Posi spills at PAX

[captainspud]

Again, I only care HOW you share them. When you're stating an opinion, make that clear. The bulk of your opinions and suggestions are stated as fact. It's either sloppy, or intentionally sneaky. Either way, cut it out. Please.

[MJB]

*puts moderator hat on*

Keep it civil gentlemen or I lock it.

*takes off moderator hat*

-MJB

[captainspud]

*flashes Meejub*

[Verfall]

*flashes Meejub*

Wow. You should hand out magnifying glasses before you do that Spud, otherwise the effect just isn't there  :thumbup:

Anyway, back on topic.

You showed the ascendants shield EC. Unfortunately that shield is far from what one could functionally use as a shield set. The closest in-game we have now is Blue Steel over in KR, and the shield he carries is the main reason you don't see him show up anywhere else except in mission clues. The ascendants shield could only be used in my idea of a Hibernate-esque tier 9, which is almost exactly how the ascendants use it.

I truly believe we're not going to see actual physical shields, for much of the same reasons spud mentioned. I really think they're going to go the USAgent route and add in a colored energy shield, and than go with a reflexes based defensive set. It'll probably be bright red and  possibly not even round shaped, maybe more kite style. They don't have to account for weight issues, and it fits with most animations. The problem arises, however, when you look at Katana scrappers. Since the redid the animations for them many moons ago, a character now wields the katana with both hands. Broadsword scrappers and mace and axe tankers don't suffer this problem. Than you have the issue of the dual blade attack set. It's going to look awfully stupid wielding 2 blades with a shield strapped to your arm. At this point you're going to have to dismiss shield defense from every AT that gets dual blades. My assumption is scrappers and stalkers would be the only sets to get dual blades, since they aren't very tanky or brutey even.

Perhaps that's my biggest complaint with the selection of sets. Willpower is fine and dandy, you can cram that into all 4 melee AT's really. It's the choice of dual blades that really throws things off. A 3rd set should have been selected for the tanks and brutes. For tanks an easy fix to this would be finally giving them the electric sets, and for brutes finally giving them some of the weapon sets. Redraw be damned, I'm sure plenty of people don't care if redraw costs them a few fury points. Only your hardcore min-maxxers are going to care, and I'm willing to bet they're vastly outnumbered. Besides, they're too busy making fire/kin trollers. By giving tanks two new primaries you fix the disparity in numbers there. Brutes would finally get the weapon sets they've been begging for. Stalkers and scrappers get something they obviously voted heavily for and natural based origin characters finally get a set to call their own. Right there you'd have a mostly win situation, with only a few detractors of which there are always some.

But I'll say it again, the lack of a real street fighting set is mind-blowingly stupid. The fact you can't make a punching/invul or willpower scrapper is practically an injustice.

[B A D]

I'm dissapointed in the choice of dual blades. You can't tell me Street fighting would have been more difficult to animate. We already have Katana, Broadsword, and uber l33t ninja blade. I'd like a combat set that involves less kicky! choppy! and more "punching you into next week" flavor.

[Viking]

To quote a post of Positron's on the forums:

Dual Blades was the winner of the "offensive powerset" poll. Psionic Weaponry was second, and Street Fighting was a distant third (but strangely had huge forum support in the discussions).

The winner of the "defensive powerset" poll was... Shields. And we did try to implement this for Issue 11. The only problem was to make Dual Blades as cool as possible, that left us without the time to get Shields done in time for the release. Shields is the single most complicated powerset we will ever do. The amount of animations it involves is staggering. But we DO KNOW you want it. It is on the list of things to get into the game!

Willpower was second place, and a lot simpler animation-wise. Castle had some really cool ideas for it, so it got the greenlight. (Third place was Growth, another troublesome-in-the-engine powerset).

So there you have it. I expanded upon the troubles of Shields a little at PAX, so those of you who caught me there got the full story on that, and probably shared it elsewhere in the forums that I haven't read yet.

