srmalloy

It's like how we know the world is round, and not flat -- if it were flat, the cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.

The rule of thumb seems to be that if the escorted NPC participates in combat while they're being led out, they can see you through stealth; if not, then they're too stupid to take the canvas sack off their head, and will lose track of you at any hint of your getting outside their perception range.

Redside was designed around each of the ATs being more self-reliant; in the early issues of CoH, both Controllers and Defenders had issues where they became much more dependent on teaming -- as I remember, at around level 12, my Controllers' solo leveling slowed to an absolute crawl; while they were largely safe due to the amount of control they could put on hostile mobs, their ability to take them down degraded horribly. On teams, the problem didn't exist, and once a Controller got to 32 and got their pet(s) the problem went away; it wasn't until Containment was added that the low-mid-level soloing experience was improved. Defenders... well, I've never really understood how the Defender inherent was supposed to work -- you get an End discount if the rest of your team is sucking more? It's supposed to show the Defender stepping up and being able to keep attacking in the face of adversity, but it doesn't make your attacks any faster or stronger, so you're still standing around waiting for your abilities to recharge so you can do the limited damage your AT modifier gives you while the mobs that are wiping the floor with your more combat-capable teammates decide you're a better target. If the Defender inherent gave you a boost to End cost, recharge, and damage as your team's overall health declined, it would fit the concept better, but an inherent that only comes into play when you're not doing your job as a part of the team feels misapplied.

And with the current setup, color choices are just indexes into the system-wide table of 'allowed' colors, which among other things included allowances for the game engine to render highlights and shadows. Changing this in the database to an RRGGBB value means that every character record in the database across every server needs to be changed, which at a bare minimum requires that a separate table for the character data be created and all the existing character data be mirrored to the new table, then the old one archived (against the chance of needing to revert the changes), then deleted, and the new table renamed to match the old one (if that's sufficient to get the existing queries to point to the right table; if not, every single query in the server and client that queries the character data table will need to be updated). Your suggestion is simple enough in concept, but is enormously more complex behind the face of the game; you can't just handwave a data change and expect it all to happen magically.

Having an account-wide 'bank' that is just an inf repository is a much simpler thing to implement; you have a database with one record per game account, and the database has two fields -- the game account the record belongs to, and the amount of inf in the bank. The game doesn't need to look at all the characters on the server and grovel through their badge records, then sort the data it gets back to produce an ordered list. And when you close the bank interface, the server can discard any temporary data it allocated for your transactions; there shouldn't be any way for it to run out of memory the way the badge tracker does.

It's also worth noting that the roles are not equivalent -- in the original intent of the CoV design, Masterminds were the Tanker analogue, and Brutes were the Scrapper analogue. That the original intent fell on its face rather badly -- Masterminds having to resummon and indivually buff all their henchmen at every door, for example (still better than Controllers having to resummon their pets every time they went up or down an elevator, which shows some progress), which caused Brutes to largely assume the tank role while the MMs were back at the door fiddling with their pets, and the lines blurring further when side-switching was added -- shows that the original design intent lacked a real coherent plan for the future.

It's not waiting for the tram to arrive and open up that's annoying, it's the animation synch offset — where you get to the tram, and the doors are open, but you can't click on them, and have to wait until they close before you can click and pick a destination, coupled with the tram arrival offset, where you've selected your destination and are waiting for the tram, then when it shows up, you can't wait for it to stop and open its doors, but just jump in front of the tram before it fully reaches the station, getting run over by the tram in the process.

It's a highly unpopular position, what with the perception of inf as just a currency (and has functionally zero chance of ever being implemented -- maybe when AE was originally rolled out, but certainly not now), but if you go back to the original definition of what inf was -- blueside, influence was your reputation as a hero making people willing to support you, redside infamy was your reputation as a villain making people want to give you what you want so you'll leave them alone, and goldside information was having dirt on people to coerce them into doing things for you -- then changing AE missions to provide no rewards except experience and tickets would put a damper on farming. No inf dropping, because going to an AE building at level 1, crawling into your electronic navel, and coming out at level 50 would leave you with no reputation in Paragon City or elsewhere; no one would know you from Adam's off ox, no matter how skilled you'd become at using your abilities. Similarly for mobs in AE missions dropping enhancements, salvage, and recipes -- you're inside a virtual world; nothing there carries back to the real world but the experience of using your abilities you get from completing the missions. Tickets are AE's reward for performance in AE missions; they would remain, and would probably need to be bumped up to partially counteract the loss of 'tangible' rewards, and you would still be able to use tickets to buy salvage, recipes, and enhancements to use or sell. But that ship has long since sailed, and there's no chance of the AE rewards being axed that hard, just to make the lore of what AE is and does link up with how the game lore defined its 'currency'.

