gameboy1234

I think at the moment my "main" is the Create New Character button. Seriously, *why* do I have all these toons? I've saved Atlas Park so many time I think I should get a repeat discount. Mathew Habashy doesn't explain what's wrong to me anymore, he just points and I go there. For a while my main was my Fort, but getting every last IO I'd need for her was getting to be a pain, so I ended up making about 50 alts instead.

I'd probably slide all the tiers down so they can be picked in order as new levels come up naturally. Then I'd move Fitness back to a power pool except for Stamina, which should stay inherent. That removes exactly three powers, the same as what you got extra at level 1. Then I'd add a couple of powers to Fitness to round it out and stop there. So your "nukes at level 20" is three extra power pool picks, and you can have the same set of powers as you have now if you like, or you can pick new ones. Personally my builds are always kind of tight and I'd like to have three extra powers to chose. I'd probably increase base movement, running and jumping, somewhat to make Swift and Hurdle not needed so much, but I'd probably turn those two powers into a near-travel power if you take them. Like a Parkour travel power or something, maybe add some "wall climbing" inherent in those two powers to increase vertical movement a bit. Fitness Health is still valuable for the slots it can take. Dunno what the other two powers should be.

All I got so far is Detention Field on Test is situationally useful. Mostly solo, because otherwise it's likely to cause frustration on a team. If nothing else it could use a much stronger visual effect so folks can tell when it's applied. That's all I got. Repulsion Field and Dampening Bubble are interesting, haven't played with them much so far.

Second try on Brainstorm, I respect'd my Bots/FF with the new changes in mind, moving slots around and adding more End Redux. I skipped two powers to add in Maintenance Drone and Upgrade Robot (the second pet buff, now available at 26 instead of 32 I think). This reduced my clear time to 5 minutes from 8, although at least part of that was me being more familiar with the map and enemies. I also looked more closely at the power descriptions -- Force Bolt (now Repulsion Bolt I think) and the MM attacks apply their debuf for 30 seconds but recharge in about 10 secs or so. So I started using them more sparingly. This plus the reslotting for End Redux fixed all my personal End problems. However I also noticed that my Bots were running low on End. I don't know if that caused any delayed attacks or power problems, everything seemed OK. I think getting the Assault Bot earlier will help with the mastermind "hell levels" around 18 to 26. I really don't want to try to manually grind through those levels, though I'm hopeful they'll be a bit better. Overall, my build is a bit tighter (I had to give up two powers, though maybe I could have cut out one personal attack). Power level seems about the same. I think some folks are going to gripe that without large changes it's kind of a pain to have to respect a character for some relatively small but important changes like these (I'm talking about moving -Regen from the Assault Bot to the personal attacks), and this is my main concern. You're basically forcing two to three powers into a bots build, and it's just enough for folks to feel they need to address it, but also it isn't going to change that much in the long run, so why do it? Is there a way to let people keep their current powers until they respec? That would seem ideal to me. Don't touch the build and you have the same (old) powers, only if you create a new character or respec the current one do you have to deal with the new stuff. Edit: This is for my level 30 Bots/FF on Brainstorm, Iron Miss. In case you want to look at the build(s) (I have the original from live on Build1, and the revamped one on Build 2).

If it were up to me, I'd make things even easier at level 1. A problem with the basic game design in CoH imo is you have to grind before you get a decent power chain. This led to "cheap" powers like the origin based powers and brawl so players could have something to mash. I think a better solution would be let players have their first three primary and first two secondary powers right at level one. This would give most ATs a decent attack chain and a bit more, just so that the earliest levels aren't a drag to play. This isn't a power creep issue, it's a fun issue. And an "I win" or story mode button isn't a bad idea. For certain content, maybe TFs and other "hard" content, a solo mode with constant buffs would be fine. For regular content one can always set the difficulty to -1, which is pretty close to I win, and also asking for help is not beyond consideration either.

Thanks, I tried out the mission test beds. @Vanden So first report is clear times were very similar, 8 minutes live vs. 8.25 minutes on test. The most noticeable difference was endurance usage, which jumped at least on Force Bolt from 6.5 to 12. I ran low on End constantly and even completely out at one point on test. Never got close on Live. I have one Performance Shifter proc but that's it. Of course this is a live build so Force Bolt was completely unslotted, this is likely fixable with just some slotting. Though I kinda agree with the "slots are tight theme," not sure where I'd get a couple of extra slots. Equip Robot without any Resist IOs didn't seem to hurt anything.

