Rudra

You're thinking of the 'you have entered a co-op' zone message. The exiting co-op zones to non-co-op zones has a notice that cannot be disabled or bypassed to confirm you want to do so.

More content can also include more tips and expanded radio options.

In my experience, that is only with radios. I usually find myself hopping between zones blue side if I'm chasing alignment tips. Not constantly mind you, but I do find myself being sent to different zones depending on the tip. (Edit: Mostly to Steel Canyon or Skyway City with a smattering of Atlas Park.) (Edit again: And there were a few tips that if I checked them while in Talos Island, the mission was in Talos Island.)(Edit yet again: I have a tendency blue side to head to Talos whenever I'm out of tips to smack around Warriors for more tips. So I wind up checking them in Talos, and there have been multiple times where the mission wound up in Talos.)

No, they aren't. 'Exotic Armor Schematics' and 'Seeds of Destruction' always send me to Port Oakes. (Edit: I always do the Rogue choice, so I don't know about the Villain choice.) Edit again: And the morality 'Easy Job, Easy Money' always sends me to St. Martial.

No, but I thank you for posting it anyway. I forgot about that discussion since it wasn't as full of vitriol as the original War Witch discussion. Though I'm not seeing the original discussion on a search to link, sorry.

No, that thread happened after the War Witch... uhm... discussion....

Trying to sit this out, but I do have to point out that adding hitstop would impact other players using the set. Players that may be happy with how their big weapons aren't forced to stop when hitting a target and now would see their massive weapons stopping when hitting targets where other weapon sets do not. (Disclaimer, I do not currently have any Titan Weapons characters. I have not made any since the Live game shut down. However, Titan Weapons picking up an imposed stop/pause in their attacks for impacting targets will prevent me from making a Titan Weapons character on HC. Given my preference for fast attacks though, that isn't a consideration for the proposal. How it affects others already using the set however, should be considered.)

I'm not running under any assumption of hitstop being about the weapon being stuck. (Edit: And my hitting the ground example has nothing to do with getting stuck either. It takes longer and more effort to lift a massive weapon than a small one.) It is about showing the weapon/attack hitting the target. I am aware of that. I'm just saying that as far as hitstop impacts go, the titan weapons should be affected less by hitstop than lighter weapons which would full on stop depending on the target. This is progressing beyond the questions I wanted to ask, so I'm not going to pursue this any further. I have to ask then why would a katana or a broadsword, let alone an axe or a mace, be assumed to be making glancing blows or anything else other than a full hit while titan weapons would be assumed to be making full blows. Yes, titan weapons would be a very gory set if the graphics of the game and the game's rating allowed it, but so would any sword or axe. This is a tangential discussion, so I'm stopping here, but I do have to say I very much disagree with your presentation of how the melee weapon sets work/are portrayed.

Teleport Foe, as part of Teleport Target, cannot teleport bosses or higher. It can teleport lieutenants, but only some of them. That is why earlier in the thread it was described as only being able to teleport minions and under.

I would have to say you have it backwards then. A lighter weapon should have the same impact, stopping when it hits a solid object like a monster from Monster Hunter or worn armor. A titanic weapon should stop when hitting something more solid than the lighter weapon. The feel you are looking for is the weight of the weapon. Which would be conveyed by knocking the target back or sideways if not of a sufficient mass to withstand the hit. Now if you were talking about a hitstop with the ground instead, then I would be inclined to agree. It would take longer to get the massive weapon back up and ready than it would a smaller weapon. However, if you want to argue how something feels rather than how something functions and you feel that having a more massive weapon means it feels stronger if it is affected by impacts that smaller weapons are not, that's up to you. I figured that would be your response. And while I won't disagree because if it were to be applied to every enemy in turn then you would lose a lot of time with the set's attacks, I do have to ask why only the first target hit would do anything to impede the weapon and none of the other targets also being hit do not. After all, you are hitting each of them too, so they are being impacted as well. And with the momentum you lost with that first impact's hitstop, each following enemy should have a longer hitstop than the previous until the weapon is denied the ability to hit any further enemies despite not having reached its target cap yet. I believe this is better addressed by aligning the effect (and impact) to mesh with the animation. Not going to argue about "a nice meaty 'crunch'" though. Sound effects do go a long way to conveying depth and feel of action.

