Luminara

It's 80' Stealth with a model-specific costume (Huntsman male /Night Widow female /Crab Spider huge). It can be acquired multiple times by accepting Agent G's mission, abandoning it and accepting it again (the power isn't deleted when the mission is abandoned). Each time it's re-acquired, it adds 1 hour of duration, up to 2.5 hours maximum (game time, not real time, so the timer isn't ticking when the character is logged out). That's it. It's just "free" Stealth for 1-2.5 hours, and it works anywhere and on anything that doesn't ignore Stealth. I played around with it while leveling up a few characters, but I didn't like the toggle cost. Similar powers are Midnight Visage (50' Stealth) and the Chameleon Suit (1000' Stealth). https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.arachnos_disguise https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.midnight_visage https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.freakshow_disguise

The Sinatra version of this song is eerily appropriate here... Here we are, as in olden days. Happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us, Gather near to us, once more. Through the years, we all will be together, If the fates allow. Hang a shining star upon the highest bough, And have yourself a merry little Christmas now. Merry Christmas to you, too, @High_Beam. Merry Christmas to all of you, today and every day.

None of the activities associated with running a tip mission (opening Contacts, selecting Tips, selecting the specific tip... everything involved with selecting and running a mission, including exiting the mission and closing the mission completion dialogue window) created the invisible window. I also allowed myself to be defeated once to bring up the rez dialogue, and leveled up (veteran level 44), still no invisible window. Zoning via transit hub (Rogue Isles ferry, in this test) doesn't create the invisible window. It's not caused by entering a base, opening a vendor window, opening the salvage window, opening the Incarnates window, entering and immediately exiting the Enhancements screen, opening the recipes window or accessing a crafting station, opening enhancement/salvage/inspiration storage in a base, opening the merit vendor window, opening the ID or personal info windows, the combat attributes windows (the sticky one at the top left or the main window), the Clues or Find Contact windows, nor the Options window. Not a result of staying in the Enhancements screen for six minutes, or exiting a base. Abandoning a mission doesn't cause it. Drops and getting a tip doesn't do it. It's not pseudo-pets, this character has two (Ice Storm and Blizzard). E-mail usage, claiming account items, nope. Camera angle, orientation and zoom don't create the invisible window. Selecting a newspaper mission, abandoning it and selecting a new newspaper mission didn't do it. Earning a badge doesn't cause it. /respec didn't do it, but I backed out immediately. A full respec needs to be investigated, but I don't have any respecs planned for any of my characters at the moment, so that will have to wait. AH HA! I tested logging out to the character selection screen, and on the character I logged in to, the invisible window is there. Logging back out to the character selection screen and back into the character I was previously playing, the invisible window is there. That's it. It's caused by switching characters. I exited the game entirely, restarted the client and logged into a character. There was no invisible window. I logged out to the character selection screen and logged back into the same character, and the invisible window was there. Switching characters is what creates the invisible window in the center of the screen. It's either the logout window itself not properly terminating, or a hidden window created specifically for some purpose, though I can't fathom why switching characters would need an invisible window always active. Wish @Faultline were around to dig into the code and figure out what's going on.

It's not part of the character hit box or model, it's a window. Easiest and simplest way to see the same effect is to open a mission acceptance window or /ah, then open the badge window. With the badge window on top, the exact same behavior occurs, tooltips failing to display where it overlaps the other window. There's an invisible, non-interactive window that sits in the center of the screen... but as I note in my last post, it's not always there, something creates it. Some activity or action. It's not present upon logging in, something we do creates it, and once it's created, it persists for the remainder of that gaming session.

Now this is interesting. I just logged in to check the progress of a day job on my Ice/Willpower sentinel, and the dead zone isn't present. New question on my mind is what makes that region of the screen dead. It's not Alt+Tab, so we can strike that one off of the list. Going to test this...

