srmalloy

And the thing is, he's right. Adding a second autofire power -- or any number of autofire powers -- is a fairly simple thing. IF the code to manage autopowers was implemented rationally, with the intention of having more than one autopower sometime in the future. I can think of easily four different ways that it could be done. And I'm absolutely certain that none of these was used in the CoH server code, and if we were to go digging, we'd find it buried somewhere in the loop that updates countdowns for status effects or something, because that was where the devs could find a code loop that executed with the right frequency to catch the autopowers becoming fireable and set them off. And there's no way to shoehorn a second autopower in, because they used a random integer field they had lying around in the character data structure to record which power was tagged for autofire, and there isn't any space there to put a second field, so you'd have to arbitrarily pick an unused field somewhere else in the data structure, which means you now have two arbitrarily-chosen data fields that have to be maintained whenever something with autofire powers changes, with no explanation why. (with close to forty years of work experience as a programmer, I have some insight into how spaghetti code gets that way. And we don't want to make it worse just to add a feature that will increase the bottability of the game.)

Heh. "Didn't want to have people zerg-die-zerg through content." Sounds kind of funny in the face of Jack Emmert's direct statement that 'fun', for him, was throwing yourself at the big boss again and again, getting defeated over and over and over again, until you figured out what the one tactic that would let you defeat them was. Which is a little ironic in the age of the internet, where when a solution is found, it's all over the net in days at most, and the challenge switches to how effectively you can follow the go-by -- and how well you can recover when something goes Tango Uniform in the process.

They're also different periods -- Echo: Galaxy has an (inaccessible) AE building and arena, while Echo: Atlas has the original buildings that were torn down when the AE building and Wentworth's were put in, and is missing any connection to Eastgate/The Hollows. This would make Echo: Galaxy City's timeframe sometime after Issue 14, when AE was released, and Echo: Atlas Park's timeframe no later than Issue 1, since Issue 2 added The Hollows. It feels a little incongruous simply to be stopped in the tunnels out of the echo zones, and for the hazard gate from Echo: Galaxy to Perez Park to be blanked off. I think it would feel better thematically for the zones as 'pockets in time' to have players automatically zoned to the first open Ouroboros zone when they reach the transition point (or click on a guard in the Perez gate). I don't know how possible that would be to do, though.

I don't remember the specific comic that the panel was in, but years and years ago, there was a Spider-Man comic where he'd wound up riding vehicles in a chase well out of the city, and he'd resolved everything, waved a farewell to the victim he'd rescued, and fired a webline to take him away... and the panel had him standing there in a suburban tract full of one-story buildings as his webline arches over and descends, with no tall buildings to attach to; you could almost hear the 'Wah-wah-wah-wah' sad trombone slide. Pointed up how location-dependent that type of mobility was. Found it. Spider-Man #267, page 10, panel 3. And the kid's comment is just rubbing salt into the wound:

That's loosely similar to what I did with my Bots/Dark MM; he was a late Soviet-era project to develop a robotic director for combat robots that accidentally became self-aware and began ignoring his orders, replacing them with his own plans. Despite the fact that he was actually more efficient this way, the generals backing the project wanted robotic cannon fodder, and not being able to rely on the robots being there to draw fire made it unacceptable, and he and his subordinate robots were deactivated, crated up, and stuck in a warehouse for decades, until he was awakened by an earthquake that triggered automatic threat sensors.

Shooting runners in the back is probably one of the things I love most about playing ranged characters. ;D It's not just shooting runners in the back; it's seeing the runner, taking the shot at them as they scurry off, and watching the trail of your shot curve to follow them as they duck around a corner, which tells you that, no matter how fast and how far they run, they're going to get it. And sometimes you get the weird effects, too; back on live, I had one where I was on the docks on the W side of IP with my AR/EM Blaster attacking a spawn of Tsoo. I'd fired an M30 round at a Red Ink Man, enough damage to finish him off, and I watched it arc over and begin to descend... then the Ink Man hit me with Siphon Speed and took off running -- and I watched the grenade turn in mid-flight and begin ascending again as it disappeared into the distance chasing my runner. And about 20 seconds later I got the XP and inf for his defeat, without ever seeing him again. You can't buy satisfaction like that.

