Rudra

*slams own face into desk repeatedly*

And somehow, despite every effort to enlighten you, you are still incorrect. If you increase the magnitude of knocks, then you are most definitely increasing the amount of knock being done. So knockdowns become knockbacks and knockbacks become more distance knockbacks. Your original presentation was of unresistible, which would not increase the amount of knockback, but would let you knockback absolutely everything in the game including things that are meant to not ever be moved by the players. So now you are conflating unresistible and increased magnitude as if they were one and the same, making your suggestion even more ludicrous than when you started. Edit again: You cannot make effects selectively unresistible in this game. They are either affected by the appropriate resistance and protection, or they are not. Neither can you make effects selectively work. If you increase the magnitude of a knock effect to overcome the target's knockback protection, then you increase the magnitude of the knock effect. A Knockdown effect isn't going to go "okay, I am hitting an AV, so let me crank up the knock effect to 15 to make sure I overcome the protection, but somehow only apply 0.67".

Considering MMs can't rez their own pets with their own rez powers? I'm betting that isn't going to happen.

I'm not a dev, so I don't really know, but from my understanding, putting a timer on the pets would make them like the Dark Servant pet, they would go away after a set duration after being summoned or when defeated, whichever is first.

Yeah, it isn't consistent, but as best I understand it, the reason why mob pets persist and player pets don't is that link or lack. As for the mob pets that despawn, they all have timers for how long they can exist as defined by the power that summoned them. Even if the summoning mob isn't defeated, when that timer runs out, the pet goes away. So if the mob has not been defeated, the mob has to summon a new pet. So there are different considerations there. And to the best of my knowledge, unless the devs put timers on the mob persistent pets so that they go away on their own after being summoned, which means the mob will have to keep summoning as long as the mob survives, those persistent pets cannot be linked to the summoning mob for reasons I can't remember, so they won't go away until the player(s) defeat the summoned pets. (However, neither will those mob persistent pets pursue players as far as the summoning mob would if not defeated either. The mob summoned pets that persist after defeat seem to have a much smaller pursuit range than any other mob in the game. Like they are subject to a Stay command.)

I'm trying to run off memory here, but the problem I believe is with the pets themselves and how they have to function. When a player character with pets summons their pets, the pets are still linked to the character. So when the controlling character is defeated, the source for the pets is gone and they are also defeated. When a mob summons pets, the pets are not linked to the mob, they are their own entities. So when the summoning mob is defeated, the pets remain because they are basically their own entities and not subject to the summoning mob.