Dumb question: why would titanic weapons with all their mass stop upon impact when light weapons still pass through? Wouldn't titanic weapons have an easier time punching through targets with all their mass than smaller weapons? (Edit: That was why execution swords and axes were so much more robust than combat weapons. To make sure they went through the target in one hit rather than risk the weapon not fully decapitating the target.) Edit again: Another question: When you use one of Titan Weapons' four AoE attacks, would the hitstop apply just to the 1st enemy or would it have to trigger on each enemy in turn?

NPCs following you seem to be classed as pets. And the pets they summon, if they all follow Dream Doctor's example, don't count as part of the team for xp gains. Dream Doctor is the only NPC I am aware of that summons pets that summon pets. I haven't bothered to check to see what Desdemona's summons do though, since I make it a point to not free her from anything until the map is cleared. Edit: Just checked Desdemona. And the results are... inconsistent. Sometimes I see a reduction in xp and other times I don't. There was a definite drop in rewards from bosses, but didn't really see any losses from minions. Checked Desdemona again, and yes, her pets reduce both the xp and the inf' gained from enemies depending on how much damage her pets did. If Desdemona defeats the target by herself, you get full rewards. (And when you leave her as a boss, she can routinely defeat minions before her pets touch them.)

There is another concern with the split slimes. I just ran an Illusion Controller on the test server to verify, but pets of pets don't count for xp. You can see it on the mission where the Dream Doctor fights alongside your character. He summons a phantasm and it summons a fighting decoy, and your xp from defeats start wildly fluctuating. (Edit yet again: I think inf' does too, but I'm running from memory. On the test server test though, my inf' gains didn't drop with the Phantasm and Decoy Phantasm.) On the test server with the Illusion Controller I threw together to check, whatever target the decoy phantasm was damaging, I got less xp from. Equal level Council minions were awarding 4168 xp upon defeat, but with the decoy doing damage, the xp dropped as low as 2779. So the split slimes from the summoned slimes' defeats will reduce gained xp depending on how much of the damage the enemy takes is from them. And since the spawned slimes from the summoned slimes are also pets summoned by pets rather than summoned by the MM himself/herself/themselves/itself, they will also likely reduce xp gains. (Edit again: And unlike the Phantasm's single Decoy Phantasm, you can generate a lot of pet of pets mobs. That can, won't necessarily, but can neuter xp gains. Not sure about inf' gains, because I only checked on the Controller with the single decoy, and inf' didn't drop.) To ensure the validity of my test, I attacked a reference group of Council without pets and then the test group of Council with just my Phantasm and its summoned decoy.

Plus the three the knights can summon when they get their one attack in before dying. Even at only 5 second duration, they are still additional pawns capable of launching up to 2 attacks during their window of existence.

You summon before the fight. After the fight starts, you aren't anywhere near that 9 second recharge any more. Knights die, you immediately summon more and have 6 pawns on the field. If those knights die, you have possibly 12 pawns and can summon 3 more knights 9 seconds into the fight. Timed right, this means you can have up to 3 knights and 15 pawns for maybe 3 seconds. Where are the extra 3 pawns coming from? The knights hit a target affected by Sludge Hurl. (Edit: This of course assumes that the pawns are miraculously surviving where the knights are not somehow.)

I would personally recommend either dropping the splitting slime function and just retain the extra slime spawning ability, or change the summoned split slimes to not be the same as the summoning dead pet. Will this hamstring the split slimes? Yes, however, provided the game's code can handle the splitting function in the first place, having say Underling tier pets spawned from the Henchman tier pets' defeats would at least give the player incentive to upgrade their pets and keep them alive, while still retaining the ability to get more pets from your pets' defeat. Since you envision this as a perma-Gang War, and considering that Gang War's pets only last a few minutes on a 10 minute timer, cutting down the split slimes' capabilities would make it easier to justify the sheer number of pets your proposal can generate.

