srmalloy

Well, let's sift through my characters and pick some: "Теневой Огонь" (Tenevoy Ogon', 'Shadow Fire', fire/dark corruptor), "Лучник" (Luchnik, 'Archer', arch/ta blaster), "Обморожение" (Obmorozheniye, 'Frostbite', ice/ice dominator), "Ядерный Огонь" (Yaderniy Ogon', 'Nuclear Fire', fire/rad controller), "Термоядерный" (Termoyaderniy, 'Thermonuclear', fire/rad sentinel), "Пожарная Сорняк" (Pozharnaya Sornyak, 'Fire Weed', fire/plant blaster), "Голубая Молния" (Golubaya Molniya, 'Blue Lightning', elec/elec defender), "Ядерная Зима" (Yadernaya Zima, 'Nuclear Winter', ice/rad corruptor). All with names that are essentially just descriptions of their powers, yet, having been filtered through a foreign language, acquire more weight.

To corrupt them effectively, you need to start them young. Good work.

Certainly not as a traditional pizza, but cut into rings and grilled on the fire along with a pork butt, which is then shredded, the pineapple chopped, and both scattered across a circle of pizza dough with barbecue sauce and baked, and it's wonderful. But it just doesn't go well as a topping with a plain tomato sauce and mozzarella.

No Way in [suitably amplified] Hell.

Observer bias, yes. You don't notice all the times when things happen the way you expect them to, but the weird outliers jump out in your face. Something that might be worthwhile to do is to go into the source code, extract the function for the RNG, and set it up as a standalone program and run a few million numbers to look at the distribution to see if the RNG itself has an issue. Some RNG functions have odd biases built into them because the developers don't think about the data they're working with. RNGs produce a binary number (32- or 64-bit, typically), and one of common way of getting a random number in a range is to mod the random number by the range (i.e., X mod 10 + 1 to get 1-10). But this introduces bias; mod 10 means the bottom four bits of the random number are all that determine the result, so you have 0-15, producing 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 when you apply the mod function -- 0-5 appear twice as often as 6-9. This effect gets smaller as the range goes up -- a 1-1000 range (10 bits, 0-1023) only doubles up on 2.4% of the range, compared to 60% for 1-10. I would hope, though, that the original CoH developers accounted for things like this; RNGs in games have been around for a long time, and solutions to this problem should be routine.

When you're sending email, the game complains and won't let you send it if the email doesn't have text in both the subject and the body; this is worthwhile, so you can tell the recipient why you're sending it. When you're sending email to yourself, though, it's redundant to say why -- you're usually not going to be sending messages, except for things like base passcode macros you want to have available to all your alts; it's normally an attachment or inf -- recipes, enhancements, salvage, or merits. It's not a big thing, but if the email function didn't require a message body when you were sending email to yourself, it would make it a little more convenient -- for example, if you're sending empyrean merits, you open mail, click 'New', drag the merit into the mail, and it populates your global name and the subject, but you still have to tab or click into the message body and type something; not having to do this (or having the game automatically put something like a period into the body when you're sending mail to yourself) would simplify the process a little.