Well, barring imports from other MMOs whose experience from those games is that the high-end content assumes that you're min-maxed to get the last 0.0008% possible performance out of your character, and will kick you if you don't meet their standards of how you should be having fun. If they're that fixated on having the One True Build™, then there are better places to spend your time than arguing about why you don't have a particular power slotted a particular way.

None of the contacts are there, and BAB is missing from his pedestal; the Freedom Corps building is an empty shell. Which is strange, because if you go to Echo: Atlas Park, Ms. Liberty is in her normal spot on her pedestal, and the origin contacts are down in City Hall where they should be (and I've even gotten introduced to new contacts by them on occasion). So why is everyone missing from Echo: Galaxy City.

I'd + this if I didn't think that it would have an effect on CCs (you'd get a BIG cry about it). Costume contests. Although putting power suppression in, say, a 40'-50' radius around Ms. Liberty, rather than Atlas Plaza as a whole (what ever radius would not quite reach the plinth the Atlas statue is on, so CCs up on the plinth are good) would be sufficient. Although the idea of turning off Ms. Liberty's function as a costume editor, so people would spread out to BAB and Icon, is a good one. CC's = costume changes? I wouldn't think we would dampen that as they are a power...

*sigh* Once more for emphasis. Except for costume pieces specifically hard-coded to work around it, when you pick a costume piece, you are defining the costume for one side of your body; this is mirrored by the game engine to the other side of your body. Every costume piece that's not side-to-side symmetrical has code in the game client defining it that way, and adding more is not just an art issue, it's a programming issue. I see the "asymmetrical costume pieces" suggestions come up again and again, and it seems no one looks to see if it's been asked for before -- like the person making the post somehow believes that they're the first person who's played CoH to ever have wanted more asymmetric costumes. And the answer is the same one that the Paragon Studios devs gave back when the game was live -- the whole costume manager would need to be rewritten to allow more than the one-off asymmetrical pieces we have,and it would double the data storage requirements for costumes (not the stumbling block it was a decade ago, but still...).

Unfortunately, it's really hard to fly in at precisely 90° to the 'backstop', so you wind up sliding to one side or the other, and come to a stop mashed up against one or the other of the guards. They seem to be disciplined enough to resist the opportunity to cop a feel, but it's still a bit embarrassing.

The 'grope location' on the hazard zone guards seems to be dependent on how far away you are from them. I ran a character into Perez today, and with the character right up against the stop barrier, I was able to click the open space about a foot to the side of the right guard. Other times, clicking the head/chest work; the farther back I am when I click, the vaguer the location is -- at maximum range, I can click anywhere on the figure and have it work. Unfortunately, I tend to zoom in flying, and let the barrier in the back stop me, which puts me in the guards' armpits.

I'm tempted to suggest a brute-force solution, something like "if you are within 20 feet of Ms. Liberty for more than five minutes without interacting with her, you're automatically teleported to a random location in Atlas Plaza", but that's probably overkill.

Either that, or create a new travel power PvP IO set that can be slotted into the prestige sprints that give, say, Speed, Speed/End, End, and the Speed IO has a PvP-only effect of giving +4 KB resistance.

I saw the sale history on enhancement catalysts the other day where someone had suffered from a zero spasm and bought one for 100,000,000 inf -- about 1,000 times what the running average seems to be.

Sometimes the game doesn't register that you've entered the area where the 'open-world instance' is set; the consensus seems to be that you move to another area (the blue dots on the map defining neighborhoods) or zone out and back. I've had times when it was like pulling teeth to find Arachnos commanders, and other times when they've respawned so fast that I have to be careful to avoid pulling in a second spawn.