In the region I've outlined in red, tooltips don't display. There's an invisible window blocking mouse interaction with the badge window. The placement of that invisible window is interesting, dead center of the screen. Wonder what it is and why it's there at all, since it's not interactive.

This times infinity. Low hit chance is the real cause of endurance management problems. Missing forces the player to use more attacks, more attacks use up more endurance, and more endurance per attack than all the toggles a character has active.

From the other end of the perspective spectrum: My mother would start decorating right after Halloween. Splashes of red and green everywhere, that canned snow stuff frosting the windows, garlands of gold and silver strewn around. Christmas music played constantly for months. Family tree tinseling and ornament hanging, and nothing came down until the tree was shedding needles faster than she could vacuum them up. She never put up a single decoration outside, everything was always indoors. Christmas was in her heart, and her home was her heart. We were poor, so it wasn't about presents and fancy displays for other people, more about feeling Christmas for as long as possible. That was usually about six months. When the inevitable time came to put everything away, we took the tinsel off of the tree and saved it (i said we were poor), boxed everything up and moved it to the shed, and she'd get a mixed look on her face. Part regret, part anticipation. I still believe it was the best Christmas present she ever gave me. I love Christmas. I love seeing Christmas decorations. I love snow and firs and holly trees and hot cocoa on cold days and Christmas music and Christmas movies with cheesy cliché conclusions. During the holiday season, middle of the year, doesn't matter to me, every day is Christmas because Christmas is in me every day. It's a perpetual feeling, and I'm grateful that people leave their decorations up because these complete strangers are sharing their joy, their love of Christmas, with me. Just like my mother did. There's always bad shit going on in the world. Wars, hate, starvation, abuse. The Christmas spirit is the polar opposite of all of it, and to the people who leave their decorations up past some stranger's arbitrarily determined date of expiration, I say thank you. There's never a time when we don't need some of that spirit, and for every person who rolls his/her eyes and scoffs at the doofuses who haven't taken down their decorations, there's also a person who looks at those decorations and feels a spark of warmth.

Seems down to earth. Nothing ground-breaking, but solid nonetheless.

And the PPD in the PI safeguard mission. Makes getting that badge annoying. I intend to test some other missions, like the ones with Blast Furnace as a hostage, as soon as I have the time.

Correct. I apologize for not including that information.

First objective of this tip mission is "Rendezvous with Silent Blade". She spawns as a hostage, guarded by Council critters. And she takes damage when those Council critters use AoEs, PBAoEs or cones. Guess what happens if she's defeated. Go on, guess. That's right! The next objective is set when Silent Blade is rescued, and the mission can't progress because rescuing Silent Blade isn't completed! Because she's dead, and dead chicks set no objectives. Obviously, /leaveteam or mission abandonment and waiting for it to reset are workarounds, but since you guys redesigned this mission, added a badge for Voids and bumped it up to the 40-50 slot so people would play it, maybe you might want to do something to... I don't know... make it not a pain in the ass to complete?

That's an argument against doing it, not for. If you want a KD patch with -ToHit, play the appropriate set, rather than homogenize the sets.

