Shenanigunner

But first, this message from our sponsors: Macros: trivial; only a moron wouldn't use them. IOs: absolutely necessary for pleasant gameplay no matter how much Inf, crafting time or hassle they soak up. IO sets: master them and all their nuances if you even want to bother logging in. Procs: if you can't do the math, may as well go play CO. Incarnate Levels, Boost and Attuning: well, duh, dude. ...but... Binds: <fx Jessica Rabbit> Oh... MY... GOOOOOODDDDDD! </fx> I'll go away quietly now.

Sigh.

Probably no way to implement this, but if you're entering chat text, a ground glow of your contact radius would be awesome. That is, if you're set to Local or Really Local, as long as you're typing there's a faint blue glow on the ground around you (only visible to self), that tells you if alts will receive your message or not. Pipe dream, I know. If it was possible, we could have selectable targeting range display for attacks and AoEs, too...

Yeah, I know, all that work-work-work. 😛 Then move her away from the wall. She's not a decoration.

I'd like War Witch put back where she was in Pocket D. Or at least not standing right against a wall.

I'd say that if any changes are made along these lines, Emote chat/text strings should be reduced to the closer distance. I'll firm up my preferences as this: simply reduce Local and Emote to about 20 feet. Done.

I solved my chat scroll issues by having four chat windows for the major stuff and a larger, separate one for "game" - NPC and team chat, mostly. It seems like serious RP'ers could open a tall, fairly narrow chat window and assign it only to, say, Local and Emotes. That would keep other channels from pushing in and give plenty of time to "converse." Bind or macro to open and close it, since heavy RP and heavy combat might not be compatible anyway. 🙂 ETA: I don't mean this to be an alternate solution. I am heartily in favor of the "close-range" chat channel as well.

I've tried to parse out that line many times and all that really comes in clear is IN THE HOUSE! Which is why I like the techno over in PDP... reminds me of walking down the mile of techno clubs in Dusseldorf.

"Wugga-buggle sugga-wobba SOMETHING THE HOUSE!" — okay, heard that repeat about 1,000 times too many. I'd like to see... ANY other player in there sometime, yeah. Hook it back into reality more.

Yep. Like 120 CB+SSB channels did. It *might* be worth repurposing Local for this closer-range use. That is, Broadcast to the whole zone, and Local/F2F/whatever for 20-25 feet. I don't think the loss of the ~100 foot or whatever range of Local would be a problem, and it keeps this channel-diffusion down. I've always thought of Local as "these alts I'm looking at" and not "everyone who might hear me if I was yelling." Maybe the right approach is to change Local to match this idea, not add another channel.

Local isn't used much for anything, but I think it's a useful option to talk at people in that area and not the whole zone. I use it, f'rex, when a new alt needs an Ouro portal at Liberty Plaza. Leave Local; add a very close-range channel. The three options should remain useful. I don't think a user-adjustable range is possible. Creating a new channel modeled on Local should be pretty easy; hacking code to allow individual settings... I'd bet it's a lot closer to "impossible" than "workable."

The "Do I need to scale my chest down?" channel. I still suggest F2F as a neutral name.

Thumbs up here. I don't RP but having a "close" channel would be nice. Tag it F2F.

Sounds like a really, really high calorie Italian snack.

A glance at the file seems to show it's correct and valid. Maybe it got corrupted in your game folder?

You can also enable continuous loc data display with /showfps 2 or 3, which displays loc data. You'll need to make notes or do some quick math but it's flexible. Another trick is to bind a key to /loc, so you can tap it at one location and then another, and do the math from the entries in chat.

As I've noted in a couple of threads, I have twice now entered a mission to find the boss and objective just inside the door. Defeat boss, click objective, mission done... despite there being 2-3 floors of mission laid out, often with increasing levels of foe up to where the boss "should" be. This is very recent and I don't recall ever encountering it before. I think there's some small but significant glitch in the mission-building code, relevant to how the final objective is placed.

Fair enough. 'Nuf sed.

Ah, yuck, so much work, all that typing. I just hit F8: /bind F8 "ah$$toggle salvage$$toggle recipes" 😜

Good points. However, isn't it just as easy to maintain bind-load files that can be copied, with or without a little editing, from alt to alt? One of the huge advantages of binds is that they can be saved and loaded, and even loaded in small chunks without disturbing a larger bind set. Treating them like macros, where you enter the bind string manually on each and every alt, emulates what to me is the biggest flaw with macros (no way to save and load, even for the same alt). Not dissing the tool, at all. I've certainly spent my time creating and building support things that Do It My Own Rotten Way and all. I just lean towards seeing this as using a robotic, programmable sledgehammer to put in a thumbtack. 😄 In the end, what does this bring that an editable (copy-able, distribute-able) bind file doesn't? A customized editing mode, with a lookup database, for Notepad++ might be more productive and useful, and easier to maintain.

I think there's also a tradeoff between spending a lot of time managing your investments, and, you know, just playing the game. 🙂

I can see how management of all "income," especially the gambits for converting Merits to Inf, could make that work.

Interesting approach. I've never found binds as difficult to write and manage as some good portion of the player base obviously does; maybe a background in both coding and scripting makes it easier to understand. My thought here (from wide experience) is that it's going to be a bit like visual HTML designers: okay for simple approaches and "take what you get" results, but with some portion of optimal outcomes not reachable except by going into the code. I can only admire the thinking and the effort, but wonder if the amount of time needed to master the tool matches or exceeds the time needed to just understand how bind strings work, and write them without assistance. (And keeping in mind that macros, which many players seem to prefer, are identical in every way except the first few elements, key assignment vs, macro naming.) Kudos, though!

Sell, sell, sell. Make a stop at the market at least once a session, drag all your orange drops over to post, collect the inf from those that have sold. I tend to post at a nominal price like 10,000; they sell for anything from 25-500k. Sell everything else at any vendor; yellows and whites aren't worth posting. This alone tends to get most of my alts fully stocked with SOs all the way up, which is good enough for my needs. The 4-500k orange sales come often enough to keep me in Inf. The only alt I've had lately that needed an infusion from my one rich uncle is a Kheld with two builds. If you believe IOs and sets are essential, you are pretty much going to have to run a farmer to fund those.

Not as such, but I've had a number of missions lately, usually in huge, complex office maps, where the boss and the objective spawn right inside the door. Mission over in the first battle, and there are sometimes four elevator levels full of XP left. It's a wild shot, but you might have the visual range set very low, such as zero, which might obscure some elements that are very close to you. Type /visscale; it should return 1. For better visibility across the map, use /visscale 5. (This comes and goes as a persistent setting; you might bind that to a key so you can whack it at the start of every session.)