunken duel.. :rolleyes:
''You missed, sire''
Well... um. Since regen only affects yourself, you're basically asking for regen to automagically resurrect yourself every time you get ganked.
-shrug- I got Regen & Rebirth... so yeah, that's basically what I said.
(Concept was "Miss Never-Stays-Down")
If the argument is to avoid wasting space on a rez (be it self or other's), I don't see why not...
Now, after that, cool-downs, number of times and all that number crunching is up for discussion, but on the principle, yeah, why not?
-shrug- I got Regen & Rebirth... so yeah, that's basically what I said.
(Concept was "Miss Never-Stays-Down")
If the argument is to avoid wasting space on a rez (be it self or other's), I don't see why not...
Now, after that, cool-downs, number of times and all that number crunching is up for discussion, but on the principle, yeah, why not?
Heh.. that's kind of similar concept to the bestial character I made. Concept goes waaaay back in time to the ole PnP. If the concept was comparable to rebirth it could be doable yes, but the point is sortta that rebirth is more generally usable feature than resurrect - it's applicable in solo (which is most of the game's content), not some power that you just take because it's mandatory for a very specific and limited situation (that being generally the bossfights in lairs where fallen characters can't revive and get back to fight by themself). So I think it's different issue.
As a separate issue though - sure, I could see rebirth-like ability added as one-point advantage in regen. It would work very well with concept of some characters - thematically it would be natural extension of regeneration.
Heh.. that's kind of similar concept to the bestial character I made. Concept goes waaaay back in time to the ole PnP. If the concept was comparable to rebirth it could be doable yes, but the point is sortta that rebirth is more generally usable feature than resurrect - it's applicable in solo (which is most of the game's content), not some power that you just take because it's mandatory for a very specific and limited situation (that being generally the bossfights in lairs where fallen characters can't revive and get back to fight by themself). So I think it's different issue.
As a separate issue though - sure, I could see rebirth-like ability added as one-point advantage in regen. It would work very well with concept of some characters - thematically it would be natural extension of regeneration.
First took Rebirth after going in the Endbringer fight with a Soldier and a Power-Armor FreeForm without rez...
My very first experience of lock-out...
Never again!
30 minutes is long, too long!
The idea I had when I saw Sage's message is that Regen rez you, but then starts a non-healing cool-down for a while (after all, the damage from Rebirth does not negate fully Regen, and even worse it buffs the healing since you take damage), so that it stays "fair" to other powers. Could also revive with the amount of HP you would have gained from Regen.
And yeah, I also think it fits Regen's theme closely.
And what was the whole idea ? If they mess around with our rewards and stripp all exclusive stuff
what else will our LTA then be like a silver account ?
And what was the whole idea ? If they mess around with our rewards and stripp all exclusive stuff
what else will our LTA then be like a silver account ?
And what was the whole idea ? If they mess around with our rewards and stripp all exclusive stuff
what else will our LTA then be like a silver account ?
I think you're kind of missing the meaning of F2P. F2P is marketing hype. The reality of the F2P model is generally that you can play the free demo as long as you like, but to get the full content you need to pay progressive amounts of cash to get access.
Some titles - notably some of the Perfect World games - introduce a system on top of that, where you basically have to pay a 'subscription fee' by means of making consumable items from cash shop necessary in order to complete higher level content.
F2P is really closer to 'Free to Pay' than 'Free to Play'. There are some exceptions like for example LoTRO where you truly are able to get anything and everything for free if you grind long enough - although mostly the investment is somewhere around, grinding for ten hours will net you store points worth approximately $1.. which means for the most part you don't want to grind.. but rather take the shortcut.
Most of the so called F2P games you could also categorize as P2W (Pay-To-Win) in that the more real cash you spend, the more advantage you can get in-game. In CO for example the sidekicks, premium archetypes, and various healing/buffing consumables in c-store are examples of this.
No I did not miss the point, no game company is going to offer anything totally free; that's not business. In fact I did use the example where you can choose to pay to cut grinding time. I also did mention about paying for the gear and devices but they can be made available if you grind long enough. To me that is already a really free model because the entirety of game content is still available if you choose not to pay but rather invests days and months to grind.
Sorry, but that passive already needs love so bad, and you don't mention it as a healing method...
