Naomi

It's been brought up a few times in passing, but I would say we're more reluctant than not. I would guess that most people, including myself, would like to see the AFK timer increased longer than 15 minutes on its own but there are no definitive plans in the works at the moment. The GMs and other Devs are aware people use it to farm damage and healing badges, but those can also be farmed inside of missions if it were somehow taken away. So if this is about stopping the farming of badges itself, it wouldn't accomplish that goal on its own. If tons of people are farming the badges, then we honestly (in my opinion) should look at the requirements themselves and adjust them accordingly. In the past, the healing badges used to be a lot worse in terms of requirements, but back then, the badges themselves also used to be geared specifically to certain ATs before the "collect every badge on every character" culture became more prominent. The badges themselves at the moment still have pretty steep requirements for people who don't have tons of time to get them organically, if at all, as not every character has a way to heal friendly targets for that one in particular. One of the damage taken badges is also a requirement for a power granting accolade. We also don't want to see players getting actioned left and right for farming, or even the occasional afk farming, since (and this is just my opinion not HC policy), it isn't so much an exploit as it is abusing the intent of a system for some other gain, which is where the GM team tends to start asking us to see if we can change things that they're getting frequent reports or complaints about. Overall, the biggest concern at the moment is whether your actions are effecting someone else's gameplay. So if you're using a Giant Monster or something for such things, it's going to be looked at more sternly than if you're just healing friendly mobs or taking damage while afk.

Split from costume bug thread. Probably needs more information on exactly which power(s) you think aren't WAI. Note: Minimal FX options are subjective by whoever made them and uses them and does not mean "No FX At All". Dark Armor for Brutes seems to have an odd mix of "Minimal FX", "No Fade or Pulse" (I don't know what this means since I don't play the powerset. Is it just another name for 'Minimal FX'? or is it specifically 1 or 2 components of the main FX it's supposed to remove?), missing "Soul Noir" for some powers (I don't know if this is intended).

Don't trust Flea to walk your dog(s). For obvious reasons.

I don't think it would be a huge stretch to update the slider, but given that the stop-gap solution would be to use -lodbias as a parameter in the launcher in the interim, it's also likely to not be high on the list of immediate things to do, but it's more a question for @Number Six. I'm not very familiar with Unreal Engine either, but I don't think they removed LODs completely. They have an optional auto-generated LOD system you can use.. but it's also not a new concept. CoH uses auto-generated LODs for character parts (stored at creation time, so not real time generated), and can do automatic LOD generation for world objects, though those need to be set manually per-object (distance settings) and probably isn't as good as whatever algorithm Unreal uses. LODs will always be necessary though, auto-generated or otherwise. There's really no getting around the performance vs memory balance that everything ultimately comes down to, or in other words, if energy can be saved, LODs will be used in some capacity or another, which is especially important for mobile devices.

Character LODs depend on their ent types, which for common player models is typically 40/100 for LODs 1 and 2 so this is WAI. The reason they're more noticeable is due to larger resolution displays. A code change to support a slider maximum value of 400% or 500% for character quality is probably the more appropriate route to take than trying to update the existing 3,000 ent types that would need to be examined.

They shut off powers because there's no combat animations like flight has for those.

This was supposedly tested a long time ago and the results were unsatisfactory without there being brief transitional animations into each chosen fly pose from a neutral hover / ready pose. Currently, all of the fly poses are entered from the actual flying pose, and not a neutral hover pose, which, while not terribly dissimilar a starting point, enough to cause it to appear unpolished. It was either that, and/or the lack of strafing poses for each fly pose. They may also need transitional animations for motion into flying backwards from each fly pose if the default interpolation looks bad. It's sort of in a bucket list of things we would like to do eventually, just can't say when without doing some tests myself. The absolute worst case scenario is 36 brief animations, but very likely less than that if they can be shared across gender types, and again, how much we can get away with with interpolation. It still needs to look "okay" if someone rapidly switches between forward and back or any other combination of strafing without looking really weird.

I'm not able to reproduce this. Do you have a .costume file you can attach?

When you post an image, please double-click the image after you insert it into your post and change the thumbnail size to 256px width or less. I will be able to click the image to expand it to the full size if I need to, but it really helps with scrolling through pages if your post's images are thumbnailed to smaller sizes and I don't have to edit your post. @Voltixdark Please see the patch notes for costume bug fixes > Male. Victorian boots didn't have dual color tinting before and it was a bug. I will check the part at a later time to see if the mask or texture can be altered to take a more event tint from both colors so you can replicate that. Soldier's of Arachnos AT Huge boots have been fixed internally. Power Customization and Weapons and draw issues belong in the bug reports forum and not in this thread. All of the issues pertaining to them are known about and are not traditional costume parts.