And it's this that makes me sad every time I see something like "lvl 50 Brute looking for AE or farm" in the LFG channel -- you can get your enjoyment from the game how you want, but seeing someone who's powerleveled to 50, and all they're interested in is more farms, is depressing. Thinking about all the content they don't care about because it's not a farm (or don't know about, because all they've ever done in game is farm) reminds me of a line from a novel referring to mining the asteroids for resources: "Out there it's raining soup, and we don't even know about soup bowls." But if endless farming is the only way they know how to play, or what they think is the 'best' way to play, I'll just be disappointed in them and let them go off and do their own thing.

The Vahzilok are the reason I abandoned Science as an origin back when you got an origin-based first contact, because you got thrown up against the Vahz right off, and then forwarded to Henry Peter Wong for more of the same. And I will still avoid picking up a new contact if they're described as following the Vahzilok, unless I have no choice. I'll go into City Hall and talk to the Magic, Tech, and Natural contacts (Prince Kiros Nandelu, the Mutant contact, makes you run back to him to tell him about the Council you found; the others chain a second mission directly on completion of the first without your needing to talk to them again) to get a wider variety of forwarded contacts, but I avoid the Science contacts until later in the game, when the Vahz get replaced.

Ran it yesterday, and was a little disappointed by having to show, with my tauntless Brute, the concept of using a ranged attack to get aggro on one or two of the doppelgangers, then pull them back around the corner where we can take them down without engaging the whole group at once. I wish there was some way to make a deliberate miss, though; if you miss your attack you're less likely to get bigger pulls.

Go to the back of the club, upstairs; go through the door in the back wall. You will be in an antechamber with exits to all the Midnighter Club buildings in the zones. Go up the corridor, and there will be a "T" intersection; if you continue straight, you'll get to the antechamber for the other faction. At the intersection is a pair of Midnighters, one hero, one villain, flanking a Pillar of Ice and Fire. You use this Pillar to go to Cimerora.

Or the "The security chief for Perez Park has asked for you by name" mission you can get around level 5-6, which invariably sends you into the woods after Circle of Thorns, who appear in spawns of 5-8, usually with a Madness Mage to help speed up your trip to the hospital. Nothing like being perma-held while you're carved into hamburger.

This becomes problematic when the team leader doesn't zone first. Do you just accept the possible split? Make the first person to zone select the instance for the team? Leave team members in limbo until the team leader zones?

I need to rebuild the stacked emote sequence I had for my Bots/Dark MM, whose background was being a "failed" Soviet military project (was not intended to become sentient) that had an exchange among the bots (all dialog in Russian): Assault Bot: <taunt emote>"Your maternal parent wears the footgear of a soldier!" Battle Drone: <slapreact emote>"What?" Battle Drone: "That's supposed to be an insult? Protector Bot <research emote>"That's what the phrasebook says." Battle Drone: “Implying that a parent is a skilled soldier is derogatory?" Protector Bot: <shrug emote>"I do _not_ understand humans."

It seems a bit like waving a dead chicken at the problem, but if you save the character's power customizations, then edit the file to remove references to powers in the Munitions Mastery pool, save it, then load it in a tailor session, does the rifle go away? I remember when I did a respec to replace Fly with Mystic Flight on a character, then tweaked the Sorcery pool colors and saved the customization to import to the character's other costume slots, that the Flight pool powers still had entries in the power customization list. If you have effect customization entries for the abilitiesin Munitions Mastery, it might force the weapon to remain in your costume. Then there's always the brute-force method of editing the rifle out of a .costume file and loading that to see if it works.

I used the "Find Contact" button on my level-17 Elec/Elec Dominator to sift through available unknown contacts, selecting Jim Temblor. When I clicked the 'Teleport to Contact' button, nothing happened, and when I tried to click the "Find Contact" button, I got the error message "An error has occurred with the Contact Finder. No contacts could be found for your level, alignment, and universe." Repeated attempts produced the same error. The first basic 'kick the problem' fix -- zoning from AP to Skyway -- cleared up the problem, so there is a trivial workaround, but this is the first time I've seen the error. My character had seven missions at the time; it didn't affect things when I tried after zoning, but it is possible that it contributed to the initial error.