That's precisely why I thought it'd work best as a toggle. If you're wanting your pets to soak up damage from you being hit, you'd turn it off. If you're on a team with a tanker or two, maybe you're at max health more often than not and you'd gain more damage and utility from keeping your pets alive. Giving the player the ability to choose which is more important is the goal. ... A player is running their Demon/anything MM in Bodyguard Mode to boost their survivability because they are fighting on a high difficulty setting and the bosses can near instantly murder the MM character without it. Same player turns on the toggle to boost his/her/their pets' survivability, because pets surviving is a good thing. Let's say the MM has 200 HP, the T1s have 50 HP, the T2s have 100 HP, and the T3 has 200 HP because I really don't feel like getting real numbers for this. And the AoE doesn't hit that hard, only 100 HP from that higher level boss. So, the MM takes that 100 damage and breaks it up into 8 parts, eats 2 shares of it, and passes the rest to the pets at 1 share each. Except that the T1s and T2s were killed by that attack before the damage sharing is applied to them. Now, normally, as best I understand it, those shares would still count for those pets, same attack after all, so the damage would still be split for having all 6 pets at the time of the hit, and the MM is still sitting pretty with just that 25 damage. As stated, the T1s and T2s would normally have died, but instead they survive with 25 HP and 100 HP respectively. The damage they took from that hit has been resolved, so now the damage sharing gets applied to them. They now eat that 12.5 damage each from the MM. Because math must still be processed as things happen in a computer. However, because the T1s and T2s inflicted 5% and 10% of the damage that killed them back on the MM to survive, the MM just took another 5 hits totaling 35 points of damage. Basically from the same attack, just now from a different source. (5 points from each T1 and 10 points from each T2.) That 35 points is broken into 8 parts, the MM eats 2 shares for 8.75 damage, and each pet eats another 4.375 damage. (Edit: Because Bodyguard Mode isn't damage resistance, it is damage sharing.) The MM is now in a worse state than would have otherwise been because the MM's HP pool has been further depleted by the MM's own pets without any confuse effects required, and despite the T1s and T2s surviving, they definitely can't take another hit, let alone a major hit from that boss, in their weakened state. Further, the MM can't just summon fresh pets for defense, because the MM has 3 nearly dead pets and 2 critically injured pets already holding those summon slots, so either the MM has to take the extra steps to dismiss the T1s to re-summon or throw an AoE heal, if the MM has an AoE heal and it doesn't miss the pets like Twilight Grasp likes to do. Sure, the MM can just turn off the toggle that injures the MM if the pets die to keep the pets alive, but we already have players complaining about the difficulty of playing MMs and this will add to it. And for those players that don't care about how MMs operate, how they are radically different from every other AT in the game? I fully expect them to just leave the toggle on and complain that their MMs are dying from everything. More so than they already do.... (Edit again: Summoning new pets isn't the heinous thing some players make it out to be. There is something to be said about human wave tactics when you have infinite forces to keep throwing at the problem. And for tougher fights, even without pet upgrades, it works better than struggling to keep mostly dead pets alive.)

And how would this work with Bodyguard Mode? (Also, given Bodyguard Mode was added to keep MMs alive, how long do you expect MMs to live when they are sacrificing their own HP to their pets? Remember, MMs aren't very tanky without Bodyguard Mode.)

For crying out loud. I'm talking in circles here. I'm done with this thread. I made my argument against the OP. I stated my support for a different approach that preserves the story. I am so done with arguing back and forth with you on this. Edit: Again, because some people can't seem to process it, I am fine with the TFs getting reviewed and having their extraneous filler removed. I am fine with shortening TFs that are padded for length and can have missions cut out without losing the story. I am fine with cleaning up the stories of the older TFs. For fuck's sake, how many time's do I have to say something before it actually gets considered by others as something I said?

Okay, so the TF has you blunting an invasion's attack, not having to investigate why something is happening and then deal with it. So a few missions works perfectly well for that. Synapse isn't that nicely wrapped up because the Clockwork King isn't invading anything requiring direct force to stop, he is running his scheme that you need to uncover and stop. Yes, the older TFs have a lot of filler there to pad them out. And for the umpteenth time, yes, I am good with removing the filler. Yes, I am good with reviewing and updating the TFs. Especially if it helps make the story clearer. What you are pitching though isn't cleaning up the story and removing excess padding. You seem dead set on reducing TFs to 4 missions per the OP and nothing else can be accepted. And you lose the story if you do that. Clean up TFs and remove unnecessary filler? Great, I support that. Make the TFs as short as possible so you can just pop in, be done, and walk off with the badge and to hell with the story like the OP presented? No. (And in case you decide to argue that is not what the OP said? It says ", but if you want a short and quick beat them up for fun or just need the badge...". It very specifically throws out the story.) (Edit: Longer quote: "choice at the mission giver to do the TF the regular way or have the Penny Yin way, this way if you are trying to level or feel more immersed on the story take the normal path, but if you want a short and quick beat them up for fun or just need the badge...". So literally the OP is asking to take away the story and just grab the badge.)

