gameboy1234

Yup. While you can argue "turn off XP" is a solution, it's actually pretty hard to monitor this constantly and turn it off when needed. Some ways to manage XP other than "turn it off" would help a lot. I'd go so far as to reduce base XP to about 50% of current values for everyone. Then increase the XP boosters to compensate. So new folks and those who want can experience gameplay at a slower rate. Experienced players can use XP booster to get the old (current, and higher) xp rates for that fast leveling.

Some quick ideas on NPE. 1. Playing red side with an Ars/Traps controller, there's a lot of pretty clear differences with blue side. One is fewer zones and therefore fewer giant monsters to fight, which can be a bit of a bummer with the new drops. This could be changed just by adding more GMs per zone. Sharkhead for example could use a giant slag golem appearing once in a while. 2. The brokers on red side feel very dated. Having to do three or five newspaper missions before you're allowed to have a contact is way too old school. Plus with new XP rates it's easy to miss the actual story arcs. I'd like to see brokers hand out new contacts whenever a player talks to them. Or at least the first contact should be given before any newspaper missions. Of course, newspaper missions should still be present and should give a mayhem mission after you do enough. 3. I was offered Vince Dubrowski as a contact in Sharkhead at level 21, and his first mission is to clean out some scrapyarders in the Pit who are all level 25+. This basically wastes a contact with the newspaper system. Checking for contact level and making them appropriate for a player would help. 4. And obviously Oberst Straxt should be added to contacts given out in Sharkhead.

They should make START a summonable pet so that you can just have your very own P2W vendor follow you around wherever you go. Just make it 10,000,000 inf from START and you're good.

I may have brain-farted and tested this on live. This time on Brainstorm for sure: 1. Didn't work if Cloaking Device was running while I changed it. It reverted to "Original" as on live. If I turned it off first before choosing "Change your appearance" from a trainer, then I was able to change it and have the change work. I don't know about "no pulse" but I was 100% visible on Brainstorm after selecting "no fade" the second time. 2. I think the same thing is happening with my gun. If a power was activated and I have by gun drawn, then the costume customization reverts to the legacy assault rifle. If this is correct and can be fixed, then that would eliminate a frustration of mine that the game seems to want to constantly revert my weapon to the default (usually legacy) weapon.

Same. The first time I tried to adjust a costume, the No Fade option didn't stick and didn't work, and when I went back to check it, it was at Original again. Second time it fades out almost completely when out of combat, and in combat there's no fade at all, I look "normal". This isn't bad, I like the option because it helps me see what I'm doing (or having done to me) in combat. But it doesn't appear to be "no fade." I'd echo a request for "Less Fade" option. I think I want about 50% transparent out of combat, around maybe 65% visible (35% translucent) in combat (so I'm slightly more visible in combat). Enough that I can see my costume and position, while still indicating that the power is on.

Ashely McKnight's Origin of Power arc, in Cap au Diable. At the very end, Golden Roller's text says that "In and of itself it is literally a moral." Should be "amoral" there at the end. (Either that or "amoral" is split between two lines, making it look like two words.)

Does anyone have suggestions what to pair with /Arsenal Assault? I have a Arsenal/Traps controller so I'm looking for something besides the Arsenal primary to pair with /Ars. assault.

Just wanted to toss out a new player issue while I'm thinking about it. Blue side, players have access to Atlas Park through Ouroboros. This is good because a newbie entering Ouroboros needs a safe place to return to. Red side, the lowest level zone is Cap or Sharkhead, not really newbie friendly if you don't know your way around. This didn't use to be a problem because Red side couldn't Ouroboros until level 35, but now the the minimum level is 1 I think having an obvious place that new players know is safe would be a good idea. Adding Mercy to the exits Redside for Ouroboros would help new players out.

Just did a mish and the final group of enemies never showed on the map. I know they were the last because I had the map open the whole time, and there never were any red triangles. I killed the two guys in the group and the mish completed. Contact: Angelo Vendetti, Pork Oaks Mission: Get shipping info & clear base, 2nd mish Loc: Mish entrance at [-2805.2 9.3 1404.9]

I tested the AH on Brainstorm this morning, there was a chunky patch that needed loading first. After I logged in, I started flying, typed /ah and I got a very noticeable stutter or graphical pause when the window popped up. Then I closed the window and got no pause at all when I typed /ah. I moved to a different zone and tried the procedure again, no stutter. This is pretty acceptable if it continues to work this way, imo. Incidentally, I get exactly the same sort of stutter on my system whenever there's a large amount of graphics to load. Flying towards Ms. Liberty in Atlas Park for example, will almost always do it because of the large number of people and SFX around her. If something could be done about that as well (load resources in the background instead of the main rendering thread?) that would cure a lot of "lag" issues I'm personally experiencing.

