thunderforce

I mean that yesterday a GM said on Discord that it quote always unquote fails, I pointed out that wasn't true, and my remarks were removed from Discord while the untrue statement from a GM was left. Furthermore, said GM absolutely did "quibble" with that point. This ("always") just isn't true. Ideally, "GMs shouldn't say things that are known to be untrue" shouldn't be controversial. I've not quoted the quibble since I'm kind of torn between this apparently being a forbidden topic and the sheer absurdity of the situation.

We've now reached the state where a GM can say on Discord it "always" fails with untrained levels, even though that is absolutely unequivocally known not to be true, and I can't point out that it isn't true. I despair.

Not a typo; the briefing NPC simply doesn't know or care about the distinction, as many people do not.

Well, again, most respecs work. Does a large and busy base matter, or is it just that if a player is in a base and has a respec fail, they are more likely to be in a large and busy one because more players are in busy bases than empty ones? We don't know. I had to think about this, but I see what you mean. No bad habit to be in if you like slotting patterns that would have been impossible on live. I mean, that doesn't seem implausible. (We could just as well be in the situation where everyone tells people to zone on a respec failure because we "know" that works, and I'm asking if _that_ is pure coincidence). If anything it seems more plausible, since zoning does fix a lot of things and Soldiers of Arachnos aren't all forced to respec without zoning at level 24.

We don't know that at all, both because "99%" is a number pulled out of nowhere and because, as detailed upthread, everything we see is consistent with the idea that respecs almost always work and so stopping whatever you were doing the first time will seem to be effective. Again, as detailed upthread, it's no surprise that when respecs fail, we tend to find things which you'd expect to be true anyway - being in a busy area is the obvious example. Most players are in busy areas; that what makes them busy areas. That seems as likely a scenario as any.

Well, it's been a while, but today I tried "in a busy area" - ie, Excelsior, next to Ms Liberty, in the evening on Saturday. Four respecs in a row all succeeded. Hence, I suspect "busy area" is as much of a red herring as "untrained levels".

I have little to add to this, besides that Discord user Grey Rellik identified the bug; I am just reporting it.

The bottom right of the front page has a link to the available help, but also - assuming someone is basically coherent and well-intentioned, almost anything they might write in that page would be better than nothing.

Indeed. Why not register an account and create it? I'm not being snarky here. The Wiki is edited by a handful of people, a few of whom are very dedicated and the rest of whom (like me) look in now and then. There is more to do than that number of people can _possibly_ do. At least one Wiki admin (me) reviews all edits by new users; if you make a mess, it'll be cleaned up. A brief stub would be better than nothing.

Better overall? I dunno. But it's arguably better at travelling around by jumping - certainly no worse - which is unfortunate if Super Jump is meant to be better at "the core thing it does". Conversely both Fly and Super Speed offer clear improvements on their Origin Pool equivalents now for that core purpose. This would be very easily fixed by making Mighty Leap's speed cap slightly lower, with Takeoff putting it even with Super Jump.

It's unfortunate, I think, that Super Jump isn't really better than Mighty Leap now, in spite of the stated aim that classic travel powers should "be better at the core thing they do (running, flying, jumping)". If anything, I think Mighty Leap has come out better, since jumping still faster and further seems more generally useful than slightly fiddly vertical mobility, the latter being available in a number of ways from the P2W Vendor.

So, ah, I'm not calling out anyone in particular here - we've all done it - but it's usually worth searching the thread for your typo before reporting. There's more than one occurrence of "insturmental", but this is about the fifth time it's come up (and presumably if anyone fixes these they'll just grep every string in the game for known misspellings...)

It's not even remotely a core premise. It's about as much of a core premise as that the highbie exemplared to you should be kicked from the taskforce if, at any point, one of your housemates tries to use the telephone. [1] It's the last vestige of a mechanic every other part of which has been removed because it was bad. Presumably in the range-based suggestion (which is not as good as straight-up removal) the range could be generous enough that this wouldn't demand constant vigilance. [1] Exactly this would happen in the old days of dialup, exemplar/sidekick pairs, and rigid upper level limits.

Eh... if for some reason we don't just get rid of the -1 level altogether, having it exist but only when you're far from your mentor (and no pop-ups) would be an improvement on the current situation. It wouldn't be like the old days. (But it would still be a half-solution to just getting rid of a bad thing... and pretty aggravating for MMs if the 1-level change makes their pets go pop every time they take a lift.)