(Underlined emphasis mine.)

I expect that's about as close to the source, and as detailed a response, as we are likely to get.  The Devs have indicated the results of their poll for first, second and third choices by public voting.  The voting mechanism itself may have been flawed, but the reported results back their choices for new powersets.

Now, I may feel that certain Devs may have told less than the whole truth at times, or said something that would only seem true for a set of definitions that only the Devs held.  But I've never been given cause to believe that a Dev would lie - that is, knowingly say something that flat-out isn't so.

[captainspud]

If they released Street Fighting, I would immediately reroll Captain Spud and replay him to 50. Badges, merits... the lot of it, bedamned.

[BlueBard]

Poor, ignorant BlueBard (oh, how I love picking on BlueBard.) reads your posts, and they fill his little head with terrible lies. You're BREAKING him, and all the others like him. You're breaking their brains.

For the record, I'm not offended.  (Which probably annoys Spud more than a little. Which gives ME a bit of perverse entertainment.  Better luck next time, Spud.)  ;)

I AM completely ignorant of 3D and game engine design, and I AM fascinated by Spud's description of what it takes.  I actually agreed with Spud (gasp!) that incorporating shields would be very very difficult, but based on a woefully incomplete knowledge of 3D graphics design and my own limited experience on the user end of various games.  I'd go so far as to say that Spud wouldn't have elaborated on the difficulty without EC's remarks, so I am indebted to you both!

As to being broken... shoot, I won't dispute that, but EC didn't do it. :D

So gentlemen, more give and take please.  I'm learning interesting things as a result.  (Just don't annoy the mods to do it, 'kay?)

[MJB]

What would be the difference between "Martial Arts" and "Street Fighting"?

-MJB

[B A D]

PUNCHING.

We no punch with the kicky choppy.

Punching, elbowing, kneeing to the head, more punching, eye gouging, pimp slapping, even more punching, etc.

Any form of fighting that doesn't come from  the  GEACPS .

[El Condor]

Punching, elbowing, kneeing to the head, more punching, eye gouging, pimp slapping, even more punching, etc.

I want...METAL FOLDING CHAIRS!!  :D

Seriously, though, I think this thread points to how maxxed out the game has become.  There's only so much they can reasonably add over the existing code.  >ahem< As Spud pointed out earlier, it's time to take stock and see CoX for what it's done.  Kind of like "The Little Engine That Could" - 3+ plus years now, in the shadow of all that fantasy stuff, and a subscription base that, depending on who you believe, has either stayed steady or ticked up over the last couple of issues. Not bad at all, and I appreciate it, too, being a first-year player, that they continue to at least try to bring new and interesting content to a game that must be a 300 lb gorilla to code these days.

My opinion is that holding out hope that any one monumental change will revolutionize the game is asking too much of this franchise.  I, for one, will try to enjoy any new tweaks they add, then see what the Marvel MMO will offer us.

That being said, I vote for street-fighting next!

...and folding chairs.

the other EC

[B A D]

Per second quarter results ( I9 I believe) the subscription rate has increased. And that doesn't take into account the goodness that is I10.

And COX is kinda like the "Infinity engine" games that Bioware put out in teh ninetys. I still love those.

The exact quote from their press release:

By game title, sales in the quarter for Lineage recorded $27.6 million, Lineage II $34.7 million, City of Heroes/City of Villains $6.9 million, and Guild Wars $8.9 million. Lineage and Lineage II sales dropped 16% and 2%, respectively, and City of Heroes/City of Villains increased by 7%.[/color]

[Viking]

Well, I'm still holding out for chainsaws as a new Brute-only powerset.

[Kommando]

What would be the difference between "Martial Arts" and "Street Fighting"?

-MJB

Its the reason I took Dark Melee when I made Krimson instead of MA.  I didn't want him to be yet another ninja.  At least with DM if you take the right powers it looks like your beating the baddies down.