I was doing the PI Fake Nemesis crawl with my Arch/TA Blaster, and I found what appear to be a couple of odd bugs. First, the two piers on the southeast side of PI are porous to Oil Slick Arrow, but only if you target it. I have a macro to drop Oil Slick Arrow on my current target -- "powexeclocation target Oil Slick Arrow" -- and for most of my loop it was working as I expected; I'd drop the Oil Slick Arrow on a Fake Nemesis, then use a second macro that, with two taps, would target the slick and hit it with Blazing Arrow. However, for targets on the two southeast piers (and the ships berthed between them), if I fired Oil Slick Arrow using a mob as a target, I could hear the oil slick bubbling away, but there was no visual for the slick, no pseudo-pet to target, and the mobs that would be in the area of effect wouldn't notice. If I waited, and shot Oil Slick Arrow again, but used the power icon and targeting circle to place it manually, it works perfectly. And it only does this on the piers on the southeast side of PI; doing this -- on 'solid ground' -- the slick always appears. Second, when you click on the Oil Slick Arrow icon, your character goes through the animation for shooting the arrow, even if the power is still recharging or you are out of range of the target location. This one is more annoying than breaking anything. Third, and I don't know whether this is a bug or WAI for blasters if they don't have a fire power in their primary, I was seeing the Fakes running out of the flaming oil slick, so I thought I'd slap down a slow to keep them there, and placed my Oil Slick Arrow to get the oil slick, then targeted it and fired Glue Arrow at the oil slick so they would cover the same area... and the oil slick caught fire. Is Glue Arrow intended to light oil slicks, or is this a bug? Update: I noticed that I have the Positron's Blast proc slotted in Glue Arrow, so this may be causing it, although the 100% ignite rate is amusing. Finally, the patch notes state that Glue Arrow in Tactical Arrow was changed to be location-based, but the mouseover text still describes it as "Ranged (targeted AoE)", and when I try to use it, it won't activate unless I have a hostile mob targeted, and the AoE centers on the targeted mob. The description and behavior is correct if the change to make it location-based was reverted before issue 27 was rolled out, and the change wasn't reflected in the patch notes.

I was hugely surprised this evening; I'd taken my Arch/TA Blaster out to Peregrine Island to do the Fake Nemesis loop, and was becoming annoyed that the Fakes were running out of my flaming oil slicks, so I tried dropping the oil slick, then targeting it and dropping a Glue Arrow on it. And the oil slick lit. I don't know if this is WAI or a bug, but if hitting your Oil Slick with a glue arrow not only gets the glue patch but lights your oil slick to boot, it's a bonus. Update: It appears that it's the Positron's Blast proc in the power that was igniting the oil slick. After more than 30 times with it, Glue Arrow finally failed to ignite the oil slick, and checking my combat log showed that the proc didn't go off that time.

I have it five-slotted with Bombardment on my Arch/TA Blaster, simply because I had a set of LotG in it before, and I moved the Def/+Rech to the new Gymnastics, with the rest of the set going into SG storage, leaving it with space to take the set, from someone else's build on the subforum. Looking back at the Sentinel+ file for my TA/Arch Defender from live, he had Oil Slick Arrow frankenslotted for damage and recharge (with the more limited availability of merits/funds, slotting was a little more haphazard): <slot boost="0" level="45">Crafted_Recharge</slot> <slot boost="0" level="33">Crafted_Touch_of_Lady_Grey -- Chance for Negative Energy Damage</slot> <slot boost="0" level="50">Crafted_Air_Burst -- Dam/Rech</slot> <slot boost="0" level="50">Crafted_Detonation -- Dam/Rech</slot> <slot boost="0" level="50">Crafted_Positrons_Blast -- Dam/Rech</slot> <slot boost="0" level="50">Crafted_Tempered_Readiness -- Dam/Slow</slot>

Isn't that Cheetara? (insert rimshot here)

If you use an angle in degrees, remember that it is relative to how you are facing when the command executes, not an absolute direction (i.e., '0' is not North). I went through some annoyance learning this with the numpad binds for MM pets and wanting to be clever and spacing the pet summons out around me.

There is an image-sharing website I frequent where people post image sets; the 'index' pages have the title the poster selected for the set. There are two regular posters who, in what seems to be a deathly fear that their posts will languish for lack of attention if they don't, virtually always put one or two bright red heart emoji (❤️) into the text of their title, creating a jarring break in the flow of the pages. Other posters use emoji as well, but use the monochrome emoji (♥★) that don't leap out and drag your attention away from what you want to read. Emoji in chat is going to be similarly distracting; I don't want to have someone else's self-aggrandizement pulling my attention away from my playing the game. So unless it's implemented with an option flag like "Show emoji in chat" that's disabled by default, my choice would be NWIFH.

Actually, I do the Ghost Falcon unlock mission on all of my characters, simply because unless you're not paying attention, it's a combat-free glowie hunt, and a ranged AT can supplement the XP by popping the Rikti Communications Officers (which give XP like a lieutenant, despite having only minion HP, so they drop faster, and if you can one-shot them or pop them twice quickly, they don't summon their portal).