You're not factoring the animation times. Your bigger attacks will hit harder, yes, but it works out better for the player to not bother giving the pets those bigger powers. Those bigger powers also have longer animations and longer recharge times. Both the pawns and the knights have the exact same attacks with the exact same animation times and the exact same recharge times. Yes, the knights will get a faster recharge with their enhancements, but they still run up against the wall of only 1 attack at a time and having to get through their attack animation before starting the next one. So if you don't upgrade the knights, you can more than double their damage without bothering to enhance them for it simply by making sure they die as expediently as possible and you can re-summon them as soon as possible. And without Hasten, I can get the T1 summon down to available every 9 seconds. On a 15 second timer, how many pawns and knights can you stack at once? Using your 30 second time frame, running with 1.5 second animations on a 4 second recharge for 2 attacks at base pet: Pawn: 12 attacks over 30 seconds at 50 damage each. 12 x 50 = 600. Only half will hit, but you do have twice the number of pawns for a total of 600 damage. 1.5 second attack usable every 4 seconds at two such attacks. Each attack has a 2.5 second window of non-availability. Each attack is used in the non-availability window of the other attack. Between both attacks, there is a combined 2 second window where the pawn has no attacks. 5 total seconds for the combined sequence. 30/5=6 cycles of two attacks each for a total of 12 attacks in a 30 second time frame. Knight: 20 attacks over 30 seconds at 75 damage each. 20 x 75 = 1,500. Only 60% of your hits land though. 1,500 x 0.6 = 900. 1.5 second attack usable every 3 seconds at two such attacks (to avoid the complication of factoring in the upgrade attacks). Each attack has a 1.5 second window of non-availability. Each attack fills the non-availability window of the other attack. Between both attacks, you have a combined 2 attacks per 3 seconds without pause. 30/3=10 cycles of two attacks each for a total of 20 attacks. So factoring in enhancements, the knights do 1.5x the damage of the pawns. (So yes, you would need 3 pawns to match the damage of a knight.) Now add in the extra complication of you can summon more knights while the pawns are in play, and those knights can die to spawn two more pawns each. And then add in the complication of each knight can spawn a pawn without dying through the Sludge Hurl ability that you are spamming on everything when you aren't summoning more slimes, even if they only last for 5 seconds and so get off 2 attacks tops. Do you see how this cascades? And this is without even considering the game's notorious spaghetti code or how old the game engine is.

Except you are discounting that they can each only make 1 attack at a time. And with a fast recharge, even not upgraded, they can maintain a near constant stream of attacks. And you are also ignoring that you have twice as many pawns as knights. So your 250 becomes 500. One knight dealing out 450 damage per hit breaks up into two pawns doing 250 damage each for 500 damage total between them. And with fast attacks, they can keep those attacks coming. And if you can summon replacements despite having the splits in play still, then now you jump up to 950 between the 3 of them. And if you don't upgrade the knight to keep his resists down and you don't support the knight with your secondary to keep him alive, you will be nearly constantly generating new pawns, doing more damage than your knight. Edit: And as for why you wouldn't be able to summon replacements while the splits are active? Lets take just the knights. You summon 3 knights. They die and become 6 pawns, so you immediately summon 3 knights. Which die and become more 6 pawns. Depending on how many pawns survived and haven't timed out from the previous run, you have up to 12 pawns now. And you can still summon 3 more knights.

The posts will appear when the devs start testing places for the new dancers. I've given my warning. Multiple times. And as I already said in this thread, I don't have a horse in this race. So I'm done here.

War Witch was a relevant part of the discussion. It didn't matter where the devs tried to move her, it made players upset. And she was already in Pocket D, so she wasn't being added. All I was/am doing, is giving warning about other players' reactions. If the devs add more dancers, I won't care. I don't dance on the dance floor. I don't interact with the NPCs in Pocket D. I usually avoid Pocket D, only going there to hit up Null the Gull. I don't have a horse in this race. I'm just giving warning about reactions you are likely to run into by adding more NPCs to Pocket D that aren't somewhere players can't make use of such as behind the bar. The whole War Witch argument was very ugly. And again, she wasn't being added, she was being moved.

