srmalloy

Random zone NPC dialog: "[NPC] Dwayne: I swear I ran into this guy yesterday who looked just like me. When I confronted them, they just ran off making crazy r" I think that their comment should have ended with 'remarks', but it just terminates with the 'r' by itself.

Used to be you could go to the force-field barrier on the east side of Peregrine island and work your way south a bit from level with the south pier, and you'd find a gap that let you get through the barrier. At that point, you could fly past the edge of the ocean and down under the map, then come back west under the island itself. This was an accepted way to get to the 'Matrix room' in the arena in PI before the arenas were regularized so you could go in their any time (I remember parking one of my characters there before shutdown). There were other gaps in the terrain, one of which was routinely exploited by the 5th Column/Council mobs in Founders' Falls -- if you were attacking them in the plaza just S of where the road goes into the War Wall to Talos Island, they could panic and run off, jumping into a miniscule gap in the terrain to get under the map, then jump back up through another miniscule gap in the fenced greenspace south of the Midnighter building (around [3167.8 0.1 1037.7]) and come back to attack you when you weren't expecting them. Even funnier, at the parking lot south of that, the octagonal pillar at the SW corner -- [3264.2 3.0 1343.6] -- was missing entirely, allowing anyone to get under the map and run around in the water that underlay most of the zone and attack up through the ground at the mobs on the ground. The mobs were smart, though, and 'knew' about the gaps in the geometry, and would run to the nearest one and jump down to come after you when you did that.

— Dendis Moore "Dendis Moore, Dendis Moore, riding through the land. Dendis Moore, Dendis Moore, without a merry band. He steals from the poor, and gives to the rich. Stupid bitch."

And something I make use of regularly; when I have a point on the map thumbtacked, I'll often just thumbtack somewhere outside the map with a double-click to set, then clear the thumbtack without worrying about accidentally clicking on something.

It's not KB qua KB that is disliked, it's pointless KB. I haven't recreated the character on Homecoming, but on Live I had an En/En Blaster that I spent some time learning how to focus her use of knockback. Back when the Controllers would wait for the tank to herd up a spawn before firing off their AoE immobilize, instead of the current meta which seems to be "fire off your AoE immobilize right away, so the spawn is spread across as big an area as possible", I would position her so that the KB from her attacks would push mobs into corners and against walls, tightening up the groups to make it easier for the other heroes to get more of them in their AoEs. Admittedly, even though it's more 'realistic', vectored KB has made clustering mobs more difficult -- for example M30 Grenade used to knock targets away from the shooter, not away from the center of the AoE -- you can't just drop your grenade in the middle of the group to push them away from you, but have to more carefully pick who you shoot at to vector the KB in the direction you want. And with the push for more and more speed, the time spent setting up a focusing KB is time not doing damage, so you often see KB going off in different directions, which spreads out the mobs and cuts into the perception of "gotta go fast".

Back on Live, before the devs fixed it, there were a couple of the Arachnos maps that had holes in the geometry that would let you get outside the map, and I found that it was possible to shoot up the mobs in the 'proper' geometry while they were unable to return fire.

Or just general disruption to the group. I was in a Nemesis raid this morning in Talos Island, and we were all in a moderately tight group on the top of the hill -- both the league and the Nemesis mobs porting in -- and someone dropped a big AoE with knockback (likely Meteor, but I can't be sure), which caused the Nemesis mobs to fly away from the top of the hill and disappear because of the render-limit algorithm for mobs (I've had mobs I was actively fighting in an MSR vanish on me because more Rikti ported in behind me, causing the rendered mob list to be recalculated, but this was objectively different because it was a player's active intervention), breaking targeting and interrupting attacks for most of the league.

See my addition to my reply about putting a thumbtack outside the map and teleporting to it. Although it does present the possibility of porting outside a map to be able to defeat a mob who's gotten tangled up in the geometry and their targeting point is outside a wall.

True, but using the /thumbtack command let's you place the marker at your desired height regardless of multiple elevations at the target. It basically does everything Mark & Recall does without the limitation of having to put the mark down first — and you want this to be a P2W power you can just buy? Of more concern is the ability for a power like this to be misused — simply to get past mobs in a zone to get to a mission door, or as an 'ignore mobs' power. Use Reveal to show the map, then use the thumbtack teleporter to mark the elevator room and port to it, ignoring the entire floor. Or use it as a second version of ATT, where someone puts their $loc in team chat and you thumbtack it, then port to them. In that case, it's useful for someone who lagged entering a mission who missed the ATT to the end. Or using it to rescue Dr. Todd in the Moonfire TF without leaving someone back to use ATT or needing Mark&Recall. Update: OH, yes — and the coding nightmare of sanity-checking the coordinates. The game cheerfully lets you thumbtack a location outside the map; what happens if you teleport to such a location? Burn a use of Ouro Portal or base portal or LRT or something? Or will /stuck put you in the nearest spot on the map? And if the latter, could it be used to access otherwise-inaccessible parts of the map? If there's a TF that has a click or glowie objective behind a 'you need a key to open this door' obstruction, could you write down the coordinates for the glowie from a previous run, then use Thumbtack Teleport to take you there without needing the key?

