Radiac wrote:

I like the idea of different A.I. for different badguys, I think it's so good it's probably absolutely necessary in fact.
I also think the A.I. should be taken into account when designing the badguys and their whole deal from the beginning. Like Devouring Earth in some cases should be less cagey and more stimulus-response and the Knives of Artemis should be way more cunning, Freaks should be intelligent, but somewhat reckless. The Clockwork, arguably, should have ignored damage entirely and stayed in the Burn patch because they didn't feel pain.

This would be nice to see, yes, and I do have a feeling that MWM also wants to go this route. That does not mean enemies will not be or become predictable, of course, but at least not every NPC will behave the same (with a few exceptions).

As for the standing in fire bit, one has to remember that for many enemies that may be the best way to fight the super. Sure, it'll hurt, but it will stop hurting if they beat them down. Besides, they would not have stayed in that line of work for long if they were inclined to run away every time someone with powers showed up. Which is not to say that there could not or should not be powers that kick in the "nuh-uh, ain't walkin' through that" response, even in zombies.

As for the Freakshow, in particular, I always had the sense that they had a love-hate relationship with pain.

Psycho Jas wrote:

Minotaur wrote:
CoH was not an easy game at the beginning, try doing the early version of the hero respec trial with a team that needed the respecs :)

I did, I played the game in its very very early stages. That wasn't the respec TF being difficult, thats the players being half brain dead, and the fact that its brand new to many people, they don't know what to do. It wasn't a skill that the player base developed into suddenly being able to do a respect TF in under an hour, it was just knowledge... Understanding how to do it.
Also lmao at the beginning it was just ridiculous easy, no aggro cap, the most ridiculous level SK cap, no AoE cap, pre ED. Just stop it man, stop.
Edited by VDG [5.14.14]

What you're forgetting is that most people who did the respec in the early stages, needed the respec because their builds were terrible. Example - we didn't have the numbers, I didn't read the boards then, my invul tank had a choice of a toggle or a passive for S/L res, I figured the toggle would run me out of end, so I took the passive. The mobs were much bigger, higher level, and spawned in much faster in the early days. By the end we could do a wipe everything at +3x8 in 40 minutes with a team of 5 or 6 without really trying and it would have been much quicker if the mobs in the reactor spawned in faster.

I think if there are going to be respecs, they ought to be available in the cash shop for money. and if there is content you can do to get one for free, it should be something you can do solo, maybe like the Warburg Nukes or the jellomen, i.e. something that you can either try to do solo or form a team and try to do as a team, but not a Trial or TF that requires a team of a given size. For the record, I'm not saying it should be tied to a PVP zone, just that ti should be something you can get by soloing for it.

syntaxerror37 wrote:

LaughingAlex wrote:
Yeah but it wasn't like every team you had was the same exact thing every single time where you had healers healing the tanks who take all the hits while damage dealers and healers both get largely ignored due to some often silly tank mechanic

just to be clear, I associate repetitive to what you are doing, the content itself rather than how you are doing it. I think we were just looking at it differently.
Psycho Jas wrote:
CoX didn't have a single piece of content that was challenging or even required you to have both eyes open or even more than a finger on a keyboard, or even to be conscious for that matter to play it. Obviously a holy trinity (lol) wouldn't be required. Please don't pretend that there was ever randomness and unexpected turns of events when you had a team of random members with mix and match builds because we all know that nothing was hard to do, the outcome was still the same, mobs with 1 attack who are auto targetted (yay! for never missing! o wait random rng bye) being steam rolled.

The amount of players I saw face plant would seem to indicate otherwise. Then there were the groups people actively complained about being too hard (CoT and Malta for instance). Was CoH the most challenging MMO ever, no, it wasn't. But to say it wasn't remotely challenging is equally false.

One thing I noticed in CoH was that I died just as often as any other MMORPG.

See, people always run the ragged edge of how much they can get away with. This game was no different. The players rise up to risk right up to the edge, taking on as much as they can handle.

It's up to the game designers to throw in unexpected things, wandering groups (lots if necessary) and so on to make a static spawn point be a little more than an isolated speed bump for your group to bump over.

Think about it, they can open an almost arbitrarily large can of whoopass if they want to -- how many "scout" NPCS are not actually scouting? What if they ran back and alerted every group they ran past, or the entire base, and weren't liimited to the "game design" concept that you stupidly follow after them hoping you triggered groups they ran through?

Oh there's a lot they could do bumping up to "+4/+8" beyond just scaling the numbers and toughness of the monsters.

Here's an idea: Have a stat visible on your "info" page when people get info on you, that says what difficulty setting you averaged when leveling/playing. In CoH terms, say, "+3.1/+4.7"

Now what was that about "easy mode" again? Lol

I think it comes down to "gamers" vs "Superhero rp'ers".

And I hate to say "vs" because it's not an intentional "vs". BUT, I think most serious, long term CoH players were Superhero rp'ers (and I don't mean standing around for hours dong creepy ERPing, I mean the joy of playing a Superhero that you made up) rather than "gamers" who were in it for the competition and game mechanics. And I think most "serious" gamers just laughed at CoH (often on our own chat after F2P came out).

Now, of course the more FUN the game mechanics are the better. But, taking Superman and trying to cram him down into Call of Duty mechanics just doesn't work, and public metrics to give fuel for crap-talking just doesn't fit either.

I never level up a Regen scrapper because the DEVs never added the Damage Buff that Blaster got.. even if it was not as Good as it was for Blasters... but still should have been there. Fiery Aura had Fiery Embrace, where was the Regens Kill or BE KILLED balance? And dont say, Pick a Primary that had allot of Mitigation! >:(

Izzy wrote:

I never level up a Regen scrapper because the DEVs never added the Damage Buff that Blaster got.. even if it was not as Good as it was for Blasters... but still should have been there. Fiery Aura had Fiery Embrace, where was the Regens Kill or BE KILLED balance? And dont say, Pick a Primary that had allot of Mitigation! >:(

I only ever played regen scrappers. In exchange for a crappy secondary, defense-wise, you had in effect a much higher sustained DPS than other scrapper classes.

For the most part, you only had to worry about the alpha strikes of AVs, which one-shotted you while all other scrappers survived (reflexes, IIRC, was a roll of the dice, either you dodged or you died like a regen).

So that was our upside -- continuous high DPS, but we had to be very careful against large-alpha strike AVs, and endurance drainers nullified us as easily as any other AT.

They also nerfed /regen fairly early on -- your health regen with all toggles on was more or less as fast as Rest was. Only big stuff could out-damage it, and even then just leap away for a few seconds then literally right back in. It was awesome, but I admit OP'd.

It probably made sense, math-wise (the ultra-high healing rate let you stand theoretically toe-to-toe just as long as any normal-mitigation secondary.) But mildly clever gameplay (such as a quick leap out to avoid hits for a few seconds) rapidly put you at the top of the survivability curve.