mechahamham

There's always a noodle of spaghetti touching something it shouldn't in CoH. For the most part, I feel like this is reasonable. In other games, if pets go down, it's a very big deal and you need to drop everything to get the pet back up ASAP. CoH has a little of that, especially for MMs who spend their time in bodyguard mode. And I agree that 'zerg rush' tactics suck. They're not fun to play. They're not fun to watch. They're 'cheaty' in that they break the *intent* of the game mechanics if not the rules. Especially in the later game, though, mastermind pets just tend to go splatter, though. (That's something that keeps me, personally, from playing non-monster masterminds. The limp bodies of the summons make it feel like I'm failing at something, even if I'm doing okay.) Frequent resummoning is just a thing. If Page 3 makes them more durable against 35+ enemies in general, that's great, and I think the system as it exists here is reasonable and it *shouldn't matter* if there's a nominal recharge or not on the upgrade powers. If Debuff-type Masterminds are still resummoning during or after every fight in 35+ content, that kinda says to me that the durability is still not where it needs to be.

A thought about the henchman upgrade powers. They all have zero recharge time and a moderate endurance cost. Even if you chain cast an upgrade on already summoned minions, it takes a bit for it to deplete your endurance bar. At this point, why are the upgrades not auto/passive powers?

I re-tested Necromancy specters spawn and despawn time with a stopwatch on that same 28 mastermind, and they last just right at 30s now as of Build 2.

This bothers me because Numina didn't actually die. Her body was obliterated in the fight with the Red Threat, but her spirit was durable enough to stick around and keep the Red Threat locked down from the inside. From: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Midnighter_Archivist_Badge#The_Death_and_Rebirth_of_Numina It makes sense that something that's effective against spirits, like the Ghost Slaying Axe, would be effective against her, but if something is effective against the unholy, say Holy Shotgun Shells, it probably shouldn't do extra damage against her. Problematically, we don't really have a distinction between 'Spirits', 'True Undead', and 'Unholy' in the game. Perhaps we should take this opportunity to make one?

Testing on a 28 Necro/Cold mastermind. The patch notes and power description both say that the spectre pets now last 30s. I can't get mine to stay around that long. They seem to reliably poof after 25 seconds, even if not being attacked. Is this maybe being level-scaled, and higher level MMs have longer-lasting spectres? Subjectively speaking, 30s seems too short a duration for these summons. 90 is too long on Live IMO, but 30 is not quite long enough to finish an even-con fight, especially for MMs who have to watch end usage by rationing their attacks. My suggestion is that a flat 45s, regardless of MM level, is more along the lines of what is appropriate. -- Edit -- I thought to boost my MM's level to 50, and sure enough the pets do last at least 29s at 50.

The bug is that the NPCs are too far away to be identified and are getting LOD culled on top of that. This seems like something Lore-important rather than just scenery.

So, looking through the chainlink, with character detail turned all the way up, I still had to be told that the people inside were from the original cover art. LOD is culling MOST of their appearance at that distance. Zooming all the way in, where a single chain link is obscuring most of the view, their heads are maybe a single pixel or two wider. If you're watching the 'System' chat channel, you can see their names: Mighty Monk, Goldie, and Kamakiri. Again, I had to be told who they were. Also, 'Leave it to the professionals.'?! Punk! Do you have ANY IDEA how many Shivans I've splattered? I was tossing these guys into the dumpster at level 1, literally. And you're a Vanguard Captain? What are you if not a professional?! I really want one of the NPCs here to offer an explanation as to what's going on, or even who's fighting inside, and this is the only thing any of them will say.

This is a reasonable way to do things, IMO, as I mentioned in a post up above. I don't like it, but that's a personal dislike and not a 'I think you're horribly wrong'. What would be unreasonable would be something similar to 'People have been asking for X, so we've added X only to this new max-level content. You're expected to create a character and then level before you can have X'. (Warcraft is SUPER guilty of this with their 'Allied Races' shtick. Let's not go down that same path.)

