Cobalt Arachne
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Posts posted by Cobalt Arachne
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Everyone who's saying this won't happen because of animations is spot on.
The Shield animation sequencers are one of the hackiest in the entire game, a game which is already notoriously clunky...
Adding new animations to it is extremely unlikely given how difficult it is for us to make new animations currently, on-top of we would be adding them to arguably one of the most volatile animation control systems in the game.
The majority of complex animation-related enhancements or features fall under "technically possible, but is too difficult/time consuming with the tools available to our team for us to be able to realistically commit to."
Plugins and scripts need to be written to add full compatibility to modern 3D/animation tools that allow them to output to City of Heroes' unique data formats if any major ground-breaking animation work is to occur.-
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20 minutes ago, AboveTheChemist said:
I like the new patch note structure quite a bit. I often find myself referencing them and it should make finding them much simpler.
I actually have a question about a note from the May 16 update, specifically: "Fixed the placement of River Rat badge visit locations that were too high." Is there a way to find out who implemented that fix? I have a couple of quick follow-up questions for clarification that I would like to ask them.
I did that fix, what do you want to know?
Only the height changed, as volumes check your feet to see if you're in them or not, and some volumes were set on the surface of the water, but in water your character's feet are lower than normal, so the volume didn't actually count unless you jumped while in it.-
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Fixed this internally; Was a missed flag in the weapon's FX.
It'll be good next patch. 👍 -
That looks painful; 😱 I'll look into this, thanks for the report!
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19 minutes ago, Barneysaurus said:
Strangely enough, the 'fastest' way to get high numbers of Prismatic Aethers are fully-kitted out specific builds called out for on high star-count ITF/Aeon runs. ( Good luck on qualifying for those on a non-particular build, much less as a new player.) Speed-running multiple 50's on a particularly easy WST, can also generate these quick, knowledge of how to do so and having multiple 50's to do so, again favor veterans. I appreciate the explanation, but the current means of generating Prismatic Aethers is *highly* tilted in favor of veterans, power builds, and a large stable of 50's.
The other design purpose of the Aethers was, of course, to provide worthy incentives for people to play the new challenging content.
It's the hardest content in the game currently, so it stands to reason those who conquer it should be handsomely rewarded for their struggles, but almost nothing rewarded there is exclusive to the advanced difficulty modes.
People with access to more characters, resources, and knowledge are going to have an advantage in earning anything we add compared to new players, regardless of the context, so I'm unsure how that matters regarding the first design goal, which is still accomplished (Aether is consumed by its use and there is no cap on how much it can be consumed, which helps it retain value) while also ensuring the hardest content in the game is lucrative enough to those who are willing to commit to running it.
Farming the influence to buy the Aether is of course, the easiest, low-input way to accumulate the currency, that's by design since it is where the influence comes from that trickles down to the new players selling it.
It's a balance made using effort vs. time as the factors that drive players to acquire it. You can either play the harder content to get Aether more quickly, slower by playing the easily accessible content like the Weekly Strike Target or Incarnate Trials, or you can buy it from the herd income that sells it on the Auction House.
We'll also be adding new gamemodes and content that will reward it and continue to make Aether more available; There's a lot of ambitious things planned in the future, stay tuned!
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On 4/7/2023 at 6:44 AM, tidge said:
Question: Does the level-less apply to the mobs that spawn with the non-Gim Vale fight Jack in Irons and Eochai as well? I have been reluctant to test if 100% of their initial spawn needs to also be defeated to get them to respawn (zone geometry, and I don't like leaving things 'unfinished' if it will prevent re-spawns)
I am not sure on this, but I will check and can make them ignore levels as well.
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Just now, BronzeKnight said:
Why not the other way around? Sounds silly but give 2 Aether to non 50's so they can sell it and 1 to 50's if they really want it. This gets more low lvl characters in the WSF and playing the game rather than the hoard of op L50s. You can always mail them to yourself anyhow if you need them on a particular character.