I feel compelled to say yes.. but, no.. wait.. this can't be right. Honestly I'm feeling a little strange - hungry, even. I could have sworn I just ate? Say, have you ever been to Lucky Spot BBQ? I heard they're giving away free chicken samplers! Wanna go? It's got to be worth it, even with the big lines I hear about.. anything to save a few clucks. Do you know anybody who wants to join us? Maybe @Cobalt Arachne?

Thank you for bringing this plot to our attention. The Radio is currently broadcasting that there's a "free BBQ chicken week" at Lucky Spot BBQ. The residents are just there to collect. Rest assured, people don't respond well to false advertising when it comes to free chicken week, and whatever nefarious scheme the Radio is planning is bound to fail.

Pretty sure this has been this way since Live. It's been low priority to sort out since I need to dig through some concept art to determine which one has the correct name and whether or not it's supposed to contain a secondary model as part of a renamed elemental set. It won't harm anything in the meantime to use either.

This has already been fixed in Open Beta.

It will still work, as the base is just a visual component. I've gone ahead and fixed it anyway though. If it ever changes to allow for it to be teleported by the team like some other pets, the visuals won't be broken as a bonus.

That's the old one, which isn't getting removed or replaced from anyone's base. It's a test / placeholder object that was put in the base editor as an item years ago and isn't used anywhere else in the game (it has road textures on it just to give the object something other than a solid color during Paragon's testing of Praetorian missions). "Praetorian WarWorks (Tintable)" was added that uses the newer, fixed mission map version. At the moment (this may change in the future), there's a sound emitter every 1024ft in a grid pattern across the surface of the water, but you may not hear it unless you leave the base boundary or are near its edge. It sounds like choppy ocean water. You can see where they are if you turn on "Hidden Markers" from the editor options.

Unlikely for the following reasons (which means not a definitive no just yet): Waiting for more reports to gauge impact of fix (e.g. how many people abuse the broken transparency for visual effect and what they were trying to accomplish) Common sense should tell anyone that abuse of any bug in the game for any benefit (to include unintended visuals on costume parts, base items, etc) comes with zero warranty or guarantee it isn't going to get fixed in the future. Often times there can be better solutions for visual hacks. In your case, it might be more appropriate to ask for whatever it is you were trying to create (for all I know a mega monitor type of item with scrolling green computer code or something would work for your needs and usable by anyone else, but if you have ideas or can explain it if you think it will work as a compromise, I read the suggestions forums a minimum of once a week. I try to prioritize bugs and things I break like this go to the top) Fixing this any other way requires doing things that are bad practice on our end, despite being the easiest and simplest method.

I looked but it would take a bit more work than just enabling it in the costume creator. The costumes that don't have sub-selections of textures and patterns are intentionally left empty since they aren't compatible with the basic boot textures as-is.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this suggestion at all. Moving NPCs around is something we've done before and will continue to do if we feel it's necessary. It also isn't something that takes more than a few minutes to do. For people who are just there to cash in merits, change their costume, or get a mission, the NPC placement typically has little effect on them. Pocket D's layout and NPC placement when Roleplayer's are taken into consideration however, is still fraught with problems for the same reasons OP mentions and it's far from perfect, at least in my opinion. I know that there are varying differences in opinion internally on this. If we were to follow the Feng Shui thought process of where things are that draw traffic in and out, then it's easy to see why not many roleplayers chose to use Sam's bar: it's right between an elevator and the Tiki Bar (added post original design), and there is constant traffic rushing back and forth against an area that ought to be stable (there's also the side effect of chat clutter from upstairs. Not many people chit-chat around the pool tables on the blueside version for probably similar reasons). The other red bar, for the longest time since Animal Heads got released, had a trio of NPCs basically hogging up the sitting area on the bar. This isn't the only reason people favor blue-side, but ever since those were moved, it's actually gotten more use the way it used to beforehand. Null the Gull, the parked truck, and now the Hologram Vendor and Vault Reserve (all post additions) are still a mild problem though, for roleplayers spending any length of time there. The other bars that are tucked away and don't see a lot of use unless things are very busy and crowded are like that for their own reasons. The problems that tend to arise for roleplayers specifically, is that half the people coming and going, or worse, idling, are not there to roleplay. There's nothing worse than having a mission goer go afk with full shields on for periods of time next to you or your area, particularly when it involves gaudy colors or constant woosh, woosh, woosh sounds. It's like trying to read a book while someone is blasting heavy metal. These FX are designed to be loud and grab attention, both visually and audibly. There is a huge flip in mood and expectation when you're trying to roleplay or you're just off doing something else. The fact you may not play with sound on has little bearing on the fact it may be disturbing to another. So these problem are real and have their own real life considerations when talking about foot traffic in an area, or designing areas that are going to receive high traffic while also expecting players are going to want to sit down and hang out somewhere for awhile. The blue bar has no NPCs near it that bring non-roleplayers into view or proximity typically. War Witch was famously moved for this reason (I don't think she's in a good spot still). If you look at who hangs out around War Witch on Everlasting on a busy night, and for how long, then it's easy to see why Duncan being placed on the opposite side could be annoying (when roleplaying). The 2nd blue bar already has the staircase traffic, and the traffic of farmers coming and going to the AE, so bringing regular players even closer to that space makes it worse. The idea that players are not allowed to be bothered by such things or make suggestions appealing to the developers because it's a "public space" or it doesn't bother you specifically is silly when Instanced Hami Raids and /kick for SG bases are popular asks that effectively give players more agency and control over their otherwise public events and personally owned, but public spaces. DJ Zero isn't a real human you can appeal to if you have a problem with someone or something like a privately owned base that's public where the owner would appeal to us for /kick to make their life easier. You also can't appeal to DJ Zero if the sound effect of that one item is way too loud next to a popular area. Asking if we can move an NPC is peanuts in terms of development time.