A minor miracle! Thank you! Thaaaaattt's going to mess with the muscle memory... You have ruined my favorite head canon: the ghost in the Mek machine.

It's World Detail and it only goes up to 2 (200%) in the UI Options dialog.

Other games have the concept of a "point of interest." It a detailed and interesting piece of scenery that makes players go there to check it out. Once there the players usually find something interesting to do (although some POI scenes are just pretty to look at). I don't think CoX really has this. Even something simple as a gang fight in Kings Row, just some dudes duking it out in a rundown neighborhood yard, can be a POI. I've bumped these in KR, fought it out, and it just turns into a bunch of random dudes to fight. If it lead to something more, that would be much more engaging. The design of the gang fight was interesting enough to make me check it out. But I think you have to put the POI there first, for players to feel that they found something and did the content. Otherwise random street sweeping is just too random and the players don't feel engaged enough in the content they're discovering.

I'm thinking about this, you're not wrong. But I'm also remembering what I know about game design and cognitive psychology; "doing something different" to get a reward is often a very good, even necessary thing. Before, Perfidy could defeat enemies, for an XP reward, or hunt badges for an XP reward. Both give the reward, but they're very different activities. Now, Perfidy can hunt badges but still has to defeat enemies to get the reward. It's basically the same activity, there's fewer ways to get XP now. I'm starting to slide over to the side that seems to think something was lost here, that an "outlet" consisting of different game play while still getting a reward was removed, and the result is not as good.

Just logged in to do some testing. Yes, most of the rocks pop, there's no fade-in. A few do fade in, it seems to be related to my movement speed. At my current fly speed (64.6 mph) they pop a lot. A /visscale 2 seems to improve this (as will setting World Detail to 200% on the Options dialog.) A /visscale of 4 seems to eliminate any visual problems. No setting I tried, World Detail, /visscale 20, or Character Detail from the Options dialog, had any effect on P2W. (Character Detail might have but if so it was really slight.)

Talos Island does this too. A lot of the rocks that are placed around the shore area of the big island pop horribly. You'll be quite close to them before they'll very visibly start rendering. I think they actually "fade in" but they do it so close it looks really bad. I'm not 100% sure what could be done but a pass looking at distance and drawing might help in at least some cases. I haven't tested this with /visscale so I'm not sure if it's the same thing. Given that modern graphics cards are much better now having longer draw distances seems like an easy solution. Also P2W's (now START) skirt has the same problem for me, and it looks pretty bad as well. At quite close distances her skirt basically doesn't render right, there's huge chunks missing. I'm not sure if this is LOD (level of detail) or something else but nothing on her model pops the same way so I think it's something wonky just with that piece.

Random thoughts by me: To send someone a message directly, click on their name in chat. This can be any chat window, but if you're looking at the LFG chat it's easiest to just click there. Left click, you'll get at pop up with the top of the menu saying "Send a Message to [name]". That's the easiest way to respond to people in LFG chat who are looking for more members. Posting in LFG chat that you are looking for more folks to help you with a mission does work. (Posting that you are solo and looking for any team tends not to work.) If you are looking for stuff to do and nothing seems to be happening, try looking through your contacts, finding a mission, and starting your own team. You can usually get at least two or three members even during slow times. It's true that the LFG queue (the auto-team function) tends not to work. It's been buggy since live and nearly everyone avoids it except for some missions where it's required or as a fast travel hack. One day in the future they might get this to work. A little of column a and a little of column b for me. Running some missions and arcs solo, and running some missions with small teams, is a great way to learn how your powers really work and how to use them on various types of enemies. I'd recommend you take some time to do this every 10 levels or so, at least, so you can feel like you're playing your character correctly. OTOH grinding XP can get boring, there's level ranges where the content isn't great or to your liking, so no worries power leveling if you're bored. I do it all the time myself. If you are just leveling up, take a look at the Temporary Powers that START (used to be P2W) has, the level boosters will help you get more XP for the time you spend.