Because the Alpha slot salvage is no longer exclusively the way to craft Alpha slots there is no longer any worthwhile incentive for 50's to join and participate in Weekly Strike Targets now, which hurts its role in the game at max level. The Aether addition was aimed at giving 50's reason to join WSTs again.
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2 hours ago, Dispari said:
Their stated design goal for the system is to make sure it's inaccessible by as many people as possible since the special auras are a tax on server resources.
You're misquoting us a bit here.... That was never a design goal for the Aether system; Rather particle limitations as a whole are something we have to keep in mind constantly with every single new thing we add to this game because particles are a hard-coded engine limit that will very easily cause problems for us if we are careless.
I've mentioned multiple times that the Aether system serves a very specific purpose, and that purpose is not to just give players new customization options, since if that were the goal we would've just placed them in the costume editor like we did with the mushroom aura.The design goal of the Aether currency is to serve as an economic balancing tool by allowing new players who don't have vast reserves of wealth to have a way to coax veteran players into parting with their dragon's horde of wealth they've accrued over the years, which creates a healthier and more accessible game overall.
The main strength of the currency is giving newer players something they can sell to the veteran players on the Auction House. Last I looked it was sitting at 4,000,000 each and for a player who's currently leveling up, that much influence is a godsend and will cover almost all their enhancement needs up until they start investing in Invention Origin Enhancements. It's very likely a leveling player who's doing missions will end up earning at least one Prismatic Aether Particle and it will majorly benefit their leveling experience.
Otherwise, the *trillions* of influence some veterans are sitting on does nothing to help new players, the game, nor the economy.
A major part of this was design was that Aether does not drop from any Architect Entertainment farming activities and is not infinitely seeded on the Auction House, which means the price and value is controlled ONLY by players themselves per supply and demand, and is given resilience from being completely devalued primarily by ensuring the Tier 1 rewards were trivial to get and the higher tier rewards were major investments (anything less and veteran players would buy them all out immediately and then the currency's design goal would cease to function completely).It's not an option unfortunately for us to do account-bound rewards in this game due to the way the account system works.
Before it gets mentioned, while there are account-wide AE badges that exist, but those were done in an awful, horrific way by having every single map instance server check every single player every single time they zone and reward the badges.
If we added anything else to that method of account-bound it would significantly hurt the server's performance, so thus is not a viable option.
Which means account-bound stuff cannot be done currently.That being said I am considering making the Weekly Strike Target reward 1 Aether to all non-50's and 2 Aether to 50's for all WSTs which should help.
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On 4/18/2023 at 10:11 PM, honoroit said:
wish beam rifle could have crey las rifle.
Beam Rifle and Pulse Rifle will get the same model proliferation pass that Assault Rifle did when I do their holstered versions. 💙
So they will be getting the Crey rifles!-
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1 hour ago, Hartanna said:
These do not show up for Arachnos Soldier/Widow uniforms.
Please, @Cobalt Arachne, I need the shrooms! Shrooms I tell you! 😄
Woops!
I'll check on that, must've missed an inclusion somewhere...
Min FX Original is also likely doable; Will look into that today. 🍄-
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Aether Rewards - Wave 3
Tier 3 Reward Additions-
New cosmetic effects added to the Tier 3 Aether reward vendor offerings:
- Effect: Flames
- Effect: Chill
- Effect: Earthen
- Effect: Shocking
- Effect: Psionic
- Effect: Photosynthesis
- The Tier 3 cosmetic effects category as a whole can no longer be used in PvP.
Tier 4 Reward Expansion-
Undefined Mode and Undefined Mini Mode now have two additional customization options available:
- Undefined Silver
- Undefined Evil
Aether Reward Fixes
- Fixed missing halo aura on Legacy Ruin Mage costume.
- Fixed a few broken pointers in the meta costume accolade menu.
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New cosmetic effects added to the Tier 3 Aether reward vendor offerings:
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1 hour ago, Crasical said:
It is visible if set to sheathe on the back, but doesn't load in if you set it to appear when drawn normally.
This is very useful, helped me hone in on where the break is; Thanks!