Was doing some light testing, going back and forth between Test and Live. Noticed that on Live right now I don't really have much use for my personal attack (I had taken them because they help a bit at lower levels). I joined an Eochai team on Live and had little to do. On Test I would have at least had a reason to toss some attacks into the mix. Side note: someone mentioned using Pylons as damage tests. This works at 50 but a lot of gameplay doesn't occur at 50, especially if we're aiming to make changes that are friendly to new people. Some test dummies that you can actually kill and measure time on would be handy (my Bots/FF I copied over is currently level 30). Not sure how this could work because we'd need a comparison with Live. Maybe a Dev sponsored AE mission? Something like that where we can run a consistent mission with consistent enemies that work well for testing, spawned at any level, might help the testing in general. Just thinking out loud mostly...

Bots primary also gets Seeker Drones after level 32, and Fold Space will yoink a spawn right on top of them. Fold Space also means a MM doesn't have to take an alpha strike as well, and the response by a mob will usually be decently distributed across your minions, so no specific alpha strike there as well. (FF secondary is excellent for this, though it's a bit passive. I imagine /Time and /Thermal would be useful too.) Though occasionally you'll lose a bot, they're easy to replace.

Forts in general can provide a lot of benefit. Team buffs, damage (ranged or melee), control, and even tanking a bit. The only thing they can't do with their powers alone is heal, though you can dip into power pools if you must have it.

Yes, the best fix would be to figure this out. I'm curious how the contact system works. Is there a custom script that has to run per each contact? Is there something more like a vanilla text file with the mission text and other things like contacts in a simple format? One is obviously much easier to debug than the other, it should just be a matter of running this in isolation and testing the various code paths, which should only be a few, at most.

This would be a nice addition to regular arcs, anyone who participates on the whole arc gets the merit rewards and associated badges (if any). I realize there are technical limitations but a lot of the arcs are short and could just be that you did all the missions in a row, with the same team/leader and just award based on that. "Remembering" arc mission progress would be better but I realize there might be difficulties doing that.

So I deleted an old level one character to change them to the new Symphony power set. The character was "expired" after 39 days not being logged in. After deleting them I couldn't create a new character with the same name. I think there may be something wrong with the new naming code. I also did a /getglobalname on the name and it came back "nope" with no global. So I think it's deleted but something else is preventing the name from being reused. (Does the database actually delete characters, or just mark them as deleted? Could the new naming code not be checking for a character that's been marked as deleted?) EDIT: P. S. I've also recently (two days ago?) had trouble renaming a character. I renamed an existing character, played a bit, then decided to switch back to the old character name. It wouldn't let me rename it back, gave me a "That is not a suitable character name" or similar message, even though I just had the name less than an hour ago. I think it's possible this is related, there may be some way old names are "sticking around" and interfering with renaming or creating new characters.

I reported this during beta test, though for me it occurred on a Villain character. Maybe that's why? Working as intended or bug?

Right now I'm noticing the most obnoxious thing is the Tarzan yell the game does when I activate Tough. Not only that, but every time I log into a new zone or mission the game seems to insist on replaying one of the toggle's animations, and that one always seems to get picked. It's pretty uncool that the game seems to insist on replaying animations in general when I enter a zone, would be nice to see that go away. But yeah this one is kinda especially bad.

Just did a comparison with the level 54 Cyclops outside of the traitors'/Romulus' fortress and they are much easier to solo. The regular level 54 cyclops seem to have much fewer hit points, so they fall much faster. And they don't double hit you for damage. The single damage hits are much easier to deal with. Most of the time I don't need to actually bother with any inspirations. Those level 54 possessed cyclops in Valeria's mission were a big surprise. One double hit of smashing plus energy from the possessed cyclops is enough to take me out, or at least put me very close to death. The possessed cyclops also seem to have a much higher change to hit, around 20% with all my defenses up, vs around 8% for a regular level 54 Cyclops. Edit: basically the regular level 54 cyclops are an easy kill, vs the possessed ones which resulted in death every time, and usually very quickly.

