Pattern Ghost

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online A loot system is fine as long as anyone can find any of the loot. You only get exclusion when the loot drops from encounters that some part of the player base doesn't have access to, classic example being a casual who doesn't raid not being able to get raid loot.

Re: Why are so many people upset that Cryptic is only using the Champions IP? Actually, Cryptic created City of Heroes. NC Soft was their publisher, but has recently bought the game from the studio. I believe I read that Cryptic still has rights to their original game engine, and that an improved and updated version is the basis of Champions Online.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Odd. My browser is showing a page 193, but going to Last Page from the forum menu or clicking on > or 193 at the bottom of 192 puts me back on 192... Posting in an attempt to see if 193 exists, and possibly get there if it does. EDIT: Hmm, this post ended up on 192...but all of the above is still true. Will we ever reach the mythical land of 193??

Here's an interesting interview with Jack regarding his experiences in CoH/V: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17549 He's very candid here about the pitfalls he faced in City of Heroes. To me it implies good things to come in Champions Online.

Re: Hey Gang! Welcome, Jack! Here's some rep. Now, get back to work! =)

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online Massively needs fact checkers, though.

Re: Odd Costume Designes Yeah, I remember the capes being put in later because they weren't perfect for launch. They didn't want shoddy-looking capes. And as far as it goes, I think they have the best capes of any game I've played, hands down. So, hoping they have capes at launch. As for the other options, seems like they're going to have a much larger selection for Champions Online. One of the characters played by the Game Informer people had a machine gun pop out of a port on its shoulder, which is pretty cool.

Re: Betatesting? I just read the Game Informer article today. It may not be too far off of beta, judging from what they said. Seems the basic game is done, and they're working on classes and content. I'd guess maybe fall/winter for beta? After all, they did have two years of development time when it was MUO.

Re: Armored Suit Which would make sense if it was a secret ID. I kinda like the concept.

Re: Name that flag-suited hero! Captain Ross? Great great great (etc) grandson of Betsy? Who, you know, has a flag connection. =)

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Ahhh! I'm a little slow. I have actually visited the thread and seen later pics, but totally missed this, somehow. (Probably skipped ahead on accident.) Anyway: Looks great! As to the description, I suppose my entry was a little vague, but the end result did end up matching my mental image pretty closely, down to the hair style. I'd pictured more of a five pointed star, but that's probably the only point where the final product is "off" from my intent, so it worked out great. Thanks to both death tribble and Storn for the pic! Well done!

Re: Opinions: A 'Hero' Stealing Their Gear.....???? Is it really stealing if she's the rightful owner? If something compelled her to use the artifacts, then can that something be considered the will of the original owner in any way, whether it's a spell or another agency putting the items in the character's way? It may be that whoever dug 'em up is the thief, not your hero. =P