Or even run the TF at 50 and get the full effect of having had the time to slot out all of your accessible powers. Admittedly, even if you've got ATOs, purples, PvP IOs, and Winter sets, virtually all of the rest of your enhancements won't be giving you any set bonuses, and the enhancement values are going to be worse than if you'd been slotting ordinary SOs, but you'll still have more overall slots than someone who was level 21 running the TF.

You run an endgame TF (i.e., one where you're not capped in level, the way Numina caps you so that you just barely don't get access to the incarnate abilities) at -1, then most of the enemies are going to be 49, with a scattering of 48 and 50 -- and none of the level 49 or 48 mobs will drop incarnate salvage, because that's the way the game is built

I think they're referring to a common practice in programming when you have a block of code that you may need later, but don't want to be actively run in the current iteration of the program, to comment out the whole block so that it gets skipped when the program runs.

I'm sure most, if not all, of you have done it at one time or another -- rushed up to the tram, been unable to select a destination despite the still-open doors of the tram, waited for the tram to leave so you can bring up the destination window... then mouseo'd your destination, selecting one completely different from where you wanted to go, and had to stand there waiting for the next tram to arrive, then for the zoning screen, to arrive at not-your-intended-destination, and have to run around from the exit to the tram entrance, only to find that the tram graphics are again out of synch with where it is in the transport cycle, so you have to wait again for the tram to leave before you can click on the doors and pick the destination you'd intended to select the first time. Is there some way, once you've picked a destination from the tram menu but before the game allows you to start the animation of entering the tram -- i.e., waiting for the next tram to arrive -- there was a small window with a "Cancel travel" button that you could click to end your character being locked into travel to the new zone. For people who don't want to bother with this, there could be an option 'Show Cancel Travel Window' defaulting to 'No' that hides the window so everything works as it does now.

That can cause some oddities -- for example, the first piece of the Positron TF caps players at a level below the minium at which they could slot anything in the Positron's Blast set, and even the second piece caps players at a level where they can barely slot it. Seems weird to have a reward for a TF that the character receiving it wouldn't be able to slot due to level once crafted.

With my Pyro/Marine Controller, I've switched from that to putting it on my Catherine Wheel, because it gets closer to the hostile mobs, creating more stacks -- and because it doesn't despawn at inconvenient times when I'm not paying attention. Even when solo, if the current activity has a cluster of friendlies (i.e., Adamastor summoning, the Kronos Titan train in Talos Island), putting it on the GM pretty much guarantees capping the number of stacks.

And there is the ongoing solicitation for multiple-star-difficulty TFs, where the post in LFG always has "Essential: must have Tier 4 Barrier", setting up gear checks. People found that a continuous rotation of Barriers is a way to successfully complete the TF, so because a single solution was found, it has become the only way to complete the TF, with no one interested in trying to find out whether there are other ways to succeed. Objectively, I find the canalization of approaches to beating TFs disappointing. But I'm not the one organizing the runs, so I'm not in a position to tell them they can't do it that way.

And judging from the sheer amount of concrete used in building Paragon City, whoever supplied the 'crete would have made an absolute fortune.