Maybe you should before replying? I'm not sure what kind of twisty logic makes you think the players who want to be effective contributors to the team can be so described. Where is that written? (And, of course, they wouldn't be, because they'd have fewer powers to lose). You seem to be suggesting the game mechanics should be entirely at the whim of whatever word was picked 16 years ago. Unless, in your world, "their own way" involves being able to contribute to teams effectively. I can't speak for anyone else, but this ain't so for me - I usually run ITF and the like XP-off.

This seems like a no-brainer for a Praetorian costume contest; hold it in Praetoria.

"Sidekick clicks a glowie" might make for an interesting comic storyline, but not every interesting comic storyline makes for good gameplay. When I die, I want to be rezzed or go to the hospital, not wait 3 months for the shocking revelation that I wasn't actually dead, or got better, or that someone else is playing my character now...

You don't say why. Because it would be a lot of work for little gain? Sure. Because Male Huge shouldn't wear frocks? Why the hell not?

It was much better than not being able to team with them at all, but the pairing up was obnoxious. Then Giant Monsters were made level agnostic, and that was better still, and some of us asked why everything couldn't be like that. Then Super Sidekicking came out and that was better again, and it was better because it made everyone in an instance nearly the same combat level. Every past step in this direction has been good; we should take the final one. Obviously it works as intended, it's not a bug. Is anyone saying it doesn't? The point is that the design could be improved. It evidently is; the OP and others on this thread have explained very clearly how it impacts their QoL and proposed a simple solution, and the issue with MM tier 1 pets is widely discussed and - while it wouldn't go away - would be considerably reduced. Personally, I'd just burn the entire incarnate shift mechanic with fire, but that's another thread; failing that, it seems to me like exactly another manifestation of the same problem. It's less bad (because "+4" difficulty is really +3 for those 50+1s) but it makes you miss, it makes your tier 1 pets miss, it makes you less effective when you're already less effective by having fewer powers... just as I say to someone else in the first paragraph here, follow it up to its logical conclusion and make everyone on the team the same combat level. The incarnates get their amazingly good incarnate powers, so it's not like they'll be no different to their teammates.

That would be easier to do if everyone's at the same combat level, rather than if the players with fewer powers are also at a lower combat level. Precisely the problem we have at the moment is it's hard to please the 50+1 to whom +4s (really +3s) aren't dangerous enough, and the 49 who can't really do much to +5s. Of course, it wouldn't fix all the difficulty problems, but this is an easy and obvious change which addresses many of them.

Don't tie 'em to each other. Let players (with all three body types) pick male or female pronouns in character customisation [1]; let players pick any voice. (You can already do some pretty good skinny-female costumes using stuff like the Circle bottoms on the Male body... except when you jump the UGH UGH UGH is a bit dissonant.) [1] Yes, there's an obvious stretch goal here, but this wouldn't require any extra NPC dialogue, badge names, etc...

I'm not sure there _was_ a reason, beyond the "sidekick" name. The -1 level on sidekicks is the last vestige of the bad old pre-Super-Sidekicking days (and as you note it's especially bad when you're effectively -2 in addition to not having boffo incarnate powers, and worse yet when you're a mastermind with pets at -3 to the team leader); there really is no reason not to make everyone in the team the same combat level at all times.

TBF, I think AH improvements might turn out to have a low benefit/effort ratio compared to some things... including fixing the egregious AH bugs.

Bid the price you put in on every piece. Presumably the intended user of this facility has more money than time.

Let me add that to my list. (That's also an excellent example of the sort of thing that would naturally tend not to be the case on a second attempt, giving the impression that leaving the base - or whatever - cured the problem). I feel that this is largely a response to something I'm not actually trying to talk about in this thread. Some responses read as if I'm making an extended criticism of GM behaviour, where the only thing I'm saying about what I think the GMs should do right now is "don't say things that are known to be false", which seems uncontroversial. (ETA: maybe I'm also saying they should test it? IDK that I am. I'm saying they could test it, in response to a suggestion that I test something which manifestly I can't.) What I want to talk about is - what do we actually know about what causes respecs to fail, and what is just accreted guesswork? I'm getting tangled up in the other discussion because in the Discord conversation, the GMs suggested they were giving this advice because it is well known that respecs fail if it's not taken, and it's useful to ask if there's any actual reason to think that's so.