Funny. Nowhere in my one mission comment did I say anyone said to condense TFs to one mission. What I said was that by the logic you gave, that Synapse only has 2 goals and we can condense the TF down to that, then we can simply condense every TF down to just their specific goal. It was exaggeration to make a point. I haven't done an Apex. So I have no idea what the story is there and how the missions present that story. But now I see I have to clarify my point to you too, so here we go. A TF/SF is a specific story. Stories require multiple steps to develop and be understood. Video game stories are presented as series of missions. If you reduce those stories to just the goals, you lose the story or you truncate it into something that makes little to no sense. That completely takes away the story of that arc and condenses it to a few fights waiting for you. Sure, Synapse can send you to stop the Clockwork attacking the university. And now you just jumped straight to Synapse knows you need to stop the Clockwork from diverting power to the Clockwork King with nothing linking that to the previous attack. Followed by the happy coincidence of the Clockwork are just lined up in a tunnel to fight as guide straight to Skyway, Babbage waiting for you, and the Clockwork King fight. That isn't a story. That is an old school side scroller beat 'em up game. No one has to know anything or find anything out, nothing develops plot-wise, just a string of waiting enemies on the literal road to the stage's end boss: the Clockwork King.

Let me restate this because you seem to either have missed the previous two times I stated it or are choosing to ignore it: I have no problems with the TFs being reviewed and adjusted. Want me to say it again? Maybe bold it, italicize it, and make it font size 72? I know there are TFs that have an excess of missions in them, like Synapse. (Even if Synapse is the shorter version of that arc.) I have no problems with filler missions being removed from TFs and SFs, and multiple TFs do have filler missions that were put in them to pad out the arc and try to make them feel more epic, but instead just make them feel overly long. I do have a problem with just willy nilly cutting all TFs and SFs down to just 4 missions. Because a large part of those stories is figuring out who is doing what and why, and then doing something about it. And to give a clear story that shows that, you are going to need enough missions to show it without making the entire story line for that TF feel truncated and cut off like most AE story arcs feel. Edit: And no, the TF or SF contact just omnisciently knowing that you need to go to Location A and take down Villain B, then move to Location C and take down AV D, done, good job, here's your badge, is not a story. And MMORPGs are stories we play through.

By that logic we can condense all the TFs down to 1 mission each. Synapse: Go to Clockwork King and beat him up. Manticore: Got to Crey and beat up Countess Crey. The story is not the end objective of the TF. The story is how you get to it and what you uncover along the way.

Dumb question: What makes the most recent comment progress but every other comment saying the same thing not?

I saw no bug reports for the forum itself, so I'm reporting this here. For the past couple of weeks, my ability to log on or off the forums has been... problematic. I go to log on, hit Sign In, and the page shows it is thinking. Then stops. Nothing changed including the logon window. Hit Sign In again and it sometimes does it again. Sometimes it lets me in on the second try, sometimes the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. Sometimes it cuts to that white verifying you are human screen like it is logging me in, then it fails and gives me a logon error so I have to back tab to try again. And then when I go to log out, it does the same thing where I have to try to log out multiple times to be able to do so, with each log off attempt taking upwards of a minute and a half. Or it may log me out but it still shows me logged in and I get an error when try to log out for seeing I am logged in still, at which point a refresh finally shows that yes, I am indeed logged out. Now, here is why I am sure it is not my computer: I checked my anti-virus. It is up to date and and shows nothing affecting my computer. I am not using a VPN, so there are no other computers in the line to be causing this issue. I am not choosing to use any human verification bs, that is part of my provider. I do not have these problems at all when logging into any other site like Amazon, YouTube, MyMiniFactory, et al. It only happens on these forums.

The exploit was not considered an exploit by a great many players, even after the devs announced they had never intended for players to be able to use the SG base access code from anywhere because it was meant as a dev device. And even after the devs announced that the base access code was never meant for players and they were going to take it away from players, I still saw comments almost every team I tried that members of the team should use it. And if you didn't get to the missions as fast as them? Too bad, so sad, they would clear the mission while anyone else was still getting there. Even if they were told to stop doing that. (And oh good lord how much they screamed and called out the team leader as a terrible leader on Broadcast if they got kicked from the team for doing so after being told to stop.)