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What does Peewee Herman sound like sleep walking? A: Bedbugs.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished a Jim Butcher-a-Thon! I'd picked up and read Storm Front, the first Dresden File book just before my birthday. My wife picked up books 2 through 6 for my birthday, and after I downed them, I picked up 7 and 8, finishing up all the paperbacks within a week. This week, I read (several days of migraines impeding my progress) the first Codex Alera novel, Furies of Calderon. I'll pick up the other two paperbacks this weekend. Then I'll froth at the mouth until the current hardback for each series is released in paperback. Or else, I'll put it on my library wait list. I'd have to say it looks like Butcher is well on his way to becoming one of the greats in the field. He's simply a solid writer who knows how to move a story along. And that's hard to beat. Furies of Calderon was one of the few 500 page fantasy novels I've read in a while that didn't bog down. Heck, that's probably because he had the sense to keep it to 500 pages, instead of adding another 300-500 pages of bloat. If you like a good page turner, you should like Jim Butcher.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Looks like I spoke too soon... every one of my characters on Liberty except my lvl 41 were taken offline. That blows. I lost three good names, and one was one of my higher level alts. Lost names on a 20, a 19, a 12 and a couple of 8s. Lame.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Well, just reactivated. Looks like my Liberty characters all avoided the name loss. On Champion, every single character is level 6, so probably all lost their names. That actually made me laugh. So far, the only one I renamed was my little fire/fire tank, Fire-Bug. He's now Devil Bug. That's sort of cool enough in a generic way, I guess. =) Well, going to log back in and redo my keybindings and stuff, and check the rest of my characters.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Thanks for the reply, Tribal! Thanks for the article link, especially.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Hey fellow Heroes! I was thinking about reactivating my account in COH, but I had a question or two for those who are currently active. When I left, which was around Issue 3, there were a few reasons, so how have these changed, if at all, since then: 1. I left after the level cap was raised to 50. Leveling at that point was a massive experience grind, and the only missions I had available were AV missions requiring a huge group. The fights and zones were simply uninspired and boring. How's the path from the low-mid 40s to level cap looking now? Is the cap still at 50? 2. It seems like we now have something besides enhancements to spend our Influence on. Do any of these add anything to the game play? Just plain looking cool counts, here, as that's one of the nice things about CoH. 3. At the time I left, Blasters had just taken a huge cut in damage output, specifically AR/Dev blasters. What's the current state of (esp. AR/DEV) blasters? Are we able to solo higher level outdoor content again? 4. At the time I left, my tank (mid-20s or 30s, I forget; Invuln/Energy) would take about a week and a half to kill anything. Have non-fire tanks gotten any better solo ability? And that leads to... 5. Has the player base learned how to use a tank/healer/dps setup? I remember the basic atmosphere being of a bunch of soloers running around, and tanks not really being appreciated for their group role, save by a small group of people with experience in other games. While it's nice that you didn't actually have to have a tank in a lot of groups, it did make it a bit annoying to be play one in most groups. 6. One of the things that I liked was that the GMs were pretty responsive when there was a serious issue. Is the in game support still good? 7. I recall an announcement about characters on inactive accounts losing their names. Later on, but not too soon after, there was another announcement retracting the first. Did anyone lose their names? Were they high levels or were they just targeting lower level alts being used to reserve names? What's my risk of having to rename Sureshot to Player5841863? 8. Speaking of lower level alts, I do have a few I was working on. Have any lower or middle level zones been added? 9. Is there anything else you can tell me that'll make me want to rush on over to COH right this instant and sign back up?

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished the first Dresden Files novel, Storm Front the other day. Good stuff. Cool thing is the TV series and the novel's universe seem to be disparate enough that I can enjoy both on their own merits, but close enough in the essentials that I can get a good sense of double-dipping into the Dresden-verse. Here's hoping they renew the show! In the meantime, I think I'll be picking up more of the novels.

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? You could have lost that post too. You know, the problem I have is that you simply nitpick too much. I post a quick, rough outline in the middle of the night, in a hurry, and you come back with this extravagant, overbearing response. I don't care enough to go nitpicking over some crap I typed out in the middle of the night, so I'll try to restate what I was thinking. Maybe that'll work better. I suggest that most people (that includes NPCs that will be in combat with PCs as well as PCs) in the campaign world should have a 3-5 speed. Exceptional fighters, like superheroic martial artists should be able to hit 6. 7 or above is the realm of speedsters. I don't expect players to run agents, so nobody is going to be taking SPD 3, the value is there because it's a common number that will be seen in game. PCs will usually be from 4-6, with most players opting for 5-6, regardless of their concepts. If you make them justify higher scores, then they will. Most games run with 4-6 SPD, and have for years, with 5 and 6 being average. That doesn't mean the characters are average, it means that people like playing on the higher end of the scale. That's typical for published material, and if you set a well trained agent at 3, elite military normals at around 4, then you're not seeing PCs that are totally untouchable in terms of SPD. As long as most PCs fall within 3-4 pts of SPD from each other, you don't have problems with people getting bored waiting on their turn to act. That range kind of splits the difference between Marvel's pretty low stats type of campaign to DCs very inflated stats type of campaign. As far as DEX, who cares? Seriously. You should be monitoring CV, skill rolls, and any other result that DEX contributes to, not DEX itself. If someone wants to make Captain America with a 20 DEX and a ton of CSLs, Lightning Reflexes, etc, and someone else wants to cut to the chase and just give him a 30 DEX, does it really matter? Are aesthetics of the character sheet as important as reasoning from effect and simply buying the end result? Not in my opinion. Anyway, I'm done beating the dead horse. Hugh, you keep on fighting the good fight man, I'm out of here.