If it works for Med Nanites, I DEMAND it works for Regen :-p
I only crammed Medical Nanites in there because I'd rather have Inventor's passive have the rez feature than Bionic Shielding, as Bionic's typically crammed into builds as a self-heal, not a heal-other. And the trigger-on-hit thing might be a bit awkward. And Inventor's another source of support for ATs, so I wanted parity.
The recent bugged Sentinel Aura (that could revive dead players...) got me thinking.
Rez powers suck. They're a waste of a slot unless something bad has happened, and the characters that would accept the power tax to cart one around are the ones who are likely to feel a sense of failure if they ever have to use them. And yet if they don't have one, they're letting their team down.
I propose you make all the energy-costing heal-other powers able to revive a dead teammate with whatever HP the heal would give. This would exclude bubbles, Palliate and Iniquity, but would include:
-Psionic Healing
-Empathic Healing
-Celestial Conduit
-Rebuke
-Arcane Vitality
-Vala's Light
-Medical Nanites (if the person equipped with it gets within melee range of the corpse)
Most dedicated healers/support characters currently use either Iniquity, bubbles or a combination of those two, with a few outliers (or those that don't have access to others) running stuff like Celestial Conduit or Empathic Healing.
Making the heals I mentioned able to revive a teammate would lessen the penalty on healers, and enable players who may not want to waste an entire power slot on a power used maybe 10% of the time to have an option to help out their teammates if need be with both occasional spot healing (on themselves or others) and a clutch rez if needed.
And not having it on the two/three most commonly-used heals (Iniquity and bubbles) means it's still a sacrifice to take, but not nearly as much as a power that sits useless 90% of the time (as current rezzes do now).
Plus, if revives are more accessible, you can feel better about making harder Content, as even all-AT teams running a Grimoire, Mind or Inventor healer would be able to have a rez available without you having to retool their powers.
Thoughts? I'm somewhat influenced by Guild Wars 2 in this, but also from seeing the Sentinel Aura bug. And I'm tired of having to cart around a useless power for most of the game, but being unable to do my duty as a support character if I don't waste that slot for lairs with lockouts.
Sage, this is a fantastic idea.
Building on top of your idea, I would suggest making the revive portion on heals a 2 point advantage. Second suggestion is to have dead players fall over grasping for help (the zombie animation) with an icon over their head to indicate they can be revived. Third suggestion is to queue-prioritize groups such that they have one tank-ish toon, and one player with the revive advantage. For groups unlucky enough to have a tank or healer, scale the "difficulty" based on whats missing in some way (no healer with revive, maybe the mobs deal less damage or the mobs drop more green orbs, no tank, maybe whoever has aggro gets a defense bonus or something).
Building on top of your idea, I would suggest making the revive portion on heals a 2 point advantage.
I agree with this thought. I think 'certain' healing powers should have an advantage that will allow a teammate to be rezzed.
Heals that can be charged may rez after a full charge, and heals that can be maintained may rez after being maintained for X amount of seconds.
For me the rez power could not be justified for taking a power slot. Dying happened too infrequently, and when it did occur while fighting bosses, it was usually best for the whole team to die and regroup to rengage the enemy.
Building on top of your idea, I would suggest making the revive portion on heals a 2 point advantage.
I agree with this thought. I think 'certain' healing powers should have an advantage that will allow a teammate to be rezzed.
Heals that can be charged may rez after a full charge, and heals that can be maintained may rez after being maintained for X amount of seconds.
I grudgingly agree with this as well, though, I don't like the idea of having to sacrifice my healing potential, since a 2 point advantage means I could never rank that power to R3. Still, being able to rez with your heals alone sounds like an extra, and not charging anything for it might trivialize rezzes (and take them from being pointless, to being overly abundant and easy to use).
Though, I'm not sure if requiring a full charge or maintain on top of a 2 point advantage cost is necessary. Maybe one or the other, or reduce the cost to a 1 point advantage if a full charge is required.
Where is the problem?
Oh, nowhere, if you like visiting Sodom and Gomorrah...
Come on, you're joking, right...
Not joking at all. I also paid for a full lifetime (see sig), but I am willing to give up the benefits as a selfless act if it could lead to a more balanced and equally challenging game FOR EVERYONE down the road.
Keep the C store the same. And use it for primary source of revenue.