I'll add to this. Usually, on the very rare occasion I join a Hami or MSR, I let my character just go AFK. I find a nice "quiet" spot away from the spammed buffs and then do nothing in the game while I wait for the raid to start. When the notice comes up saying I've been AFK for too long and I need to click the button to not be logged out, I click the button and then resume doing nothing in the game while I wait for the raid to start. I am still paying attention to the game, watching for the raid to start, I just don't see the point of constantly doing random things simply for the sake of showing I am still there and waiting. So it seems to me the OP is a very biased response to a problem I don't think exists. (Edit: And in case anyone doesn't already know, you don't get that AFK logout notice warning until some time after you get the AFK flag.)

There is a distinct difference between what you are saying and what the OP is asking for. You are asking for the filler missions to be removed and I doubt anyone will oppose that. As my first response on this thread shows, I sure won't. What the OP is asking for is to trim all TFs down to just 4 missions regardless of what story is going on the TF/SF so (s)he/they can just grab the badges with as little effort as (s)he/they thinks they can get away with asking for. And to me, the presented choice between the story (still with all the extra filler the original devs padded the TF out with) and the no-story version the OP is basically asking for is just a poor smoke screen to be able to grab all the badges in the game with as little effort as (s)he/they can swindle the current devs into.

CoX is a MMORPG. That means we are playing a story and interacting with that story and each other. TFs and SFs in particular are major story devices, running players through the more epic parts of the game's story. Your 'choice' is an attempt to simply skip the story and just quick grab some badges. You don't have to care about the story to play CoX, but you are still playing a story. If you don't like the story? Then speed run your TFs. Most of them are quite easy to do so.

Best guess? It is because those are already existing characters and the names became available through lack of use per the name release rules. Make a new character with the name you want, rename that character, and then rename your existing characters to that name.

I can support reviewing and adjusting the longer TFs, but knocking them all down to 4 missions? You're going to lose a lot of story that way, not just filler. So, no, I don't support the OP.

Dark Blast/Plant Manipulation -> A shadow plant entity from pick realm (shadow realm, qlipphotic realm, whatever realm) Electrical Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Malign or violent nature spirit Energy Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Inverse of Dark/Plant idea, also bio-energy plants Fire Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Entity of the cosmic cycle (destruction and rebirth) Ice Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Variant of Fire/Plant idea, except winter-spring themed Psychic Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Uses psionics to attack and control vegetative matter, or plant that gained sentience and associated psychic powers Radiation Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Science experiment gone wrong (or right?) Seismic Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Standard earth-plant approach Sonic Attack/Plant Manipulation -> Plants that use vibration as self-defense (or use sonics straight up if preferred) Storm Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Variant of Electric/Plant, also storm attractor entity concepts Water Blast/Plant Manipulation -> Standard water-plant approach (variation of sentient aggressive cactus creature?) Just some thoughts from scanning the Blaster list. Edit: Any gun(s)/Plant Manipulation -> Modern or Sci Fi druid. Archery/Plant Manipulation -> Martially minded druid.

If you use the same trap, you can spawn more Spectral Pirates by overloading the trap. Defeat those at the trap too and they also count towards both badges. (Also, if you can squeeze in a taunt, even if only on an alternate build, then you can safely pull the pirates to the trap. I've defeated a lot by accident even using the Origin power.)

If I'm remembering correctly, it was added as an explore so players would be more aware of the badge. I believe it used to be that if you went to that tailor, you got the badge, but that wasn't very well known, so an explore marker was added to make it more apparent. (Edit: Again, if I remember correctly, because the badge was presented as a badge for using that tailor as a play on the frequency with which players confused "rogue" with "rouge" when red side was added, but just being near the tailor awarded it.)

If players have the option to not get the already earned AE badges rather than the original request that takes the choice away, you have my support.