TemporalVileTerror

Wait . . . do you mean you don't just fling yourself off of two-to-three story tall balconies in real life, @twozerofoxtrot? Doesn't everyone?

@ScarySai: "... nothing really comes close to it." That would be the Repel Power folks were talking about.

Thank you. Is there an option (now, or in the works) for the program to have a "check for updates" button while running with that option flagged?

That seems to solve it. Thank you for the assistance. Although, I do have to say I'm not really a fan of how this software keeps changing without any kind of indication that its downloaded or applied any version changes. I would feel a lot more comfortable if the software didn't make any changes without user input.

Even if the tests don't include all variable conditions, they can still provide valuable data. And -knowing- that particular variables exist and are not inherently represented in that data is also valuable. It's the basis of the scientific method. Establish parameters. Conduct test. Observe. Remain skeptical. Analyze data. Ask questions. Rinse. Repeat. Of course, much like I said before, we do have to be aware that these tests and benchmarks aren't necessarily going to answer the question "what's the best way to balance the game." Rather it'll be closer to: "Assuming players are interested in playing the game under the conditions expressed by Galaxy Brain's thesis statement of 'Playing CoH = Designing a highly customized character in order to use super powers and defeat hoards of enemies in specially instanced missions.' then how do various Power Sets perform under specific conditions?" And within that framework, setting up a series of spreadsheets and formulae to create a predictive model that is future-proofed for balance passes gives the community and the Devs a potential tool to meet at least some players' expectations. It's ambitious, but if @Galaxy Brain and other interested community members can pull it off, and share their findings, I say: All the power to 'em! Though I will encourage them to be mindful of introduced errors and biases potentially corrupting the data, and account for that when they perform their analyses and conclusions.

Nah, that's not the problem, @WanderingAries. Operating system is Windows 10. Logs sent to @Number Six.

Today my launcher looks like this: I have no Shard Status or game launch buttons. Shutting down and restarting the launcher has no effect.

I'm not sure having the gloves as anything other than the costume pieces would be necessary in this. It would be a matter of using either the "hand blast" animations, or the "wrist shot" animation (of which, I only know of one, so additional animations for the latter would need to be created). I believe the "simplest" solution is adding an additional "Weapon" which is "empty." A weapon model with a transparent texture and moves the "barrel of the gun" to the hand itself. The new problem, as I understand it, would be that the way the system is presently laid out, the player could theoretically select either conditions of having a weapon model in their character's hands, but still using the hand-blast animations, OR the player selects the invisible weapon but uses the default rifle-fire animations. Not really a problem at all in my view, but I understand that there are members of the Dev Team and community who feel that's too "janky" and unpresentable.

That actually sounds like something related to a bug I've experienced a handful of times after prolonged periods of typing messages (for roleplay, go figure). It's rare, but I'll post some screenshots in here the next time it happens and see if that helps in narrowing down the problem any.

The colours of the pistols themselves versus the colours for power customization is a different matter, and the subject of this thread (I believe) is the latter.

Which is why I was proposing the mining of Builds from the forums here. Testing every single permutation of Set Bonuses would be so mathematically huge as to be effectively impossible. So let's cheat a little and see which combinations are already floating around. This isn't meant as the whole solution to the problem. Just one way to potentially extrapolate an abstraction for a more rapid test cycle.

What a lovely thread! Some really juicy and fun stuff in here. Quite informative. Thank you to all the contributors!

We already know that Nemmy's ego is infinite, so there's no need to discuss it.

I believe you can customize the little white spiral ring for active Powers with a Mod. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/60-tools-utilities-amp-downloads/ I don't visit that particular Board much, so you may need to ask around to see if one already exists, or if anyone would be willing to create one.

I believe there may be a communication breakdown here. I admit that I don't use Mids much myself. Been several months since I booted it up, in fact. But as I understand it, that program shows a list of values for the IO Set Bonuses. Could the community not effectively analyze those Builds to collect the specific information I'm speaking of? Or is Mids -that- far off from the actual in-game values for Set Bonuses? I mainly brought up this idea as it intersects with Galaxy Brain's last thread about IOs and Balance, and this one.