@Scarlet Shocker Can you attach a screenshot of the combination? I'm assuming Robotic Face with an eye detail but not sure which if that's the case.

Splitting your topic off costume bugs to requests since I couldn't find any evidence they ever existed for females.

Just to be clear, the update occurred before Homecoming, during Issue 21. 100% behind this though on every point. The whole flow of the zone was ruined, and the new villain experience hasn't felt right since. It's very clear from the original design that it was intended to be a linear progression style map from A to B, which not all zones are, but it worked very well for Mercy. If the goal was to make the new player experience feel more exciting or interesting (for new players), I think the execution the first time around had more heart. It feels more like it was an unnecessary update that was lumped in because Atlas got a face lift (which was great) and a new Hero tutorial. The Longbow invasion story progression in my opinion should have been executed differently. Right now it feels like if someone edited in portions of Red Dawn into Scarface. There's too much going on and the zone is already out-leveled much more quickly than it used to be. On the technical side of things, the phasing, spawn placements and speed-spawning by themselves objectively need work, they have no life or charm to them and create no memorable experiences.

Unfortunately there isn't! I did take a look at the code involved out of curiosity and the bulk of the generation is done by a hashing process that's also used by other systems. As mentioned by someone else, the result is then brought up to a minimum brightness if the luminosity is too low. I went ahead and ported the relevant portions to an html/javascript page you can run locally to test names out, if it helps. The zip file contains the .htm file (which you can read and edit in a text editor). It's possible some anti-virus might freak out at that, or it might not work at all since locally run pages might have their javascript turned off as a security feature from your browser, anti-virus or something else. coh-name-colors.zip

I'm willing to entertain a more orange and more red palette since the power customization route might be less likely to happen in a reasonable amount of time, and the green color is a bit of an odd choice in context. There are what looks like 7 particle files for the trails, each using about 3 colors each (start color, be color by time x), so sorting out the new palette is a bit more work than changing just one basic color for the FX (all of which are definitely yellows and greens). If I can get some video of the results, I'll try and get 2 options to choose from and post them here in the future for which would go on beta, if approved.

I've been noticing a lot of suggestions lately being derailed instead of being engaging. There's no need to tear down an idea you don't like in most instances (in a manner that involves name calling or forum vitriol), since we tend to read most suggestions pretty defensively anyway. The only thing it does is make it a lot more difficult for us to find valid points in the noise. I can say at least that the OP isn't alone in their line of thinking. I'm pretty sure I even read a similar post about bringing back Prestige costs for base items. The basic premise of any game is to be rewarded and I'm never too surprised to see these types of suggestions. I wouldn't read too much into or go in-depth here about that topic because it's pretty massive, but suffice to say, there is validity at the core principal he's suggesting here. Our default stance on cosmetics though (costume parts and emotes) is that we don't like to gate-keep those in most instances because of what most of you basically said, which is that it's annoying to have to wait to complete a concept, especially when they're not account unlocks. I don't really care how few or how many heroes start their journey off without a cape at first reveal as an argument for or against, because that was never the reason you had to wait until level 20 anyway. It was simply about luring most players toward a magical goal post. The same argument could have been made for travel powers.. or really, any powers. Why do we even have to level up to begin with? That aside, I do think there is wiggle room for cosmetic rewards. Personally, I'd rather most of them be limited to seasonal rewards like the witch and Santa hat type of stuff, possibly unlockable with the candy canes, Halloween or other salvage obtainable from seasonal events (making them available to be purchased year round). I don't like the idea of them to be hard to keep track of, locked behind difficult content, or divided between a loyalty reward structure, pay pack, recipe or other methods for the same stated reasons. There was also an idea on Discord I remember seeing about the possibility of basic free parts and better looking ones that are rewards, sort of like the valentines patterns. I'm not really sure how I feel about those yet other than they would consume a lot of extra time for probably less benefit realistically, and so I'm not a huge fan of that model either. The last time we did something like that was when I added the extra donut flavor emotes behind the Faultline badge and everyone complained, so my guess is it would still be an unpopular reward type, which is fine. There's also the possibility of cycling parts through rewards before making them free from the start, which probably still wouldn't be very popular but it really depends on the part and context (again, I could see old seasonal parts being free the next year with new ones to unlock with salvage). Some people want to be rewarded and others just see it as the millionth time they have to do some annoying, unnecessary thing - which in fairness, like costume slot unlocks, can get really old after a while with little sense of reward. Rewards are also never static and always subject to change based on feedback, so having that flexibility to at least try it in the future is important to us.