I have made up a file of popmenus in my menus folder so it loads on client launch for location powers that, at least for me, streamlines their use, so that I'm not clicking around on the screen to try to position the AoE where I want it (at least in most cases). The individual popmenus are of the form: //------------------------------------------ // Lifegiving Spores Menu "LifegivingSpores" { Title Lifegiving Spores Option "Lifegiving Spores &1" "powexecname Lifegiving Spores" Option "Here &2" "powexeclocation down:max Lifegiving Spores" Option "Target &3" "powexeclocation target Lifegiving Spores" } So, for this popmenu, I would set it up as a macro, say, "/macro LGS popmenu LifegivingSpores". This puts a "LGS" macro icon in my tray. When I click it, I get the popmenu above, with shortcuts '1', '2', and '3' -- '1' acts like the power normally does, putting down a glowing target for you to drag around and click to set; '2' puts it under you, centering it at your feet if you're on the ground (the 'down:max' is for things like rains, where I'm flying above my target and want to drop it on the ground under me); '3' centers it on your current target. Since almost all the popmenus work the same way, I don't need to actually look at the popmenu; if I want it where I am, I click the icon or use the keyboard shortcut and press '2'. If I want it on my target, I'll press '3' after activating the macro, and if for some reason I want to target it normally, I'll use the '1' option. For powers that are location teleports, the 'target' option gets moved to '2', and the '3' option changes to a 'forward:max' move-through: //------------------------------------------ // Lightning Rod // This popmenu alters the default hotkeys; '2' is for current target, // and '3' charges forward to the max range of the ability Menu "Rod" { Title Lightning Rod Option "Lightning Rod &1" "powexecname Lightning Rod" Option "Target &2" "powexeclocation target Lightning Rod" Option "Rush &3" "powexeclocation forward:max Lightning Rod" }

Then Build Up is just a proc. It adds damage and a moderate to hit buff to all your attacks for a short time. Envenomed Blades adds typed damage and a moderate to hit buff to all your attacks for a short time. With the exception of the damage buff being typed, Envenomed Blades is mechanically identical to Build Up. This feels strongly like a case of "I want this one effect to work differently than all the other functionally identical effects in the game, because I think I should be getting more of an advantage from it".

The only immediate upgrade I want for Trip Mine is to make it queuable. Not to affect its interruptibility, but just to be able to put down a Trip Mine, move to where I want the next one, and queue it so I start setting the next one as soon as it recharges, instead of having to watch the recharge timer count down before clicking it again. Getting hit, or moving, or any of the other things that interrupt a queued power should still break the queue; I just want a little more convenience when I'm putting down several mines in a cluster.

That's the way it's been since the game launched -- single-target buffs applied to you have never affected already-summoned pets. Changing that would involve a much deeper alteration to the mechanics of the game and would likely require rebalancing of pet powers.

Are you activating Envenomed Blades then summoning your Fly Trap, Carrion Creepers, or Lore pets, or do you have the pets out and then activate Envenomed Blades? Fly Trap et al. are separate entities; once they've been summoned, any attacks they make aren't your attacks, so they don't get buffed. Expecting them to be buffed is like expecting Envenomed Blades to buff the attacks of all your teammates. As I understand it, if you summon pets while you have a buff that affects you active, the buff will carry over to the pet, but once summoned, a buff would have to be applied to the pet for it to get any effect. Interface effects are continuous, so they would be in effect when you summoned the pet, and would therefore carry over; if you had an empty Interface slot, summoned your pet(s), and then slotted the Interface slot, your pets would not get the effect from the Interface slot.

You'll have to get Mender Silos to divulge his method of getting around the Carbon Limit for that to work...

It was the intended path at the time of the release of Praetoria as a character origin; it was a longer-term goal to have goldside fleshed out to 50 (along with all the other longer-term plans, like Tyrant 'reforming' and getting shoehorned in as a replacement for Statesman, and the moonbase, and the Coming Storm, etc.), but that kept getting kicked down the road, so we never got any formal post-20 goldside content.

What we need is for the enhancement tables to actually sort the enhancements in them, not just show them sorted. What is going on is that the display of the enhancements stored is sorted alphabetically, but the database 'inside' the table records the enhancements in the order that they've been added (IIRC, this made the SG leader's audit function easier for the Paragon Studios devs to write). When you take an enhancement out, it takes the earliest-stored one of that type. If there are more of that type of enhancement in storage, but the next internal slot isn't that type, then the display part of the interface gets confused, and you get the annoying jump in position to what the next most recently added enhancement was. To fix this, adding an enhancement to the table should resort the internal list, but this would require rewriting other functions associated with the SG leader's audit capability, and might require changing the database structure of all the storage objects.

Alignment is already visible; it's the hero/vig/villain/rogue icon. Vet level is useful to have immediately visible on the character list. For the stats in your list, 'active mission' is indeterminate unless you're in a TF (logged out while in a TF proper is rare any more, but in an Ouro arc also counts. Other stats would be better, I think, shown in a 'right-click for detailed info' pop-up window, instead of being there constantly to clutter up the screen.