"Incentive to be prosocial." That's the crux of WHY I think this market model is a huge problem, and why I'm a strong advocate for making further changes to this market system to promote behaviour which feeds in to spreading benefits to the entirety of the community, while minimizing the opportunities for predatory and antisocial behaviour. I will continue to place items in to the market listed at 1 Inf. Yes, that means that predatory players will be able to exploit my efforts to drive down prices and create accessibility. I just hope to encourage a substantial enough number of other players to follow suit with me, so that we can undermine the profiteers through sheer volume. If the collective community expects to be able to buy Common Salvage for 1 Inf at all times, market forces should limit the number of players who are able to capitalize on buying up stock and trying to resell at grossly inflated prices. It would be good ideas, in my opinion, to further incentivize players to share items while also limiting the ease which predators can exploit that.

Therein lies another assumption with the "full team" metric, @Galaxy Brain. I only have the narrow window of Everlasting to really draw from, but I can tell you that full teams are -not- the modus operandi there. They happen, and they happen plenty, but I'm fairly certain that they're not a categorically significant datapoint for analysis, and solo and small teams represent a significant percentage of players under your definition of core gameplay loop. But what I was suggesting with the datamining from the Devs would be, hopefully, indicative of not the player who set the Notoriety parameters, but rather the number of player-hours collectively at the various Notoriety settings. Tangentially: I had a sudden idea . . . A way to potentially address a bit of that X factor from earlier may be to pull together some community volunteers and datamine the Builds in the various Archetype Boards here on the forums. Plot that data in to some spreadsheets, get some potential numbers to experiment with for what sorts of IO bonuses are theoretically at play. True datamining from the game itself would obviously be much more accurate and much more informative, but in the absence of that, we might be able to extrapolate some exemplary samples to work with.

Not to subvert further, but I think it's worth tackling the assumption of "most true for the most people" at some point. In another thread, probably. But operating within that parameter, I think that "X factor" is probably equally impactful, if not more than, the +X/xY Notoriety. The difficulty settings are fairly solid numbers, much easier to graph than the incredibly fluid nature of all the other variables. Of course, that does mean we might be able to meaningfully predict the impact of Notoriety in test cases. Factoring those in to some spreadsheets where we can drop the more variable aspects of the game for analyse could be fruitful. Your proposed categories are something which I can't accurately comment on, @Galaxy Brain. But subjectively . . . they look good? Naturally +0/x1 at one end, and +4/x8 on the other make for good benchmarks. Perhaps the Devs would be willing to share some datamining information on the next three or four most popular difficulty setting configurations for the other benchmarks?

I believe it's worth noting that the Heist portion of the Blockbuster does already function in that all four players need to enter the staging area before that half of the Trial begins. Duplicating that behaviour for the Colosseum half isn't unreasonable (on paper, no idea what the feasibility is).

Nails hit upon their heads. Pretty accurate.

The DBZ-style "beam struggles" also had me laughing quite a bit, but I'm not sure that was the intended reaction the showrunners were aiming for. At least they didn't spend five minutes grunting and posturing first.

I believe it is actually now 100, and it's emails that have any attachment. Oddly, I believe you can exceed 100 items in your email if you send them from an alt account.

Nicely said, @Replacement. Some additional gradients also exist in the context of the themes, tone, and depth of the narrative content, as well as where to draw the lines between the gameplay being in service to those elements, or those elements being in service to the gameplay. Adjusting the numbers of Powers for "balance" can't be wholly divorced from the entirety of the game experience, especially when the game experience has such a wide range of valid interpretations. The phrase "feeling powerful" comes up a lot (or derivatives such as "feelings like a hero/villain" or "feelings like I matter"), but there are some clearly different interpretations of what that even means.

I believe it's due to the No Redraw option having to enable the colour palette options by default, even though there aren't any colourized textured for the actual Powers in the Set(s).

Well, "easily." As I recall, even the original Devs had some considerable hurdles getting the Kiosks to work. Was it around Issue 1 or 2 when they finally became functional? And from what I see, those Kiosks are now providing way less information than they used to. No idea if that change hit Legacy/Retail, or if that change happened during SCoRE or here on Homecoming. But . . . yes. They make an ideal platform to have in-game bulletin boards and calendars, at least from UX and coherent narrative standpoints. Granted, we would need to install some in the Rogue Isles. As it stands, Villains can only access the Kiosk network from Mayhem missions.