I think we don't know yet exactly how much 'grinding' or 'gating' is going to be required. Going to Unitas' argument about the Witch Hats, I feel like that's a valid way to do things even if I don't personally like it. If you have a special costume piece that's obviously tied to one faction, but then more generic versions, then getting the generic versions at creation and then the specialized version as a reward is reasonable. The problem comes when the costume pieces are pivotal to a character concept, as Kitsulot mentioned. The generic witch hats didn't come out until MUCH later than Katie's TF. If you wanted to be a witch with a witch hat, you had exactly one way to obtain one. A good example here are the various wings that were introduced way back when. For probably most characters that have them, wings are a body part rather than a costume to be worn. If I want to make, say, a fairy pistoleer, and fairy wings were still tied to a very rare drop recipe, grinding and grinding, or paying huge sum of influence would be the only way to have such a character. In fact, to my recollection, the biggest complaint about making the wing recipes more widely available was entirely about having a wing recipe drop no longer be a huge financial windfall. If a class of costume pieces arises that inspire new characters, but those characters can't really have that look until they're effectively 'raid level', then those costume pieces may as well not exist. They're for bragging rights only and not about roleplay, character ideation, or the like. Going by the screenshots, this particular set of pieces looks to be very gladiator-themed, and we already have the Roman costume pieces. Characters can at least be created with a similar look. I can't be in other people's heads, so I can't imagine how important a particular piece is to the idea of their new characters. If we EVER end up discouraging someone from creating a new character because they can't start with a costume piece that's integral to their idea, I think we've failed.

I'm really sad that we've crossed back over into the 'Here are costume parts you've got to grind for' territory. We were already headed that way with hologram powers, but now I can't tell people that all costume parts are unlocked on character creation any more.

As I've mentioned in other threads, I don't powerlevel or farm at all. I usually avoid the PI ToT league unless I'm on a character over 25 that simply can't solo the EBs, which isn't really a problem after last year's changes. I love door-to-door ToT and did it for most of the month entirely solo, with frequent breaks to run Dr. Kane's House of Horrors with the requisite team of 4. On the teams that I form, I make a point of fighting through the entire house rather than skipping ahead to only the boss fights. If my character can manage it, I stay behind on other teams that did skip to clear the mansion of monsters and zombies. I occasionally broke off to help fight Eochai and Jack in Atlas Park. If someone advertised for a Banner/Deadly Apocalypse event, I tried to join even if the character I was on already had those badges. I love the 'Whispered Rumors' tip mission. I love visiting player-created Haunted Houses. I love seeing characters in Halloween-themed costumes. I love changing my own costumes for the holiday. I had EXP turned OFF for my characters for most of the month. Now, a few days out of the event, I'm looking forward to next October. I love it that much. If you reduce or remove the event, you're stripping that much enjoyment away from *me* that has zero to do with powerlevelling characters. Don't take that away from me.

I love that we've got some more color to the various spawns in Brickstown. The Crey encounters where they're threatening or even killing civilians are chilling and will fill even the kindest hearts with rage. And then there are these hosers: When you attack the Council soldiers, these asshats get to run away to the nearest door like civilian NPCs. I want to arrest this guy, even if I don't get experience or influence for it. On my less patient characters, I want to arrest this guy into a greasy smear on the asphalt. Can we adjust these guys so that they have the same level and abilities as like a level 1 Hellion? Barring that, can we make them go into the 'hands behind head' pose after we've taken out their supersoldier friends rather than just getting to run away? (I'd also like to rough up the council trainees that tend to appear in the East part of the zone, but I suspect that would likely be more development effort.) Thank you for helping me to stamp out fascism.

The name alone gives me a cold chill. And sadly not the kind that gets you paid sick leave. There it is. There's the awful horror movie. Wow, I wish I could say I hadn't lived through that a few times.

I really feel like the auction listing needs a major reorganization and optimization. The way it's currently done smells like the Paragon devs used an unordered 'select * from items where category = 'something'' when what they needed was to add on a series of parameterized clauses onto the query. 'order by parameter1, parameter2, etc...' I'm not privy to the code, though. If it were me, I'd also 'flatten' the tree-view listing a bit. Rather than have a tree for 'Enhancements', just bump the different enhancement types to the top level of the tree. The most major change I'd make would be to acknowledge the fact that the consignment store buckets enhancements regardless of levels or attunement. Rather than a separate listing for each level of enhancement, have one listing per enhancer, and then have it select the player's level as the default to purchase, with an option to change the level or to purchase pre-attuned. This is is some pretty serious SQL plumbing and UI work, though, and as we know, UI work is a LOT harder than it seems like. Additionally, unoptimized, uncached SQL can be a huge drain on computer resources and we know for a fact that this is something that HC can struggle with since they're using a hosting facility rather than the far more expensive option of maintaining their own servers.

In the Rogue alignment tip mission 'Steal the stolen items!' from the 'Auction Notice' tip, Shock Treatment tells me that she's going to kill me, but then fails to change alignments: She accompanied me for the rest of the mission. Interestingly, she showed as 'Orange' alignment while hostage to the Wyvern agents in the mission, and actually got debuffed when I used Devour Psyche against them, although she didn't attack me then, either.