Let's see, my Widow could not solo the Cyclops and the Minotaurs in the second (I think) mish. The Cyclops especially have too many hit points, and eventually they're going to get in a quick succession of attacks that effectively one-shots me. I can by-pass them but I don't know how those fights were envisioned. The rest of the missions went well, though Valeria with her long range attacks *really* likes to head off and engage groups at random. I wonder if this AI can be tuned a bit, maybe given something like Mastermind's "Follow Defensive". Getting my toggles re-enabled during the "disguise" mission is a massive pain. If you implement some sort of toggle suppression as requested, please exclude at least Sprint (and maybe the prestige movement powers) so we can at least move around at a decent speed. Depending on the mission and avatar, optionally allowing the temp movement powers like Jetpacks might also be a good idea if someone is writing new code for this (what I mean is, you might want to write the code so that a level designer has the option to include, or exclude, some of those powers when using a "disguise" in a mission). The PC behind Valeria that won't talk to me, Alexandra Sideris. She supposed to after the first mission? I've done Valeria's whole arc and no go. I'm a villain if it matters, I didn't think the ancient Cimerorians cared about that though.

The Lost are Marvel's Morlocks, at least at first glance. Their story diverges as it progresses. Freedom Phalanx is a kind of Legion of Super Heroes expy. I feel Manticore is more of a Batman expy (the mansion, the wealth, the fact that he's normal), since he's the one who like to work on investigations and such (Countess Crey). Though you're right rather than a utility belt they gave him gadget arrows instead, clearly inspired by Green Arrow. I think Arachnos is supposed to be more of a Legion of Super Villains expy, though of course with the heavy spider theme.

Oh hey replies. I assumed the boards would ping me if there were any but it looks like not. Yeah in general I play with the sound and music set to 20% in the Options menu, and then I turn the master volume down about halfway on my PC. I can turn it up for a bit if I want to locate an objective quickly but most of the time I leave it set really low. If I forget ... well my ears will tell me quickly. Headphones are dangerous with this game. So I guess another question is: Do we NEED to address any sounds? Or if they're all really loud to we just turn the sound down (or mute) and not bother with it? Maybe the sound levels should be set at 25% by default in-game (still rather loud ime) and let players adjust further if they need to. Do any sounds really stand out as needing fixing even if the volume is turned way down? (It seems like some sounds play constantly, including MM pets, and those might perhaps need to be looked out.)

The /screenshotui command doesn't appear to be working on beta. It may not work on live either, I didn't test it. I tried both /screenshotui 0 and /screenshotui 1 and in both cases it shows the GUI when taking a screen shot. Neither command gave an error (I tried /aslkjf and it gave an unknown command error) so I know the command still exists.

Tried this just now (sorry for the late input), on a fully incarnated Night Widow with perma-Mind Link the difficulty is pretty much "lol." I also habitually take Mask Presence and Smoke Grenade (mostly for role play reasons) and they make it trivial to walk up to a Surgeon and one-shot him before anyone knows what's going. So far the writing and story are nice though. More to follow, though I realize it's late in the test cycle...

Oh, good point. Villain. And normally I play as a Rogue or Hero on live. (Maybe show destinations that are locked as greyed out, with a tag indicating the alignment required. So other folks don't make silly assumptions like me.)

Just popped into Ouroboros and noticed that the links to Echo Atlas Park, Galaxy City, and Faultline are missing (maybe others). Only Dark Astoria and Rikti Crash Site are available. Did that change? Am I missing a badge? (Could be it didn't transfer over from live.) If I am missing a badge I'd prefer to see it listed on the menu anyway, with a "Locked" text tag next to it, and greyed out. As is now folks won't know what options they are missing and won't know to ask around how to unlock it.

Folks in chat the other day were complaining about some of the sounds in the game being too loud or having other problems. I can't remember which sound now. I think it was one of the Tanker/Scrapper/Brute defensive sets. You turned it on and the noise it made is horrible. But we suggested getting a list together then asking some of the fans to get a copy of Audacity (free sound software) and just adjusting the sounds files. So what sounds in the game need work the most? We'll start with a list of sounds then maybe ask the devs what they think. Please note if the sound is simply too loud, or if it has other issues that need addressing.

I'm late to the party but as an additional concern, could the AE tutorial NPC be added to your contacts list when a player enters KR or Port Oaks for the first time? Similar to the way detectives work. It won't make much difference for most of us but for anyone who is truly new I think it would help a lot. As a bonus if they get the "New Contact" pop-up window I think that would be better.

Yes, the Night Widow costume parts are great, a great new look. Thanks for adding these!