Every transaction on the market incurs fees. 5% listing fee based on the price at which the item is listed, and 5% sales fee based on the price paid for the item. If you list an item for 1,000,000, you pay 50,000 for listing that item, and you're not paying another player, the inf* is destroyed. It no longer exists. Same thing for sales fees. When an item sells, 5% of the inf* you would collect is destroyed, it no longer exists. The higher your list price, the higher the listing fee. The higher the price paid by the purchases, the higher the sale fee. And all fees are an inf* sink, performing the solitary function of permanently removing inf* from the economy. So no, it's not equivalent if respecs are changed to unlimited and free. The transaction fees are the larger sink, not the crafting cost. I recommend reading through posts in the Market forum before making any other assumptions about how the market or the economy work. My point is, the cost of buying a respec recipe is a negligible expense in comparison to the cost of outfitting the new build. In the same way the inf* sink represented by respec recipe sales is a drop in the bucket (presuming the average sale price of those 3432 respec recipes was 1,000,000, that would be 343,000,000 inf* removed from the economy by transaction fees... but the economy has trillions of unspent inf* floating around. ergo, drop in the bucket), the cost of a respec recipe is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall cost of replacing enhancements. Replacing enhancements is the relevant, and much more significant, expense. I can buy 100 respec recipes and mail them to you, but I guarantee that you'll still find yourself struggling because it will be replacing enhancements where you incur the real cost, And the more you respec, the higher that cost will be, as you rip out one set of enhancements after another and cram new ones in, over and over again, constantly changing things. How many of those respecs would you use before you'd be flat broke and going out of your mind with frustration and anxiety over finding a way to pay for the next attempt to "fix" the build, with said build incapable of running content at -1/x1, missing enhancements and zilch in your pockets to do anything about it? Ten? Fifteen? And then what? Start a thread about the necessity of enhancements being free and unlimited? This is where phrases such as "hoist with your own petard" and "enough rope to hang yourself" come into play. And yes, I do, in fact, agree with you that it's a restrictive design, I'm strongly averse to this kind of nanny state bullshit, but in this particular case, it does serve a purpose and do a lot more good than harm. If you have to use some semblance of caution, if you have to stop and consider the consequences of respecing your build, you're less likely to find yourself at a point of not being able to play that character at all. Being flat broke and staring at a couple dozen empty enhancement slots is a sure-fire way to lose all interest in a character, if not the entire game.

Let's pretend that, for some ungodly reason, I want to respec my level 37 Rad/Elec sentinel out of PBAoEs and take ranged AoEs instead. If I'm too poor to afford a respec recipe at buy now prices, and too impatient to wait for a low bid to fill (there are 3432 for sale as of when i started typing this, last five sales ranging from 333,333 to 2,000,000), then I'm frankenslotting set IOs, because that's the least expensive option. It's cheaper than SOs over time, same price as common IOs of an equivalent level and more combat-effective than either of those two options. And, being poor, I'm buying inexpensive recipes and salvage and crafting them myself, rather than paying someone else to do it. I have to replace 11 enhancements, so that's 11 recipes at 25,000 apiece, 22 common salvage at 250 apiece, 11 uncommon salvage at 2500 apiece, and 81,640 crafting fee for each enhancement. 1,206,040 inf* for the 11 enhancements I'm replacing. If I am patient enough to make those low bids for enhancement recipes, I'm also going to be patient enough to wait for a low bid to fill on a respec recipe, so we can presume that I could get it for 333,333. The miserly approach is four times as expensive as the respec recipe, and that's for a very limited respec, two powers and eleven enhancements at level 37. If I couldn't afford that respec recipe, there's no way I could afford the enhancements I'd need after respecing, even if I make them myself. Of course, it's possible to recycle existing enhancements, if one is using common IOs or SOs, but that's assuming that the powers can be slotted identically, and that's not a given. I can't put level 25 Damage IOs in Power Sink or Energize. I can't swap Neutron Bomb for Maneuvers and still use 1 Acc/3 Dam/1 EndRdx/1 RchgRdx SOs as my slotting. In many cases, the player is going to have to replace enhancements, and that's where the inf* goes. Not to respecs, but to the replacement enhancements needed after respecing. Having done that respec, I'm likely to want to respec again immediately after testing, if infinite respecs are available, always pursuing that perfect build. I'm going to spend more and more on recipes, salvage and crafting costs. The price of a respec recipe is a pittance compared to what I'll spend replacing enhancements over time with unlimited respecs at my disposal. I can offset that by selling some of my enhancements, but they'll always sell at a loss. I can use converters to change my frankenslotted set IOs, but that's going to require constant play to keep the supply of merits coming in so I can afford to play converter roulette to turn my useless IOs into usable IOs for my own build, and I'm going to be doing it with a dissatisfying build that I haven't enhanced properly (if at all) because I've spent all of my bread on enhancements for the builds I've respeced out of. At best, you'll still spend more on enhancements than the cost of a respec recipe. Making respecs free and infinite in supply won't reduce your respec expenses because the expenses aren't in the respec itself, they're in the results of the respec, the new powers and required enhancements.