[RTTingle]

BAB has had a lot to say lately in regards to dual blades, shields, and willpower animations.  Heres the latest...

hmmm been thinking why shields would be so hard. they would have to rework most of the animations for all of the sets except maybe BS.

Broadsword doesn't get a free pass either. The biggest hurdle for Shields is that the default combat stance that all of our power animations are based on doesn't accommodate having a shield equipped on the left arm. When we looked into how many animations we'd need to create modified duplicates of we ended up with a list of 102 animations. Take that list and multiply it by two as everything needs a standing and a flying version. Then take chunks of that list and multiply it by 3, as some animations are unique to each of the 3 basic player rigs. By contrast, Dual Blades, which has completely new animations for every single power, has required 23 animations. Willpower, zero.

And that's with restricting certain powerset combos. We can't have Katana/Shield scrappers or Shield/Dual Blade tankers for instance. Any left wield, dual wield, or 2 handed powersets have to be restricted with a Shield set. Sets like Stone Melee that have a couple of powers that use a two handed swing for their stone mallet would have to use a different animation instead.

Lots of great info in that chunk there and answers to quite a few questions some of use had over here.

Lets see, thats 102x2=204x1.33=271.32 Assuming a good chuck is less than half, but more than a quarter... that would be 271 animations roughly.  Dual blades is 23.  Willpower is 0.  We all pretty much figured willpower had none anyways, so.  :P

3 questions for you BaBs will the duel blades use the constipated Assassin Strike animation and does adding weapons like this for brutes means you guys finally fixed the redraw fury bug? More weapons for brutes to follow then?

1) Only for your character. What was his name again?
2) There is no weapon redraw/fury bug that I'm aware of. If there were the Undead Slaying Axe, Nemesis Staff, Blackwand, and any of the dozens of weapon temp powers that a Brute can pick up over their career would cause this. There's literally no difference between them and weapon powersets other than the model in your character's hands. I have a level 50 Brute and never noticed any issues with Fury and weapon powers.
3) Don't see why not. I'm not sure why Brutes didn't originally get access to any weapon sets. Maybe it's a concept thing with Fury. Maybe Posi and Castle want to gauge how successful Dual Blades is for Brutes before going through the effort of porting something like Mace over to them as well. That's not really my call, totally up to those guys.

I like BAB's humor.  Heh.  Interesting bit about the "fury bug" that some people complain about.  Never played the AT, so I'm not aware of the issue.  Some people say it is, some say it isn't.  Sounds BAB is taking a guess in assuming if it is in there, its intended.  That'll cause a mini riot ;P

Umm....heres a VERY easy way to get around your problem. BackAlleyBrawler...

Make the shields smaller and fit on the forearms. This lets people still fight normally and in normal stances, while also allowing the character to use special shield type moves.

That would be a lot simpler to do, but also exactly not what we feel most players would want from a Shield powerset. We could cheap out and just say that Shields are really bucklers or glorified bracers, but really don't think that would go over very well.

Your thinking of shields as "captain america" and thats it...instead of thinking of all the other way shields can exist.

It's partially drawing from comics but also just a defensive complement to all of our medieval weapons. There's a big draw for people who are playing Broadsword, Axe, Mace to have a Shield defense set to couple that with.

We want to do it right, and that's just going to take some time to do.

Hmmmm... sounds like energy shields aren't being considered.  Sorry Verfall.  :(  I kinda' dug the idea in its own little way.  I hope the shields don't have an overly fantasy feel to them.  Ugh.  Ugh.  Ugh.
I still fancy the idea of a shield that would expand with sliding panels for certain animations and shrink when not in active use.  For some reason, I swear the Ascendant shields did that.  Could be imagining things though. 

Lots of great info from BAB the last 24 hours.

RTT

[Viking]

If I had to guess at why Brutes didn't get weapon powersets from the get-go (and, in fact, I do have to guess), I'd imagine that it's because several of the weapon sets have slow animations.  Broadsword, Axe, and Mace immediately leap to mind.  Fury depends on attacks firing off and being received.  If a Brute's attack powers have lengthier animation times compared to others, this will hamper the generation and maintaining of Fury.