Deer tail animations would be for things other than the casual tail movements the animated tails have in game, so they could get away without animation. Deer tails are similar enough to the elongated rabbit tail that one could be used for the other with recoloring. Squirrel tails would need to be animated, if for nothing else than the tail dropping behind when running, but could be statically up the back at other times. Given the number of ways that a horse tail can be dressed, some of them would be static, but the standard free-falling horse tail would look better with an intermittent sway from side to side similar to the existing animated tails, but less continuous.

The only way I've found is to toss an AoE at one of the other Freaks at the object, and then run away (preferably around a nearby corner to break LoS) to get them to come after me; that generally gets them to pop out of the object. What annoys me about that mission, though, is that the map is generally linear enough, with the 'ambush' spawns starting from the front of the mission, so that I will clear the mobs around the first item, defeat the spawning attackers, then move to the second, defeat the mobs around it, and have the attackers that spawn for the second item come running down the map, find the first item, and destroy it, then don't go any further. This gets repeated for the third item, so even though I get credit for 'saving' the first and second items, they get destroyed by the mobs that show up to destroy the 'next' item. If each of the items to be protected despawned after you 'save' it, the mission would flow better.

My concern about Jack's success in his game development career after CoH was removed from under his thumb:

If you could go back in time and change things, going back to when NCsoft was buying out Cryptic and putting language in the documents creating Paragon Studios that would explicitly allow PS to buy itself and its properties away from NCsoft in the event of NCsoft shutting down Paragon Studios might be a more effective long-term alteration.

There are a number of crane hooks that you can disconnect from the load they're supposed to be lifting. There's one in SW Kings Row you can bump loose from the platform it's raising, for example. These have been in the game since early in live without being fixed.

I have to agree; in its current state, it's a very mediocre last-ditch defense to distract melee attackers; about the only time I've gotten any decent use out of it is in some Oranbega maps where we get hit from multiple directions because someone pulled aggro wrong, and I find myself in the middle of a cluster of minions.

For the NPC version as well as the player version; I was doing a Fake Nemesis crawl in PI today, found a Master Illusionist on the stern of the ore ship at the south dock, and lit her up from the air to get her to spawn her pets. The Phantasm came up after me; the Dark Servant ran around the side of the ship, the summoned Illusionists were defeated before getting a chance to show whether they can fly, and the Decoy Phantasm just hung out near the water and never attacked. Eventually the Dark Servant came back, and was defeated still in the water.

Or, to slant your argument differently, increasing your chance to hit from 5% to 6%, you reduce your chance of missing by about 1%; increase your chance to hit from 95% to 96%, and you reduce your chance of missing by 20%. Statistics can be so endlessly flexible, able to be twisted in ways that can create almost any impression you want.

Tried that; it didn't work, and I had to bite the bullet and download the Homecoming launcher.

To-hit chance just affects the likelihood that you take damage; if a mob has a gonzo to-hit, but lacks effective damage, it's just an annoyance. Player survivability depends on mitigating the incoming damage well enough that you can eliminate the damage source(s) before you run out of hit points. Different ATs and powersets approach it differently. Regen, for example, relies mostly on healing fast enough that they have the time to reduce the incoming damage to less than their healing rate. But since the impression that I get from the other posters is that this is an undesirable change, and the arguments for the change seem to me to boil down to "I don't want to have to miss! Make it so I don't have to miss!", I'm going to bow out of further participation in this thread before I say something to make GM Tempest start stealing sweetrolls.

It related to your tying your character bios together; I'd done the same thing, but more loosely.

Tell that to the AV that just missed you despite their 100%, 150%, or even 200% chance to hit. You have the same 5% chance to be missed no matter how much the "chance to hit" of the mob attacking you is over the to hit cap. It's comic-book physics; you can be standing there with your nose in the bore of the D-100 120mm main gun of a T-55 tank, your head tied across the muzzle, and it still has a 5% chance of missing you.