Not if the mental gymnast is naked...

In a vacuum, it wouldn't be important. This is just one sink, not a large one, and in that vacuum, it probably wouldn't make any difference. But our economy is multi-layered and multi-targeted. Consider amplifiers, for instance. Superficially, they're fantastic inf* sinks, but that's only superficially. The 2.5 million inf* cost at level 50 looks like a huge sink, but if players aren't buying them... well, they're not very good sinks, are they. If a player spends 24,000 inf* on eight hours of all three amplifiers at level 1, and never touches them again, they're not even as good at being a sink as a single respec recipe sold on the market for 1,000,000 inf*, as that transaction destroys four times as much inf*. Every sink is vital to the economy, and considering that inf* is added to the economy faster than it's destroyed, we need more sinks, not fewer. Removing one won't destabilize the economy significantly, but it would have an impact. And every step away from a stable economy is a step toward inflation. Adding a Sybil belt to your costume won't increase your hit chance or buff your damage. Respecing out of a power to add Aim or Build Up would. Replacing a cape with a backpack item on your character won't make any difference in combat. Respecing to move slots to a newly acquired T9 power so you can blitz missions in half the time would. Costume items being unlocked isn't the same as changing a basic aspect of the game in a way which would bring a notable amount of power creep with it. I understand all of that, but... you don't need a killer build to hit 50. I've played some mind-bogglingly bad shit to 50. I took a Trick Arrows/Archery defender to 50, most of the way solo, between Issues 5 and 7. I leveled a Kin/Elec defender to 50 without using any of my /Elec powers, I used Flurry, Kick and Air Superiority, and, again, most of the way solo, in the same period. I took a Bots/TA mastermind to 50 when Bots were the worst mastermind primary and TA was the worst set period. It's ten times faster and easier now, with P2W buffs and a stable economy. You can get there, if you want to, even with the worst build you can make. The ride is definitely more enjoyable with a solid build, but I've never let a build stop me from going the distance. A build can always be fixed later, but if you avoid getting to later because the build isn't just right, you're just making it take longer. Join a team once in a while, only one person in a thousand gives a damn what you're doing or how you're doing it, as long as you're doing something. Participate in group events, like Giant Monster fights or RWZ raids. Use the P2W buffs. Adjust the difficulty to suit the character. Select missions against enemies which don't push the character past its limits. Grab some cheap recipes from the market, craft them, collect exploration badges to acquire merits, use the merits to buy converters, voila, all the set IOs you could ever want or need for a leveling character. Or grab a farm build from the forums, make a second account and use it as your farming account to power-level characters. Infinite respecs aren't the answer to getting to 50. You are. I don't like the hit roll system. But it is what it is and it's unlikely to change, so I live with it. People who don't have inf* for respec recipes also don't have inf* for new enhancements, so unlimited respecs won't improve the game for them. Broke is broke. People who don't have the time to log onto the test server, instantly bump a character to a specific level and use the provided popmenu to enhance it for free aren't going to have more time by going through multiple respecs on the live servers, leveling up the slow way and manually buying and slotting the enhancements. And no-one has to be 50 to be wealthy or well-enhanced, we have players posting their results from marketeering with level 1 characters who start with nothing but the inspirations they receive from the tutorial and turn it into a billion inf*. There's no equivalency between respec availability and these things.