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11 minutes ago, Crasical said:
Scepter of Stheno fails to render on a DP/Ninja/Mace blaster
Ultra icky! 😱 I'll get it fixed
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Before it gets asked, the remaining Holstered Weapons sets (Beam Rifle, Pulse Rifle, Bows, Dual Pistols) are aimed for next update; I had to delay them due to some health issues leading to unproductive months earlier this year.
I'm back now, but they weren't able to be ready for this Page's release cycle.-
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11 minutes ago, fitzsimmons said:
Mayhem Missions:
Arson completes in Mayhem Missions now give everyone in the group badge credit upon completion.
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Can Safeguard side missions and badge objectives be shared as well? Thank you.Probably, I'd need to go look at them and how they were written.
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Disclaimer statement: None of my projects are in Issue 27, Page 6.
Clarifying follow-up: Before anyone starts asking where the teased macguffins are.
Distraction attempt: Have another teaser image!
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5 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:
Whatever it is, I'm against it.
Understandable, it's been annoying to implement.
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We're never working on anything. EVER.
Nothing. Not even stuff like this. ESPECIALLY not stuff like this.
Now that we've cleared that up, thank you for everyone's understanding.-
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6 hours ago, Greenmantle said:
When I purchase costumes using Prismatic Aether Particle Salvage, my costumes have been appearing under the Hologram Matrix so far for standard costumes, but when I purchased a legacy CoT costume from the Tier 2 Vintage Costumes it does not show up there. It still shows as gray. It's available in my power list and I can drag and drop it into a tray and turn it on, but otherwise it does not show up in the drop down in the Hologram Matrix like the others. Specifically the costume is the Legacy Circle Death Mage Costume.
I'll look into this... potentially a typo in the power ID that the menu option looks for; Should be a quick fix.
Thanks for the report! -
10 minutes ago, Luminara said:
It has nothing to do with portals. I was nowhere near a base portal, a tram station, a ferry, an Ouroboros portal or any other transportation access point when I tested. The float notifications on minimum height characters appear near the top of the screen, instead of the center. Look at the screenshot in the first post, where the float notification is circled in red. That should be just above his character's head.
Ah, the explanation of the issue and the picture specifically included having the SG portal threw off my understanding of what I thought was being referred to with the report.
I wonder if it's some kind of monitor resolution related issue and what the game reads as valid coordinate points on-screen to generate the float? Hard to say.
I've never noticed that issue on my own computer, despite having played a couple characters who were the absolute minimum size the costume creator can legally create, but I'll start keeping my eyes out to see if I notice it when on them.
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Is it it exclusive to targeting through the SG portal?
There's actually an invisible cylinder geometry inside those that serves the function for mouse-clicking detection, it used to be solid (thus SG portal objects had collision) but when Homecoming made the portals side-color specific, we removed the collision property of that internal cylinder geometry so players could walk through SG portals, however because it still exists inside it, the camera and target pathfinding still calculate for it, and if you're standing behind an SG portal targeting something on the other side, it won't think you have line-of-sight with your target because you're behind an invisible geometry.
That's all a side-effect of that non-rendered geometry cylinder inside the portal FX, and not something I'm aware can be fixed with the way the map engine works, fortunately you're not super likely to encounter SG portals where you're fighting in most content.
Also the reason player names vanish when they walk inside the portal FX, the game thinks they're behind a wall and not in view.
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Appreciated and most welcome!
Posts like these are the reason we're developers. In the end, our goal is ever to deliver a fun and quality experience to our players, and while there are no perfect decisions, we are always striving to create work that lives up to the legacy of the game we all hold very dear.
Happy holidays to everyone in the City of Heroes as we move into 2023!
🎄
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Happy Halloween! 🎃
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5 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:
Hm, this thread got interesting.
Literally right after your last post, you missed the party. 🎉
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Shield Defense for Sentinels!
in Suggestions & Feedback
Posted
My current plan is to go back and see how feasible this is once I have finished all the weapons, but given how cthulian the shield sequencers are, I can't commit to it being possible until I've familiarized myself further with it's setup and nuances.