Gang War does not potentially prevent you from summoning replacements for 15 seconds after any of your pets die. Neither do the specters spawned by the MM's inherent attacks from Necromancy. In both cases, when they lose one or more pets, as long as their pet summon power has recharged, the MM player can immediately summon replacements. And those replacements are subject to commands from the MM. Which means they can also almost immediately start soaking damage for the MM. As for the "need three Queens just to somewhat equal a single King" part, that isn't the least bit true. Since you have the the split slimes simply be uncontrolled and unable to be upgraded regular summons, you are still getting up to 6 T1 pets, 4 T2 pets, and 2 T3 pets. Yes, you lose access to enhancement upgrades too, but you aren't losing any combat levels; the splits are still the same level as the originating pet. You aren't gaining any improved accuracy or damage from enhancements, but you are doubling the number of pets. And those pets are still doing normal damage for pets normally summoned, just not enhanced damage from slotted enhancements. And you aren't losing number of attacks per pet with the splits, just access to their added attacks. And you have their attacks at a fast cooldown, so with 2 attacks at say a 4 second recharge each and a 1.5 second animation, they can still maintain an almost constant stream of attacks, just not incorporating any of their upgraded attacks. My main, a ninja mastermind, only gets a +26.5% accuracy boost from a single multi enhancement on the genin. The rest of their accuracy comes from Tactics, which is giving them a +11.81% boost to accuracy. And they only really seem to miss enemies on the highest difficulty settings. (They still manage to land a lot of their attacks even on the highest difficulty settings, just not for much damage.) My Dark Servant from my secondary set isn't even slotted for accuracy, but manages to always land that heal. While the T1 splits will struggle to hit depending on your difficulty settings, the T2 and T3 splits won't have any major problems and you will have 6 of those. One thing I've learned about MMs, when the fighting gets really difficult or bad, the upgrades aren't anywhere near as important as simply getting pets back into the field to fight. And splitting pets upon defeat means you will be getting lots of pets on the field. It also means the MM is best off not trying to protect their pets, but rather gets the best effect by sacrificing pets to get more pets on the field as quickly as possible. And then you get to teams. Can you imagine a full team of just slime MMs? There are already MM only runs for various TFs/SFs (just like there are other AT only runs), and they can have anywhere from 64-72 pets on the field at once depending on their secondaries. This AT could have up to 152 pets on the field at once depending on secondary. So you introduce your own invasion problems to the team, where not everything may be rendered to fight depending on the PC. Yes, this is an extremely niche case, likely never to happen, but it is a possibility to consider. Gang War does not even summon pets as capable as your T1s, and yet it has a 10 minute cooldown.

I'm curious how you feel about 'bots and demons then. The Protector Bots have both a shield and a heal, and one of the tier 2 demons has a heal.

I highly recommend losing the splitting slime function. Aside from standard code rant, MMs rely on being able to command their pets. Uncontrolled pets don't function for Bodyguard Mode, and since the split slimes will most likely still count as the appropriate tier pet for summons, they not only decrease the number of pets available for Bodyguard Mode by transitioning to being uncontrolled as Aggressive-Follow pets, they would also prevent replacement pets from being summoned for the extra 15 seconds those uncontrolled slimes exist. I'm also not sure if the Elemental Infusion would work given what we know about the game's code and the fact you are trying to change what your pets do/how they function. You probably also won't get the ability to have your pets spawn more pets even for the low time you posted since you are now looking at a MM that can have up to 18 pets just from their primary power set, that despite being uncontrolled while active, are still every bit as powerful as your 6 standard pets, just without their upgrade powers. (6 pawn slimes from defeated knight slimes, 3 pawn slimes spawned by the knight slimes before defeat, 4 bishop slimes from defeated rook slimes, 2 bishop slimes spawned from the rook slimes before defeat, 2 queen slimes from defeated king slime, and 1 queen slime spawned from the king slime before defeat. [Edit: And if for some reason replacement slimes could be summoned even while their split versions are in play, then you could feasibly have up to 24 pets for a very brief window of time just from the primary power set. The 12 split slimes for however much of their 15 seconds remains, the 6 slimes you summon normally, plus the 6 slimes those replacement slimes summon for 5 seconds each. Especially after you get the recharge rate of Sludge Hurl down so you can focus on just spamming it on every enemy in sight.]) This means this set plays best by not upgrading their pets since the upgrades would slow the rate at which the pets can be defeated, so they can generate more pets faster between replacement summons. Edit again: It also means the MM is best served by not even trying to keep their henchmen tier pets alive with their secondary so they can get more slimes in play faster, freeing them to focus on spamming Sludge Hurl and the occasional pet summon for yet more slimes.

City of Data says Empowering Circuit replaces its existing effect when from the same caster and that only the highest value applies. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=mastermind_buff.shock_therapy.empowering_circuit&at=mastermind

I know this is a dumb question, but, did you talk to her afterwards? You don't get the ring from the mission, she tells you to hold on to it after you talk to her again.