strix_

It's just a good trick for posing for screenshots, mostly. Holding down RMB lets you angle your character around for good lighting, while then pressing PgUp/Middle-Mouse-Button locks your character's rotation in place to make small adjustments to the framing. You can do it manually still in the Test Server by letting go of RMB and then using PgUp+Mouse Move, but it's a much slower process now that you have to release one to do the other.

Oh yeah, the fact that a lot of the in-game feedback that pushes Brute into adopting a tanking role is hiding in "You Taunt [X] with your Fury!" messages buried in the oft-ignored Combat Tab deep in a chaotic chat scroll and their vestigial Fury bar that never quite fills up entirely is definitely something that needs refinement and better signalling to the player, especially when all the language around Fury in the inherent powers section itself doen't highlight that it's a power for drawing and keeping agro (in the way that Gauntlet does explicitly tell Tankers that it's a Taunt power), it just describes that you deal increased damage for giving/taking hits. But that's absolutely a convo for a different feedback thread, lol

This! The Playstyle/Role expectations argument ultimately falls apart under scrutiny, because multiple ATs fall under multiple playstyles within that menu and unlike other MMOs, player choice and build variety is encouraged and fostered by the power-buy mechanics and enhancement abilities which encourages experimentation, not rigid adherence to a meta. Players tend to pick powers that "fit" their idea of their character, not vice versa. This degree of variance in what ATs "should" do is quite literally baked into the game at its foundational level, and compounded on with all the supplemental power pools and their value for player self-expression. To pick the Brute, because it's in the Melee Damage AT menu along with the other Melee Damage ATs, because you want to play a Melee Damage character for solo content and casual teams while you're levelling, and the Brute advertises itself within that playstyle menu not as a Tank AT, but as a Damage AT with strong damage output and survivability, and to then spec powers and enhancements into single-target damage and health regen because you want to play the AT as a survivable Melee Damage dealer but not take Taunt because you don't really expect to ever have to seriously Tank high-level content? Sure, that can be called an off-meta pick, but it's clearly and repeatedly signalled to the player as a viable and worthwhile playstyle in every single visual and mechanical signpost that's presented to the player through the process of building their character. It's not helping nudge a player into understanding their role to then put that player into a big box saying "you will always be a Tank, to us, even though you very clearly picked this AT because it was in Melee Damage and have been allowed to build your character in an entirely different direction because of that", it's adding additional layers of confusion due to unclear signposting between the visible playstyle distinctions and the obfuscated role distinctions, especially when the EATs are apparently allowed to qualify for multiple roles in a team while other ATs don't. (There's obviously reasons for this, but these distinctions would likely be lost on the hypothetical new player who needs nudging in the "correct" direction to play their role.) Couple into that unintended-but-fun playstyles that run counter to the "intended" role of a class (obviously, a Dodge Tank Scrapper would take much longer to get going during levelling than a Brute Tank and probably requires a substantial investment in enhancements to make it viable, but both can ultimately fulfil the same team role for the bulk of casual content that comprises the game). and the game just rejects easy role categorisation at times, which is fine, and I would argue comprises a huge part of what makes the game unique and vibrant to play compared to more restrictive MMOs on the market. Ultimately, I'm fine with these badges (& suggested earlier to make ones for each TF, because that'd be fun!), but there could be a lot less confusion and backlash to the AT groupings if they were just "playstyle diversity." and reflected the menus that have been visible in the game this entire time, rather than this new arbitrary and hidden distinction of the "role," which is only made even more confusing to new players because the roles have the exact same names as the playstyles, only apparently different ATs count for one but not the other.

Oh hell yes. This is such a necessary QoL change and it's going to make the game so much more comfortable to play, for me

I actually love the idea of adding Same/Diverse AT badges to each TF a lot! It could really incentivise the all-same-AT runs that already seem popular with players, and incentivise more experienced players to teach newer players the functions/tricks of the AT. I know I'd definitely be interested in running TFs I haven't experienced already if someone was recruiting for an all-Brute run, for example, and being able to ask those players for advice on how they've slotted enhancements after seeing how their builds perform could be really helpful in planning out my own character builds. More casual and social content in the game is always a net good, for me. Also: the dev team could give them all funny names. That alone usually makes a badge worth getting imho

Running this zone for the first time on the open beta! Just wrapped up the Straxt story arc, and working my way through Orpheus's contact now. Lots to love, lots worth critiquing. I'm going to try to keep gameplay feedback brief, because I'm aware that I was playing co-op missions solo so my experience might not be representative of other players' or the intended experience: - Missions felt decently paced, but bosses go down a little easy. - I felt decently able to solo everything on an appropriately-levelled Arachnos Widow with crafted enhancements (wanted to test out the new VEAT changes!). Died a couple times in more hectic fights. - Bomb locations in both the cargo ship and the warehouse were really obscure and out of the way in places, which got a little frustrating, but that could just be poor RNG on the spawn locations. While I love the content itself, I have some feedback on the grammar and word choice in the NPC dialogue I've read so far that really make me think that a few bits of dialogue could use another polish/editing pass before release to make things clearer for the players. However, I'm also conscious of the fact that, as the build is currently at Release Candidate 2, it's probably too late for substantial overhauls of the dialogue before the final release of Page 7. As such, I've included a "tl;dr" at the bottom of the post that just consists of purely of grammar and formatting errors I've noticed during my playthrough, rather than my more in-depth thoughts about the quality of the writing so far (very good) and ways I think the presentation could be improved (extra clarity on a few lines of dialogue). Here we go: And the "tl;dr" of quick fixes to grammar and formatting: Anyway, this zone rocks. Sorry for the long post!

Took Killer Scream for a punk rock Sonic/Sonic Corruptor! As part of my altaholic spring cleaning, I've released a few names people might be interested in: - Century Girl - Eidolon Alpha - Midnight Wasp - Mudslide - Praetorian Knight - Regime Change (perfect for a Malta char imho) - Be Gay Do Crimes (thought it would be a funny title for a queer rogue to name themselves ICly, the novelty did not last)

Finally had a chance to run around the Vanguard base, and I've got some performance reports for how the level runs on lower-end hardware: on my Ryzen 2200g at 1080p windowless bordered with maxed out settings (& 200% char/world detail), there's a bit of noticeable performance hit as the level initially loads in around the Infirmary/Lady Grey area after teleporting in from Atlas Park (roughly consistent to framerate tanks on a heavily-decorated SG base) but it's manageable and after the initial bump the game runs smoothly. Similar results while having cel-shaded mode on. Not sure how having big leagues running around for MSR could affect performance, but it's difficult to test that on the beta server. Overall, the redesign is awesome, and I really hope we can see other areas get similar treatment later down the line!

Wholly agree with this, it's inordinately damaging to casual/solo players for next to no benefit. Love the idea of giving the CoT more enemy variety (the critiques of them being balanced upside down in live is pr much true lol), but the current implementation of that in the beta isn't the play. In a broader sense, it's also damaging to try and shunt the power-levellers towards AE farms? Say what you want about MSR/PI radios, but at least those put power-levelling players into going through content where they might learn fundamentals of the game from other players or catch story content that gets them invested in the setting or characters. I know when I was first learning the game, I caught most of the basics of knockback/knockdown and how CC works in this game through doing MSR for the rewards. Changes that push newer players towards passively door-guarding in AE fire farms against generic enemies in the same three environments is ultimately a net negative for keeping those players invested in learning the game, esp. if they're being incentivised to do that by more established players who wouldn't see dragging them through 50 content as valuable if these changes get implemented.