Have you ever asked. "If I were paying for a sub still what exactly would I have paid for?"
I mean look at the history of Cryptic. You have AP that cost money, Costume sets that cost money, Travel Powers that cost money, Hideouts that cost money, and ATs that cost money. So really all a sub has paid for is Tumerboys wonderful redesigns. Kitchen Sink 1, 2, and now 3. Basically if you have paid for a sub you are paying for a glorified beta test with Tumerboy's magic sprinkled on top.
Players fought to get Vibora Bay for free. They didn't feel Cryptic had done enough to the game to warrant the right to demand for a paid expansion. I miss those days. No we have grab bags and Travel powers with alternate animation or effects that cost money....even for lifers to use.
Compare this to a F2P game such as Allods, with its huge updates, added classes, mounts, and airship battles...and suddenly as a lifer I feel bad for the subbers getting ripped off. I am not saying Allods is better than Champions. I am just pointing out how much content can be made for a game where subscriptions aren't even an option. I quit playing WoW when they did the opposite and added a "c store" to their P2P game.
Back on track,
I like the new bag UI size and the tags on the side look slick.
Though, I'm not sure if requiring a full charge or maintain on top of a 2 point advantage cost is necessary. Maybe one or the other, or reduce the cost to a 1 point advantage if a full charge is required.
Same boat here.
I feel it would have to be one or the other. I like the idea though of charge and maintain more than just a purchased rank.
Great idea though. Opens doors for Cryptic to add more interesting or diversified powers to replace the "wasted ones".
Comments
I'm liking what you've done with the vendor buildings. The old Arms building looks really awesome with all the questionite tech. It actually really does feel like a Questionite Exchange. I like how all three crafting schools are consolidated into one big crafting center, and the same for the vendors and their... I dunno... recognition marketplace? I kinda miss the NPC scientists and mages wandering around their respective shops talking about all the cool super-science/super-sorcery stuff they could buy, though.
One thing kind of bothers me, though. All the questionite vendors are cybernetic and stuff. Does that mean questionite, like, has a poisonous effect if you're around it too much, like Tiberium or something? If you're wanting me to go out and farm this stuff I'd like to know if the real reason you buy cyberpunk costume pieces with it is because the questionite melted off your skin.
actually hold on a second I got a comic series idea coming on
Also, in GRAB, once you've downed a villain they're still targetable. This is annoying for tab-targeting, especially with so many enemies around.
Or stance even.. or both. I DEMAND BOTH!
If the system just threw everyone in anyway, then the person that now declines would likely just leave - and so the team would be one man short for dealing with the alert.
I suppose what you could do is to set an escalating 'cooldown' for queueing into alert for someone who declines it when ready, which might partially lessen the possibility of someone simply griefing alerts by queueing and declining, but I don't know if there's much else.
I haven't actually experienced this anyway, does the alert go poof complitely, or does it just go back to waiting for a replacement to join? If it's the latter, then on live it probably isn't going to be a huge problem.. assuming there's enough people joining in.
Hero Games are still giving out Acclaim instead of Hero Games Tokens.
When Switching to the search tab in the vendor, the tab you moved from will no longer have a graphic for it's tab.
I had it happen several times in a row - when one person fails to respond, it seems like the alert just goes poof. I think the message said something like it had timed out or was no longer available. I'm hoping that a lot of the problem - long wait times, and queue abandoning - is due to the low PTS population. It could be that someone had queued for multiple things, had two pop at the same time, and went with playing the one I wasn't. Hopefully with the larger population on Live that won't happen so much anyway.
...at least it's worth more, I guess. Heh.
Alerts are still boring with very little mechanics or substance. Looks like the fights just last longer with more chances for players to die (higher damage mobs), be instantly respawned and put back into the fight. These things should have a 1 death limit. If you play like an idiot then it should hurt your group. Death should mean you get no loot, and hurt your group. Do that and guess what? Players will actually have to start paying attention to the only mechanic currently implemented: damage. But at least they will have to pay attention, which means when you get around to adding compelling gameplay mechanics, we'll be looking for them.
Get rid of the star system, it's terrible.
No one seems outraged about the chance to fail with the new crafting system, or the fact you can cstore success. /sad I hate it and it's the doom of the game bla bla bla. Doesn't matter what I think, it's clearly already in the game. Depressing to see this kind of thing come to CO.