Respec recipes are an inf* sink. Not a large one, but every sink helps maintain the economy. That's the purpose of allowing respec recipes to drop from NPCs, to give players something to sell to one another and bleed a little more inf* out of the game world. If you want to remove that sink, create another to replace it. Additionally, the test server is running year-round specifically to give players a place to test without limitations. It's not an oversight, no-one forgot to shut it down after the last beta, it's intentionally left up so people can log in and try anything and everything, at every level, in every way they can imagine. The HC launcher even streamlines the process to the point of making it one click, and Mids' builds can be imported directly into the game on the test server, so it really couldn't be more convenient. Moreover, we're supposed to show some care and attention when making builds. That's why there are only 15 free/earned respecs (16 for Soldiers of Arachnos), why respec recipes have a low drop rate, why respecs purchased from vendors have a high cost, why Real Numbers was implemented way back when. Respecs were never intended to be used with abandon, to be something done on a whim. A core philosophy of this game is that choices should have meaning, weight and consequences, and that includes whether or not to use a respec. Turning respecs into an on-the-fly, at will activity would diminish that. This also isn't in line with the spirit of the game that the HC team is trying to preserve. Yes, they're updating things, changing things, but they're doing so within a framework which doesn't stray from the original flavor and essence of the game. Unlimited free respecs is the kind of thing other servers do. Given how unlikely it is that either Cryptic or Paragon would've implemented such a radical thing as unlimited free respecs, it's equally unlikely that HC will do it. I also find some of the reasoning for this proposal to be suspect. For example, this is wrong. Respecs don't change enhancement types or categories, so the player going on a respec spree would not, in fact, save inf*. Every time a power is changed, the slotting and enhancements used changes. Drop a PBAoE, take a single-target melee attack, now your PBAoE enhancements can't be used, you have to replace them. Remove all of the slots from a power and move then to another power and, unless that power is identical in slotting, the existing enhancements are useless and the newly slotted power can't be enhanced. You're positing that this would be an improvement for new players, but new players won't have ten storage bins full of enhancements to play with, they'll be scrounging on the market, spending more on a single enhancement than they would've spent on a respec recipe. And if these new players do have enough inf* to blow through multiple builds worth of enhancements in a frenzy of respecs, the cost of respec recipes isn't going to be a factor for them. And here, you're saying that you spend most of your time not using your powers in combat. Why do you need free unlimited respecs to move things around in a base or tweak a costume? Respecs are intended to be used to fix problems in a build, and builds aren't relevant in the base or costume editors. Which powers are slotted, what powers you've taken, these aren't conjoined with bases or costumes, so that's pretty sketchy justification for "needing" free unlimited respecs. As someone who burns through respecs like they're discount holiday candy, and would benefit tremendously from an endless supply of them, I still can't see this as an improvement. It decreases economic stability, removes a potential income source for players who sell respec recipes when they drop, lessens the value of making choices in the game, and obviates the primary reason for the test server being kept active outside of betas. Your own arguments for this don't even support it.

Ocho? Oh-ho!

Heals aren't shown in Combat Attributes. Regeneration, +Max HP and Absorb are. I recall something added to show float text for powers like this... don't know where they put it, but it should be somewhere in the Options window. Poke around. No guarantee that it'll display the text for this power, but it's worth trying.

It's flagged not to display float text.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Free_Fire_Zone_Transport

Going through Rogue tips today... escort, escort, escort, needle in a haystack hunt in the biggest damn warehouse map in the game, needle in a haystack hunt for a glowy that isn't a glowy because it's a boss... and the writing is just as bad as the Hero and Vigilante stuff. I'm either doing it for the money, or to stop someone from gaining more power than I have, or stop someone from destroying the world... because I can't be rich and powerful if there isn't a planet to stand on. And, of course, I'm confined to the Rogue Isles if I want the Rogue morality tip, because there are no Rogue options in the tips that drop in Paragon, it's a one-way ticket to Hero. Yeah, the whole alignment system is crap. It's inflexible, both the way it functions and the imposed motivations created with the sub-par writing. I say rip it all out and replace it with a copy of the Praetorian morality choice. Let anyone run any tips with any alignment, making a morality choice at the end of the mission, thus allowing the player to decide how it ends, and, consequently, which alignment path to follow.