I have. Back on Live, I was running my Bots/Dark MM in a Manticore TF with the rest of the team being a group that obviously played together normally. After the defeat-all missions, something led all of them to quit the TF (could be another of their friends got on, and they decided to quit and restart with them; I don't know the reason), and I had a WTH moment, and decided to see how far I could get with the TF. This was the old version of the TF where you only had Hopkins to defeat in the last mission, not Hopkins and Countess Crey... and I was surprised to find myself still standing with Hopkins defeated at the end of the TF.

If so, they're not all lower forms; a number of the jägers speak, either out in the open world or in instanced missions. They might be what happens when one of Nemesis' soldiers is too badly injured to survive being put into a Warhulk.

Also, IIRC, the giant walker at the end of the Hess TF.

While we did get a significant increase in the variety of mobs in the Skulls group, did the bug with low-rank female Skulls not counting for the Skulls defeat badge ever get fixed?

Back on Live, it used to be that the force-field barrier protecting the elevator that takes you down to the portal room to Recluse's Victory had a level-50 requirement, keeping low-level heroes out of the zone, resulting in that badge being gated behind reaching level 15 and using someone else's Ouro portal or completing Agent G's arc. Then, too, having one of the exploration badges for Atlas Park behind that force field was a serious annoyance, as it prevented you from getting all the exploration badges for the zone -- and hence the 5-merit award -- until you'd reached the level cap.

I don't recall off the top of my head whether it's been fixed, but you used to get Mercedes as an introduction choice way early from a couple of contacts (I used to pick her, as the other was always Vahz-heavy), then again after you hit 20.

They didn't seal up the ashes for eternal storage, though, since you clearly escaped to post again...

Only after the cremation and entombment.

Only if we can have you cremated and seal your ashes in the plinth of the statue to prevent regeneration.

There are a couple of exceptions; for example, you can target Outcast bosses with "targetcustomname Lead", because all the stock Outcast bosses have 'lead' in their name. But that's a special case. Generically by rank, no.

Another entry for the "Scunthorpe problem" list.

Because in a raid or iTrial, the visuals of the buffs on your character are clearly your primary focus? In the MSRs, iTrials, and events like the Rikti and Nemesis incursions I've been part of, the only time I even notice that my character has an Ice buff on them is if the action slows down enough for my attention to not be occupied by the opponents we're facing; there are enough other special effects going off that the Ice armors are buried under everything else going off. And I'm supporting adding the ability of Null to have your client display minimal FX to you. Also, Uun's observation that this is not analogous to Group Fly is quite true; it's not possible to cast the Ice armors on another character and disable some of their powers, the way Group Fly can with powers that require the character to be on the ground.

I see... it's perfectly acceptable to ask characters with friendly-buff Ice defense powers to go out of their way to change the visuals on their powers because you don't like them, but it's just a horrible ебаный imposition to ask someone to not run Group Fly, telling you that it's your responsibility to go out of your way to have Null the Null disable your being affected by it if you don't like it. Having an option with Null to apply minimal FX to buffs on you in your client puts the same onus on you to address your issues. But I suppose that right-clicking the icon for the buff and selecting "cancel" is too much to handle.

Reading this, I was immediately struck with the idea that Ignite in the Assault Rifle powerset should be renamed and have the animation tweaked to better represent the power effect. Change the name to "Cold Shot", with the animation having the rifle shoot a jet of liquid fuel to the target location, ending with a short burst of fire to ignite the pool of fuel to burn whatever the fuel was sprayed on.

And the Goliath War Walker pet is one of the ones that's a miniature version of the GWW (unlike others, like the Ghost of Scrapyard pet or P.E.A.C.E.keeper pet, which are "bobblehead" versions of the original), there shouldn't be an issue with making the player costume a 'player size' version.

Ouroboros is special; when you accept an arc in Ouroboros, it puts you into Task Force mode, effectively tucking sidelining your other missions and making the Ouro arc the only active mission line you have. Because of this, it ignores the normal limit on the number of open story arcs you can have. Regardless of whether or not you're capped on the number of open regular story arcs, you can always join/start a TF or Ouro arc.