Screenshots are not worth a lot of weight with this sort of decision making, so a few points: The Live devs did not lie or mislead anyone about Skirts. Using MA as an example is just an example, and it may not even be a good one because the speed of it hides what's going on. If you add black boots or dark legs underneath the already black skirt, it hides it even further and is misleading. The testing threshold goes beyond the costume creator and isn't limited to just one animation. The most important one is the run cycle, and this skirt in particular is atrociously bad with it (my opinion). Graphics settings and lods are an overlooked testing criteria, but worth mentioning that our current skirts have been bad for awhile now and on a long list. I often have to split my time between fixing bad things that already exist or deciding whether or not what's bad with what's being added is something I can fix later or not at all. I absolutely do not buy into or entertain the argument of "we don't care about clipping, give it to us it's fine" line of reasoning I hear a lot. There are developers and lots of you in the community who would disagree and have disagreed and that's fine, because this is a hugely subjective topic that I am always open to. I will freely admit that perfect has been my enemy on multiple occasions, but my stance on that is that your name is not the one getting attached to that patch note when someone else thinks its poor quality work and associates it with your name. I know the name isn't literally there in the open on the patch notes, but regardless that's where I personally stand on that reasoning. There is no way to fit a close fitting skirt or similar component onto a character without clipping (often terribly) when using traditional methods which are still in use today, in or out of coh's engine, without custom systems or different techniques. In other words, there's no magic wand and this isn't a problem of talent. It's a technical limitation. When it works, there's a good chance it's smoke and mirrors or pure luck in very specific instances. Tsoo (Tsoo_01) uses one of these different techniques, and it looks better, stretching aside, because the legs don't exist. Doing it this way in the costume creator is possible, but you'd be limited to a short selection of boots (of which 0 exist right now). Carnival Illusionists (Carnival_Illusionist_01) use a similar technique, without feet, but to my knowledge they're in perpetual fly animation and can't do most character animations. If they could it would probably look worse than Tsoo with the exact same skirts they wear. Regarding NPCs, no one notices the stretching and clipping on them because the first thing that happens when you come up on a Tsoo in lotus pose as they meditate is they rise up and combat begins. In 90% of circumstances, it goes unnoticed. NPCs get a ton more leeway for different reasons. Their parts, especially the older ones, don't need to be compatible or held to the same standards as a human using it. Texturing techniques can assist in hiding extreme stretching. Forget asking about fancy patterns on skirts like these when people get tired of the plain black. There are problems that exist beyond what you can see with some parts. Sometimes they're simple, sometimes they're annoying. Every part is case by case. In this very particular case, which is an easy fix, the skirt shows through windows when it's not supposed to. Lots of NPC parts do this, like with naked Banished Pantheon man through office doors. The Sybil loincloth is probably going to happen, with or without its present issues, which so far, is the fact that when you run, the cape components turn themselves off to the left or right and remain there until you stop. I believe our current capes do this when we run backwards but it's less prominent and noticeable. I wanted to try messing with the cape settings for it first and it got forgotten about a few months back when someone else offered to look into that, so not having them in page4 is my fault. Circle of Thorns bits for females are something on my list to look at. Lastly, some game engine systems are non-linear with advances in hardware when it comes to talk of performance. This means your hardware is irrelevant past a certain point. I don't have the specifics on capes or anything, but don't expect the game to run any faster on better hardware as a general rule. You'd get much better performance just turning off AO alone. There is also a weird flicker when the pocket d lights roll past the skirt, but it's something that would have to be recorded and probably caused by the transparency issue: