[MUD-Dev] CoH

[darksuit]

"Michael Hartman" wrote:

> Enhancements: There is virtually zero choice here. For example,
> every attack power gets 1 accuracy and 5 damage, or 6 damage for
> blasters with targeting drone. That's it. The fact that you CAN
> gimp yourself with exceptionally bad choices (not slotting an
> attack power in this manner) is not a meaningful choice.

 If you have a attack power and the only thing you can slot is a
 damage enchancment, sure you might do that. But that would really
 slow you down over all. And would not work at all for most of the
 other types of characters.

For instance on my Tankers Temp Invulnerbility, I might place any
combonation of Endurance Reduction, Damage Resitance, or Time
Recharage. Now agreed it would be silly to place a time recharge on
a power that has a down time of .01 second. but finding a balance
between Damage Reduction and Endurance Reduction is all in what
makes more sense for your playing style.

My War Mace powers are not all about damage either, since some of
them have very long Time Recharge rates, I have to wiegh the balance
of Accuracy, Damage and Time reduction on each of the powers. Some
of them are naturally more accurate, and other are higher
damage. Damage alone will do you no good if you can't hit the broad
side of a barn.

> Every 5 levels you upgrade from X to X+5. If you take a few extra
> seconds to sell loot in the right shop, you never have to make
> choices as to which things you will upgrade. You'll have plenty of
> money. After level 30, even if you rarely sell loot, you'll have
> plenty of money. You'll almost never use a found enhancement after
> level 15 (if not earlier) because the odds are SLIM it is for your
> origin, slimmer that it is a type you need, and even SLIMMER that
> it is high enough level to be useful. No matter what level mobs
> you are fighting, the level of the drops is affected by your
> character level. That's incredibly silly. There's no reward for
> fighting hard mobs.

This is most certain not true. I have used and found enchancements
after level 15. In fact at the End of a Story Arc mission you will
almost always get an enchanment that is your level of the highest
type that you can use DO(Dual Origin) or SO (Single Origin). It has
been this way since Beta.

I do also believe that the reward for fighting the high level mobs
is the increased experience. The experience chart is from what I can
tell loosely based on the D20 system.  The higher Level of a
creature or villian that you beat results in a greater amount of XP.

I have also found that Scrappers and Tankers who are envolved in
melee combat tend to get more pulls than the classes such as
blasters and controllers. While grouped my Tanker will regularly get
a 5 to1 pull of goods. This is with a Blaster and a Controler in a
Three Person group.

When I do get a pull while in a group that I know that others can
use I will just give them the enchancement or inspiration. I would
rather give the Enchancement to someone who could use it right then
and there, than hold on to it and have it eat up a slot that I will
just be filling in the next battle.

> As I have noted previously, the system is exceptionally depressing
> because as soon as you upgrade your enhancements (which have the
> same effect as the ones you had at level 1) you now face an
> average 6% decay in potency each time you gain a level. By the 4th
> level of 5 in an upgrade cycle, you are 24% weaker than you were 4
> levels ago. Boy, that's fun- gaining levels to get weaker.

I have never had my enchancement go lower the white on me. Its
really easy to keep green =)

> Tactical Combat: Ok, you've got to tell us how far you've gotten
> into the game. CoH has fast paced combat, but it is definitely not
> tactical. CoH has to be the easiest, least tactical MMORPG I've
> played- and I've played tons. Getting dragons stuck on terrain in
> AC2 required more skill and strategy.

Now I know that we have different play styles. Then again it does
sound like your just playing blasters, which really I will agree
takes all the skill of candyland to play. There has been talk in the
past that a person might take certain powers as a blaster and make
level 20 in three days.

Having played a wide range of character types I can honestly say
there whether you solo or group if you want to take out a mob or
creature that is much higher than you, you will be using tactics,
unless you really like touring all of the hosptials of Paragon City.

Tactics are one of the keys to not accuring Debt for your character.