FF or AT's ruin the game, take your pick. PVE cant be balanced until AT and FF are on par together. Thats clearly never going to happen. Just get rid of FF already, and gate the powers youve designed behind sellable AT's. You get to sell us something thats ACTUALLY VALUABLE AND WORTH PURCHASING and you can PROPERLY TUNE PVE ENCOUNTERS. You'll lose some of your playerbase, but if the Alert Queues on PTS are any indication, then the opportunity to grow the game outweighs losing what's still sticking around.
UI looks a little better.
No-respawn might not be a bad idea for alerts. It would give resurrects a purpose in them, and it wouldn't be much different from how the boss fights play in lairs. Someone dies, they can't just respawn and step back in. Either they get resurrected, or everyone wipes and they start the fight from beginning.
With that in place, the time limits could be less hectic - and the success would depend more on if you can beat the boss without wiping, rather than if you can throw out enough damage, fast enough.
I don't like the fail system in the crafting either - it cumulates exponentially across the tiers. There's nothing 'fun' in fearing that all your work goes to waste because of RNG. Really it's just BS in a cumulative, grind-based 'crafting' system like this. If it's necessary to self crafting crap on c-store, then the better option would be to just sell straight up mods. Using fear tactics to sell 'crafting insurance' on c-store is just something I don't understand... do you honestly believe it improves people's enjoyment of the game?
What comes to FF and AT - yes, like I said before, elsewhere.. it's not possible to balance the game for both, when they have a distinct power difference. It's like having a normal class-based game system, except one of the classes can freely pick anything from any other class. Try to balance that? However, I can't agree with throwing away freeform characters.
Freeform was the reason I took lifetime sub, and the reason why I continue to play the game. Take that out of game, and it's over for me. It wouldn't be 'ragequit', it would simply mean that the game lost the part that held interest to me. I wouldn't mind freeforms opened to silver accounts though, and giving archetypes a serious facelift to bring them more in line with freeforms - but that whole AT/FF is it's own can of worms. I think there was some mention about attempts to narrow the gap between their strength.. but I guess that remains to be seen.
Heh, and I thought I was the only person able to see the truth. I agree with the fact that AT and FF can never be balanced content. But I think the better things is to is get rid of subs and set everyone on equal grounds. Allow for people to pay for free content up to a certain time period. So the customer pays a fee to gain any content to be released in a determined time frame for free. Don't strip the current lifers though until the time they have paid for ($300 equals 20 months) has expired. Keep AT for new players or people new to the framework, but allow them to switch powers at trainers for a resource cost when they feel comfortable.
This could cause Cryptic some problems.
It would work if they closed the servers down, wiped all existing accounts (including all micro-transaction purchases) and then relaunched CO under a different name.
Of course selling AT's and other C-Store options in the future mihgt be difficult after something of this sort.
Goodbye. I'd be out of here in a heartbeat. You're both insane.
wow just wow, its players like you that give free to play a bad name. We pay a monthly sub for what we get and continually support the game every month regardless of something new coming out or not. You remove freeform and they will lose every subbing player to the game. your idea is not thought out at all. you have the view of someone who 1 has never tried freeform and has no clue about how awesome having a sub is, or 2 only tried it long enough to be confused and was unwilling to put the time and effort into learning how to play.
Ideas like this will do nothing for the game. they will hurt it far more than they will help. someone tried being nice in explaining why this is stupid i figured id be the bad guy.
Removing subs completely is also stupid i don't understand why free players feel so entitled as to try and destroy what others who are willing to pay a monthly sub or drop 300 on a life time. you want equality then pay for a sub and learn to play :{
Have a nice day.
Well it's my understanding that only subscribers can get to PTS forums.
LOL
I just want to be clear I am not in the same camp for removing FF. I think FF should be for everyone and AT should remain as skeletons or newbie friendly frameworks that can be fully edited through trainers when the player feels comfortable.
Don't have to pay for sub. I committed to this game during beta with a lifetime account. The time I payed for is long gone. I am a fan for life.
And as a fan for life I am saying kill the subs and go full free to play. That is my solution to the balancing nightmare that is on the horizon for the lair reviews. So, now Mr. Bigger Fan, what's yours?
Oh! And noooo YOU have a nice day!!
Back on track,
I like the new fly over for the tutorial. More heroic by showing the struggling champs and I like how it makes the player feel called on by Defender.
Well they didn't strip subscriptions in STO (where I also have lifetime sub) but they did pretty good job in making them obsolate. Pretty much the only reason to subscribe there is to get 400 c-store points monthly. Of course you could instead just buy double that directly, and save while doing so. :rolleyes:
I don't mind though - I'm glad they went that road, it puts silvers on same line, instead of makiing them second class citizens. And on long run I think everyone wins, because the game can be planned around one set of players, not two.
Insomnia fueled thoughts ahead.
The recent bugged Sentinel Aura (that could revive dead players...) got me thinking.
Rez powers suck. They're a waste of a slot unless something bad has happened, and the characters that would accept the power tax to cart one around are the ones who are likely to feel a sense of failure if they ever have to use them. And yet if they don't have one, they're letting their team down.
I propose you make all the energy-costing heal-other powers able to revive a dead teammate with whatever HP the heal would give. This would exclude bubbles, Palliate and Iniquity, but would include:
-Psionic Healing
-Empathic Healing
-Celestial Conduit
-Rebuke
-Arcane Vitality
-Vala's Light
-Medical Nanites (if the person equipped with it gets within melee range of the corpse)
Most dedicated healers/support characters currently use either Iniquity, bubbles or a combination of those two, with a few outliers (or those that don't have access to others) running stuff like Celestial Conduit or Empathic Healing.
Making the heals I mentioned able to revive a teammate would lessen the penalty on healers, and enable players who may not want to waste an entire power slot on a power used maybe 10% of the time to have an option to help out their teammates if need be with both occasional spot healing (on themselves or others) and a clutch rez if needed.
And not having it on the two/three most commonly-used heals (Iniquity and bubbles) means it's still a sacrifice to take, but not nearly as much as a power that sits useless 90% of the time (as current rezzes do now).
Plus, if revives are more accessible, you can feel better about making harder Content, as even all-AT teams running a Grimoire, Mind or Inventor healer would be able to have a rez available without you having to retool their powers.
Thoughts? I'm somewhat influenced by Guild Wars 2 in this, but also from seeing the Sentinel Aura bug. And I'm tired of having to cart around a useless power for most of the game, but being unable to do my duty as a support character if I don't waste that slot for lairs with lockouts.
See to me the problem with AT's is simple. IF the AT has two frameworks in it, you should be able to (At 40) go back and grab things out of those two Frameworks. IF it only contains one, you should be allowed to pick a second framework to work from.
However, things like Super Stats, Innate Talents, Color choice, and the limit on the Number of skills would remain the same.
/Signed!!!!
Seriously, rezzes are pointless in this game. There's hardly any penalties for death, characters rarely ever die, and when they do, you have to wait till the end of the fight to use it because they need a full charge and can get interrumpted. So dead team members are better off respaning and running back to where they were. And most of the content can be soloed anyway so spending a power pick on a weak power that's hardly every going to see any use is a waste.
Its better to simply let certain heal-other powers to the rezzing. This would make support toons more efficient and let rezzing have a point.
/signed
Well anything influenced by GW2 can't be a bad idea
Yes, I think it's a good idea. Support characters are already making quite a big sacrifice by.. well, being support characters. Easing their burden a bit would be good. If the old functionality was to be saved (interrupted by damage and such), they could simply be dual powers similar to how celestial powers change between friend/enemy targeting - if you target a defeated (huh.. I really said 'defeated') player, the power would turn into chargeable resurrect power.
Either way making healers sacrifice one power slot to take resurrect power is a bit meh (since I think it IS important power for healers, even though you hope you never need to use it).
It probably wouldn't cause any problems to implement a 'revive' system either - so that when someone goes down, you can simply move to melee range, and use the normal 'interact' system to revive them with, say, 20% health. Make it have something like 4 second interact time, interrupted by damage.
Full f2p is nice and will certainly be able to gain more players and also easier to balance. However there is still a need to justify to players who are life subbers like you and me. There are quite a few games atm which are full f2p but that means they probably earn from players paying for gear or devices and so on but to ensure that it is really f2p, those gear should be available via grinding instead of paying. However what amount of grinding is appropriate will be hard to set. Sometimes excessive grinding will lose the players while grinding which is too low will result in players not willing to pay.
This is the most genius thing I've heard all week.
I support this.
I think you're kind of missing the meaning of F2P. F2P is marketing hype. The reality of the F2P model is generally that you can play the free demo as long as you like, but to get the full content you need to pay progressive amounts of cash to get access.
Some titles - notably some of the Perfect World games - introduce a system on top of that, where you basically have to pay a 'subscription fee' by means of making consumable items from cash shop necessary in order to complete higher level content.
F2P is really closer to 'Free to Pay' than 'Free to Play'. There are some exceptions like for example LoTRO where you truly are able to get anything and everything for free if you grind long enough - although mostly the investment is somewhere around, grinding for ten hours will net you store points worth approximately $1.. which means for the most part you don't want to grind.. but rather take the shortcut.
Most of the so called F2P games you could also categorize as P2W (Pay-To-Win) in that the more real cash you spend, the more advantage you can get in-game. In CO for example the sidekicks, premium archetypes, and various healing/buffing consumables in c-store are examples of this.
-waves hand towards the FreeForm slot-
This is the slot you're looking for.
Oh, and what Ashen said about the LTS.
The product purchased is (server-)lifetime access to the game.
They can mess around with our vet rewards, strip all the exclusive stuff, but they must still let us access the game for as long as it exists. ^This^ Sage, I like this, but...
WHERE IS REGEN?????
XD
Sorry, but that passive already needs love so bad, and you don't mention it as a healing method...
If it works for Med Nanites, I DEMAND it works for Regen :-p
An where is the problem for PWI then to make is just to Silvers ? You know .. the game is F2P and so
everyone has access to the game.
You didn't read the whole idea, now, did you?
In other words, get rid of the main (if not only) mechanics advantage that C.O. has over its competitors?
I paid for full access for server-lifetime.
Where is the problem?
Oh, nowhere, if you like visiting Sodom and Gomorrah...
Come on, you're joking, right...
That'd be a violation of the terms. Lifetime was expressly sold as for the life of the game not for a couple of months. Only way to "strip it" without any legal ramifications is to shut the game down.
Well... um. Since regen only affects yourself, you're basically asking for regen to automagically resurrect yourself every time you get ganked.
Yeah, I admit that would be a buff for regen
I'm getting flashbacks from Highlander.. you know, that drunken duel.. :rolleyes:
''You missed, sire''
-shrug- I got Regen & Rebirth... so yeah, that's basically what I said.
(Concept was "Miss Never-Stays-Down")
If the argument is to avoid wasting space on a rez (be it self or other's), I don't see why not...
Now, after that, cool-downs, number of times and all that number crunching is up for discussion, but on the principle, yeah, why not?
Heh.. that's kind of similar concept to the bestial character I made. Concept goes waaaay back in time to the ole PnP. If the concept was comparable to rebirth it could be doable yes, but the point is sortta that rebirth is more generally usable feature than resurrect - it's applicable in solo (which is most of the game's content), not some power that you just take because it's mandatory for a very specific and limited situation (that being generally the bossfights in lairs where fallen characters can't revive and get back to fight by themself). So I think it's different issue.
As a separate issue though - sure, I could see rebirth-like ability added as one-point advantage in regen. It would work very well with concept of some characters - thematically it would be natural extension of regeneration.
First took Rebirth after going in the Endbringer fight with a Soldier and a Power-Armor FreeForm without rez...
My very first experience of lock-out...
Never again!
30 minutes is long, too long!
The idea I had when I saw Sage's message is that Regen rez you, but then starts a non-healing cool-down for a while (after all, the damage from Rebirth does not negate fully Regen, and even worse it buffs the healing since you take damage), so that it stays "fair" to other powers. Could also revive with the amount of HP you would have gained from Regen.
And yeah, I also think it fits Regen's theme closely.
And what was the whole idea ? If they mess around with our rewards and stripp all exclusive stuff
what else will our LTA then be like a silver account ?
And what was the whole idea ? If they mess around with our rewards and stripp all exclusive stuff
what else will our LTA then be like a silver account ?
Something along these lines...
No I did not miss the point, no game company is going to offer anything totally free; that's not business. In fact I did use the example where you can choose to pay to cut grinding time. I also did mention about paying for the gear and devices but they can be made available if you grind long enough. To me that is already a really free model because the entirety of game content is still available if you choose not to pay but rather invests days and months to grind.
I only crammed Medical Nanites in there because I'd rather have Inventor's passive have the rez feature than Bionic Shielding, as Bionic's typically crammed into builds as a self-heal, not a heal-other. And the trigger-on-hit thing might be a bit awkward. And Inventor's another source of support for ATs, so I wanted parity.
That would give Regen a niche, though...
Wow. So simple and yet so elegantly perfect.
I take my hat off to you good sir !
non-PBAoEs are still off-center of their target and will completely miss moving targets.
Where:
I experience the misses during duels, and I can see the off-center hits when I attack training mobs in the PH.
Me: Join Date: Mar 2008 (LTS)
You: Join Date: Feb 2009
I was playing before AT's were a sparkle in any Dev's eye.
At any rate no one's opinion matters here anyhow. Dev's gonna do what Dev's already gonna do (historically speaking).
Sage, this is a fantastic idea.
Building on top of your idea, I would suggest making the revive portion on heals a 2 point advantage. Second suggestion is to have dead players fall over grasping for help (the zombie animation) with an icon over their head to indicate they can be revived. Third suggestion is to queue-prioritize groups such that they have one tank-ish toon, and one player with the revive advantage. For groups unlucky enough to have a tank or healer, scale the "difficulty" based on whats missing in some way (no healer with revive, maybe the mobs deal less damage or the mobs drop more green orbs, no tank, maybe whoever has aggro gets a defense bonus or something).
Bug: System crash.
Where it happens: Arms mod table near fusion trainer
What happens: When I attempted to drag excess components from the fusion window to my inventory I had a systems crash and had to do a hard reset.
I agree with this thought. I think 'certain' healing powers should have an advantage that will allow a teammate to be rezzed.
Heals that can be charged may rez after a full charge, and heals that can be maintained may rez after being maintained for X amount of seconds.
For me the rez power could not be justified for taking a power slot. Dying happened too infrequently, and when it did occur while fighting bosses, it was usually best for the whole team to die and regroup to rengage the enemy.
I grudgingly agree with this as well, though, I don't like the idea of having to sacrifice my healing potential, since a 2 point advantage means I could never rank that power to R3. Still, being able to rez with your heals alone sounds like an extra, and not charging anything for it might trivialize rezzes (and take them from being pointless, to being overly abundant and easy to use).
Though, I'm not sure if requiring a full charge or maintain on top of a 2 point advantage cost is necessary. Maybe one or the other, or reduce the cost to a 1 point advantage if a full charge is required.
Not joking at all. I also paid for a full lifetime (see sig), but I am willing to give up the benefits as a selfless act if it could lead to a more balanced and equally challenging game FOR EVERYONE down the road.
Keep the C store the same. And use it for primary source of revenue.
Have you ever asked. "If I were paying for a sub still what exactly would I have paid for?"
I mean look at the history of Cryptic. You have AP that cost money, Costume sets that cost money, Travel Powers that cost money, Hideouts that cost money, and ATs that cost money. So really all a sub has paid for is Tumerboys wonderful redesigns. Kitchen Sink 1, 2, and now 3. Basically if you have paid for a sub you are paying for a glorified beta test with Tumerboy's magic sprinkled on top.
Players fought to get Vibora Bay for free. They didn't feel Cryptic had done enough to the game to warrant the right to demand for a paid expansion. I miss those days. No we have grab bags and Travel powers with alternate animation or effects that cost money....even for lifers to use.
Compare this to a F2P game such as Allods, with its huge updates, added classes, mounts, and airship battles...and suddenly as a lifer I feel bad for the subbers getting ripped off. I am not saying Allods is better than Champions. I am just pointing out how much content can be made for a game where subscriptions aren't even an option. I quit playing WoW when they did the opposite and added a "c store" to their P2P game.
Back on track,
I like the new bag UI size and the tags on the side look slick.
Same boat here.
I feel it would have to be one or the other. I like the idea though of charge and maintain more than just a purchased rank.
Great idea though. Opens doors for Cryptic to add more interesting or diversified powers to replace the "wasted ones".