Re: Harry Dresden I'm surprised nobody chimed in for Bob written up as an AI level computer yet.

Re: Are all the good names really taken? Just thought of one: Long Arm. (as in ... of the law)

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? I think that generally, comics characters fall into a 2-5 speed range, with a few 6s hanging out there. So, Bob here would fall into the 2 range and have to work his way up to 3. Nothing wrong with that, but you just described a character concept more fitting for a joke character or sidekick than what Champions has always aimed for, which is more mid-lister, could have his own title type of character. Eh, it was late when I typed that description, but yeah, he'd have to be a combat veteran to get there. Most superheroes fall into SPD 4 just by virtue of having survived through many issues of their own or others' comics. I'm pretty sure every RPG I've read has had a statement assuming the DEFAULT power level is designed to allow for some experience. Again, if you want to buck that trend, and save some points, that's fine. You've now got Bob with fire powers and no combat skills. But you can also afford to buy things like AOEs that still have decent base DCs in them, or special attacks like maybe a heat attack in an area that impedes everyone without the appropriate life support. You don't need to be SPD 4 to keep up with all of the average supers who are sitting at SPD 4, but you'll probably get up to SPD 4 with experience. Also, that was reflexes OR alertness. I'm not looking back at my OP now to see what I typed, but if I didn't make that clear, my bad. My intention was to point out that you generally don't have to be a physical powerhouse to achieve SPD 4 in my way of thinking. A high level of situational awareness allows one to anticipate future actions, giving more effective actions. Let's face it, I can certainly attack someone more than twelve times in twelve seconds, but the intent of rolling attacks based on SPD is to show the number of effective attacks someone can toss out in that timeframe. Your brain has as much to do with your effectiveness as your body does. That's why I was pointing to experience and alertness bridging the gap from SPD 3 to SPD 4. SPD 4 should not be given out like candy. It points to someone who is in some way special. If you want to make a physically unremarkable hero with a speed less than 4, that's OK. You need to sit down and think about what SPD really means before making that decision though. Then give Bob SPD 3. It just gives you more points to budget for other things. You're using an example of a guy with NO combat training and NO combat experience, and you want to use him in a genre which has a heavy focus on combat? Ok, if you want to define it that way, you can play it that way. I think most experienced heroes will fall out around SPD 4 if you benchmarked them. Taking a less experienced hero and starting him around SPD 3 makes sense. I think the problem you're having here is that the average SPD of official write ups falls around SPD 5 rather than SPD 4. I've never said a campaign average should be SPD 5. You just tossed that in. Maybe that hypothetical GM didn't think things through? I'd say Johnny Storm is probably a SPD 4 character. In general, I think Marvel comics are a lower-DEX/SPD campaign than, say DC, where you have a ton of enhanced physical capabilities guys. So, I don't get what your point is here? That you agree with me? Or that Johnny Storm should be SPD 5 or needs to be SPD 5 to compete in a Champions environment. If it's the latter, then you'll notice I said the major balancing point is CV, not SPD. With all of hero's combat options and power customization, you can be hideously effective at lower SPD values. Just because a Viper Agent and a Hero both have SPD 3 doesn't mean the Viper agent actually has a chance to beat the Hero. Yeah, basically. Do you want games with a huge SPD spread? That can be pretty unbalancing. Remember, the default human level gives you three values: 2, 3, and 4. Since you want your heroes to be a bit more effective than standard baseline humans, you nudge your chart to 3-5. You allow for shticks, such as "best of the best" type Martial Artists to go for a 6. In general, most speedsters are fine at speed 6. You could also just go with a range of 2-4 and use Hero to model combat effectiveness differently. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THAT YOU ARE WORKING WITHIN A RANGE OF NUMBERS THAT DOESN'T UNBALANCE THE GAME. You can't do that effectively if you open up all values on the SPD chart to players.* Usually when people start a sentence with "Oh, but..." on a message board, they're either being sarcastic or talking down to someone. I'd advise you that neither is conducive to productive discourse. Of I could call you a jackass. You pick. I'll help you out here, since you are having trouble wrapping your mind around the concept of "major villain." A major villain is capable of challenging an entire super team. In order to have enough actions to challenge a team, they'll need a higher SPD. You don't seem capable of defining SPD as a measure of anything other than PHYSICAL prowess. That's not my problem, it's yours. He most likely doesn't move as fast, but he probably has more chances to take EFFECTIVE actions within 12 seconds. Speedsters on the Flash's level don't work well in games, period. The concept is horribly overpowered. If you look at a more balanced approach to the problem, such as how the Flash is portrayed in the DC Animated Universe, then I'd say THAT Flash probably has a lower SPD score than THAT Darkseid. So, what's your argument exactly? That the martial artists get hit less often than the non martial artists? Pull your head out of your behind for a second and think about the question at hand. What is the OCV of a well trained agent? More than a couch potato, more than the local police, probably on par with elite military units. What's an elite military unit capable of in a cinematic setting such as a comic book? The answer: A hell of a lot more than a real person with the same job. That's a BASE CV from DEX of about 5. Add in a few CSLs with their weapons, and it goes up. I'm assuming that most agents have training, maybe not in your campaign. Also, let's look at who gets hit and who doesn't get hit. You say Iron Man gets hit a lot? No kidding. Who'd have imagined a guy wearing the most sophisticated suit of ARMOR on the planet, a guy whose moniker includes "Invincible," doesn't bother to fight defensively against mooks! Same for your other examples. HOWEVER, if Iron Man DOESN'T want to be hit, he's pretty damned good at NOT being hit, even by superhuman opponents. The suit does enhance his reflexes and speed. It's pretty easy to say so and so gets hit by agents or mooks all the time, but you don't bother to think that maybe they get hit because they simply don't care? You didn't think when you made that example that the martial artists don't get hit as much simply because they can't take the hit? What is the point of your argument? I say keep your SPD range to about a normal spread of three with some outliers to account for character shticks and to closely monitor your CVs, and you come back with anger that you can't play Bob the Flaming Couch Potato concept? Is that concept even in genre? What an utterly useless contribution to the endless debate. Try again, with less vitriol and sarcasm. *Edit: I'm going to go ahead and note that people do, in fact, make the wider SPD range approach work. It's certainly not easy, nor in my example (which my whole original post was based on being a statement of my view of things) really necessary to model a comic style supers universe.

Re: Are all the good names really taken? I'd look more away from size related names, as those are going to be taken usually. Two part names incorporating more abstract concepts are probably more productive to brainstorm with. What are his goals, both immediate and long term? Obviously, hiding from Viper is one. If he's going to hide in plain sight and continue to adventure as a costumed vigilante, then what's his reason? Is he seeking redemption, or to uphold some principle? If he's looking to be a Bastion of Justice... well there's a name right there. (Marvel has just plain Bastion.) If he's just looking to hide in plain sight with no higher goal, then maybe Elephant (as in, "...in the room." What are his interests? What did he do on his downtime between thuggery back in the day? What are his current interests? What about his occupation in his secret ID? What kind of neighborhood does he come from? What ethnic background? (And remember, generic white folks have ethnicities too.) How did he get involved in crime in the first place? Religious leanings? More generic adjectives and nouns may be worth exploring, though many of the catchy ones are taken already.

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? Hmm, the Topic That Lived. I'm pretty sure I said this before. If not in this iteration of the board, then one of the prior ones. Here's how I see it: Heroes are defined by how far they are from the norm in comics, largely. You can go from godling level to gritty pulp hero level and still be loosely in the superheroic genre. Of course, publishers love to mix and match the two, so that doesn't help us draw a baseline. Heck, the publishers do all kinds of crazy stuff, like have a guy with a medium acrobat's build flip a limo over. (A panel from Daredevil, don't know who was sleeping at the wheel on that one, so to speak.) You can look in the comics and pick a lot of things to use as a baseline to model your stats. When it comes to fighting ability, I like to look at relative performance. To me, the raw numbers don't mean as much as the spread of numbers you have to work with. Whether you aim for close to humanity, or a more lofty power level, SPD generally ends up in a narrow range anyway. It's CV that needs to be monitored more closely. DEX isn't relevant, other than using it as a baseline for CV. If you want to go first, you can buy limited DEX with Lightning Reflexes anyway, and going first doesn't help much if the other guy has obscene CV. Since most superheroic RPGs focus on the middle of the road power level hero, with an eye on the lower end of middle for starting characters, that's where I'd go baseline. For SPD, I'd say that this spread hits that ballpark: 2: Joe Blow. You can achieve the illustrious speed of 2 simply by walking around. 3: Jocks, Soldiers, Generic Agents, leet FPS players (but only in game). You get a 3 SPD through not only good coordination, and being in good shape, but also through maintaining a high level of alertness. This represents the ability to quickly size up a situation and act decisively, two things most people can't do. 4: Elite Athletes and Military. Take great reflexes, extreme alertness and then add on a huge heap of experience under fire. You won't find any non-combatants here, though you may see someone like a jockey or Indie car driver at 3 SPD. You don't train for 4 SPD, you earn it. 5: Veteran combatants, superhuman physiques/reactions. Robin Hood or a cinematic martial artist would probably fall here. So would super humans who have slightly boosted physical or mental capabilities. 6: Veteran combatants with extensive training, or superhuman with a heightened reflexes shtick. Basically, the majority of comic book martial artists fall in here. Cap, Bats, Iron Fist, you name it. You also get combat experienced and/or trained supers with physical enhancements, like Beast, Nightcrawler, and probably Spider-Man. 7+: Your SPD is a defining aspect of your character. In most games, this would be reserved for speedster types or major villains. So, most PCs are going to be 4-6 SPD. Slide the scale down to 3-5, and they are more vulnerable to mass agent attacks. As far as CV.... well, I've been up all night so I don't have the math handy. But a wide CV spread will do more damage to a game than a wide DEX spread. When I have a problem with an official write up, it's usually the obscene number of CSLs on the character sheet that bugs me rather than the DEX. What if you set out some benchmarks and someone makes a character to concept? Let's say I make The Marvelous Mop, Janitor by Day, Crime Fighter by Night. A strange accident involving cleaning fluids and a green monkey gave the Mop the power to absorb water and launch sudsy attacks at his enemies. As a Janitor, he's had no special physcial training. He's never taken an interest in sports. He's been a hero for a while, though, so has some combat experience under his belt. So, I give him SPD 2 and DEX 15, with two levels in his suds MP. So, CV 7 (depending on how he splits the levels) and SPD 2. Well.... You'll find that most comic book janitors turned crime fighters don't suck quite that bad. The character is seriously out of line with what the publishers have shown us to be the capabilities of a mid-list hero. Even with a SPD 3, he'd only qualify as an agency thug. Most superheroes either have innate abilities that overcompensate for their lack of training and experience (Spider-Man, for example), or have decent training, whether formal or learned on the job. PC heroes are assumed to be somewhat seasoned at the default point level, I think. There's nothing wrong with modeling an even lower CV and SPD range, but it's not that mid-list standard Champions has had all these years. The more you close the gap between the heroes and the SPD 2 / DEX 10 couch potatoes, the further you move away from the mainstream four color genre. I think at the de facto default levels, masses of agent level characters can't simply be shrugged off by most characters, especially if the agents have halfway decent gear and a sense of tactics.