Some of the tactics have been luring a small portion of the minons
off from a boss then taking the boss out. Others are based on which
villians to take out first in a mob so as to decrease the amount of
heart ache that they will cause the party. It really depends on what
you are fighting, and if you are solo or in a group. This all makes
a difference as to how you can effectively take villians down for
the count.

Simply just aggroing a mob run and pounce on you really only helps
to build up your debt. Debt for those who are not in the COH know is
the system by which to discourage or punish the simple kill and
respawn mentality. When you die you acquire debt which a 1/20 of the
total amount of XP needed for the next level. Debt has a cap of 1/2
of the XP needed for the next level.  So if you need 10,000 XP for
the next level and you die your Debt would be 500, with a cap of
5000. When you earn XP the system looks to see if you have Debt, if
you do then 1/2 of the XP earned (Round Up) goes to paying off the
debt. Thus by remaining out of Debt you can level quicker, but you
will have to use better tactics and run in and kill as many before
you die.

Scott Kurtz of PVPonline.COM did a good series of Strips poking fun
at the rate at which some people power level. Here is one on the use
of blaster tactics:

   http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20040606

> It would not be exaggerating to say that an average 9 year old
> could play this game and play it quite well. The game is designed
> to send your hero against large hordes of very wimpy foes. The
> result of this is that they cannot really hurt you, and you can
> kill them in 1 or 2 hits. This renders debuffs, crowd control,
> aggro management, healing, and many other forms of support or
> other tactics irrelevant. Sure, you can fight harder foes (purple
> cons), but the game punishes you for doing this. Not only are the
> rewards incredibly inferior, but the loot is the same (see above)
> and they have actually made patch changes to dramatically DECREASE
> your ability to fight hard foes.

This is only if you are playing certian types of characters suhc as
a blaster, and only fighting blue, greens and greys.  Playing a
Defender or a Controller you might never swing a punch, but it will
certainly take you more than a couple attacks to take out a yellow
or orange villian, let alone an LT., Boss or Arch Villian such as
Dr. Vashilok who has at his lowest level 15 incarnation 2300+
Hitpoints.

> I haven't even gone into the fact that the game excessively
> discourages grouping and doing missions (the closest thing to a
> story in the game). At level 25+, the exp earned in missions is
> 1/10th that of general hunting and the xp in groups is half or
> worse than solo. Obviously there is more to a game than pure xp,
> but CoH has nothing but advancement which begs the question "what
> else is there?" Further more, even if your game has more than
> combat, discouraging grouping and discouraging
> missions/questing/whatever through dramatically diminished rewards
> is bad design.

Discourages Grouping, you mean like the Team Force which requires
that you been in a group of 3 or more. That give big XP bonuses for
completeing for taking so long. And then there are the Story arc
missions that you can do that dole out around 1/10 of your current
level in XP for finishing along with an SO or DO as a reward. This
is some better serious discouragement.

The is a lot of content in the Story Arc Missions that talk about
how one fraction is fighting another but they are secretly both
being controlled by a third fraction who is doing evil
experiements. Maybe you missed that?

> At this point you might be asking "Wow. If you hate the game so
> much why did you play it so much." I don't hate the game. It is
> like a cheap but enjoyable pulp novel you read to pass the time on
> a train ride. I run CoH in the background while programming and
> alt-tab into it now and then to mindlessly slaughter a few groups
> of bad guys. This is at level 35+ mind you. It takes no strategy
> or tactics. It takes almost ZERO thought. Every mob is killed the
> same. Every battle is the same. Every piece of loot is nothing
> more than a widget to be sold for money (called influence). But
> the game is pretty and it passes the time while working so I play
> it. The fact that the PC market has been lacking horribly in games
> certainly doesn't hurt either.

It does however seem to fill the niche for you in what you want it
to do.  But I can say at this point, that it seems that you have
missed out on a lot of stuff so far.

As for every mob being killed the same. I only wish it were that
easy. Alas it really is not, especially when you try to keep debt
free.

Darksuit
Debt Free and loving it. =)
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