[BlueBard]

Ditto per your response to overly medieval shields, RTT.  Gads, don't we have enough Barbarians, Knights, and Elves running around?  I thought this was a super hero game.  Men and women in tight spandex.

I swear I'll gag if they try to shove medieval shields down our throats.  But I suppose I might as well accept the inevitable.  {Sigh}

Sounds like Spud was right... if they try to do shields it will suck up most of their creative energy for a whole issue.  Yuck.

[Durothill]

hmm most of what i would want to say has already been said, i would add though that just because you see an NPC doing or wearing something in game does not mean it would be any easier to code it for PC characters.
secondly I am happy to (finally!) be getting another melle set... do i wish it wasn't lethal damage and in specific sword based? yes I do but i like that they are giving me something new to play with especially as they seem to be promising some interesting play options with it. And given this i'm fairly sure scrappers are due for a flashy elemental based set next :P.
On a side note I totally agree about the infinity engine, i would still play a game based on that engine it was perfect for what it was designed for and aged remarkably well!

[Midnight]

What would be the difference between "Martial Arts" and "Street Fighting"?

-MJB

Street Fighting, at least in my mind, equals DC's Wildcat. The old one. Yeah.

Ahunno. Being one of the guys who's run over two dozen toons into respectable level ranges, I've still got a lot of builds that I want to experience. Squids still don't take my imagination and I have yet to get a controller to 30. Villains is practically a new game for me, because everything after level 35 I've only played as a sidekick.

And yet, I'm still bored. Why? Because I've played the damn thing for two years and need an alternative once in a while. Right now, it's the Tabula Rasa beta (which is frustrating), Counter Strike (which is even more frustrating) and playing guitar (#%$^@%).

The pendulum swings. I run some new shiny up 20+ levels, get bored and go do something else for three weeks. Then I do it again. And again.

To quote Shakespeare, "The fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars, but in ourselves..."

[BlueBard]

I can relate.  Alt-itis is the main reason why I don't have a single toon over level 24, though I finally have a few in their 20's.

Aside from the desire to tinker, a few other things contribute to that problem.

Some of the builds... heck, most of them... really aren't 100% satisfying to play in comparison with my concept of the character (how I want them to play).  And yeah, it's a personal problem.  But it's a personal problem that would be less problematical if I could customize toons how I want as opposed to the limitations imposed by the game.  A wider selection of powersets might help, but those seem to be slow in coming.

Levelling.  I live for getting a new power.  Enhancement slots just don't thrill me, though I appreciate the necessity.  The higher my character's level is, the slower my advancement.  Lower level characters get powers faster.  I just naturally follow the carrot.  The push to 14 to get that fast travel is one effective lure.  The push to 20 to get effective powers, capes and an extra costume slot is another.  After that?  I don't know enough to have a strong motivation.  Playing a squid isn't sufficient incentive for me to hit 50.

Endurance.  I hate-hate-hate having to plan my characters around Stamina.  I've only gotten Stamina on one character so far.  I have to give up powers I want just to be able to keep up my energy levels, and along the way I have to spend half my efforts managing endurance level and giving up slots for end reduction.  It's way past time that the devs addressed this, in my opinion.  As far as I'm concerned many of the attack and defense powers need their end costs reduced by at least 1/4.  That, or make the enemies run out of end as fast as I do.  Or make Stamina available before level 20.  If anything finally drives me away, frustration with this will be way up there on my list of reasons.

Time & Availability.  I should have done at least one TF by now, but I don't want to do it as part of a pick-up team with folks I don't know and haven't played with.  I don't usually have 3-4+ hours to kill without interruption, unless it's when everyone else with a shred of sanity is in bed.  And it's not fair to start a TF if I don't know I have the time to finish it.  I know I will do it sooner or later and then I'll be kicking myself for not doing one before.