Gotta agree. While I don't think we should hold up the release candidate, plopping another NPC into both Outbreak and Breakout with some additional info should be a priority as soon as RC is out the door.

Just jumped on Brainstorm, RC2 is looking good overall. Just some last minute thoughts: 1. I think my biggest issue is that running Outbreak sends you to the old contacts in City Hall. Would like to see this redirected to Matthew Habashy. 2. At the very start of Breakout, there's a dialog telling you to use WASD to move and other stuff. This is missing for Outbreak (I'm sure it was there at one time). Could it be added in? 3. I like the defaults for power timers, but I prefer to see the fractional seconds. Dunno who else feels the same way. I'd like to see the fractions as the default tho. That's all I can think of that we haven't all given lots of feedback on already. Looks good and great for new players!

There's two groups and both are part of Operative Kuzmin's missions. The first is "Defeat 5 Longbow" (his first mission I think), these respawn really quickly. A longer respawn timer would help. Also you could add something so there's an immediate repawn if *all* of this group of Longbow are defeated (ideally respawn only some of the group, but if you can't a full respawn is acceptable), I think that would solve both too fast respawn problem and also address times when there's high demand from people running this quest. The second I think is Kuzmin's third mission, "Find 3 codes from Longbow Technicians". This group also repawns really quickly, and there's a *huge* number of them. They also don't go away if you complete the mission, which is a shame. Same deal with these guys. First, reduce the number that spawn (keep the number of spawn points, but reduce how many are active at one time). Then increase the spawn timer so they respawn much more slowly. Finally if all of the groups are defeated then immediately respawn a few more. Last, this may be a big ask, but if phasing volumes support more than two phases, you might be able to get rid of them completely if the player isn't doing Kuzmin's arc. That would clean up the area completely for everyone. If Kuzmin's arc isn't started, or if it's completed, just remove these guys entirely. That I think would help a lot.

I don't play other MMORPGs, so I wonder how they implement something like this. (A "Party Finder" is a good idea, kind of a way of making a permanent and scrollable LFG announcement.)

Other random stuff, NPE-ish: 1. New MMs have three buttons in their tray for controlling pets. One, "Follow" directs the pets to "follow aggressive". Can we get that changed to "follow defensive"? I think new MMs should have at least one way to activate bodyguard mode available to them. The default buttons on the Pet Window could also use the same change. 2. The Longbow inside Mercy (the walled area of the red side starting zone) are just thick. I think it's worse than a hazard zone. I can evade them pretty easily with a Jetpack and Athletic Run, but new players might feel they need to fight their way through. Can the density of spawn inside Mercy be decreased? It feels a rather new player unfriendly as it is now. Longbow especially but some of the Ripper and Blighted too. Outside of the walled area I think the spawn is fine.

Note sure if I should post this here or the general feedback threads, but here's a new player talking about the game, from a different forum: I'm not sure what "didn't work" here means, but it might be either that it doesn't start the TF (and it's unclear to a new player what to do next), or that there's no intro or other directions telling you what to do once the TF has started, or that the queuing system is borked because no one uses it, or because certain options ("lock team") should probably be on by default. I could ask for more info, but I thought I'd post it here and let other folks think about it too.

I always liked the City Traveler badge. In Echo: Atlas Park you get a badge when you return to AP via the Tram (the badge is actually at the exit terminal of the Tram). Since Twin Shot's arc sends you to King's Row, this might be a nice tie-in for that trip.

If you went through the Galaxy City tutorial, you already made a moral choice. I think it was intended to reinforce (or change) that choice. It would be cool if the game did something with that choice, but I don't think it's strictly necessary. Something small, like a different clue (explaining in-story that you made a morale choice) would be cool, but I wouldn't overly worry about it. (On the subject of new player experience, I find the whole "clue" thing really unwieldy. The clues are seldom in order, they're hard to find if you have more than one set on the list, the UI is kinda clunky, and in general I don't find it great. A re-imagining of some the UI menus would be a great NPE addition. The clue bag should be a paper notebook or a computer (smart phone) screen with a bit more organization and easier way to read / organize the clues. Maybe clues and souvenirs could be combined into the same dialog.)