Andreah

I don't mean it in that in-your-face sense; rather that the data packet that contained the tell also contained the global. You would not see the global with the text content of the tell (or chat). However, the client computer program could access that part of the data packet and use it to look up the star rating in your local notes file. You would not see the global name of the sender unless you clicked on their name to check for it as you would do today.

Yeah, reading the local file(s) with the notes/stars should be trivially simple, but matching it up to a global name entry in it may be harder. CoH does some things in ways a non-developer may find odd. For example, player ABC who you have a note for under their other character name DEF (and whose global is @ xyz) sends you a tell. The client program can read the notes file which has an existing entry of five stars for character DEF under global @ xyz. The client has to ask the server "What is the global name for character ABC?", receive it as @ xyz, and then find the entry, retrieve the stars, and then display them with the tell. Maybe that's easy, maybe it's hard. I don't know. Alternatively, the global name of the sending player could be attached to each and every tell anyone ever sends. This would normally be unseen data with the tell, but the client could use it to look up entries in the local notes files. In this case, one could potentially do this for every communication message in every kind of channel, and display the stars for those. That's how I would do it "in bulk", as it were. But again, maybe that's easy, maybe it's hard, and maybe it's expensive in compute or bandwidth even if it is easy. A final option I can think of is to store stars data server-side. I don't think that's a good idea. That would require data refactoring and it might be considered "client private", like the text notes where you say someone is a <bleep!>. A developer would have to look into it if the "Seeing Stars" capability were one that was worth investigating.

Some detailed information about it would be really helpful. I appreciate your stepping up to investigate and document it!

The thing about even small defense debuffs when you are just barely over the softcap is that each one makes the next more likely. You're cruising around great with only your 5% chance to be hit, and then something hits you and debuffs your defense by, say, 5%. It took a while for that attack to land. But now, you have a ten% chance of being hit. The next 5% debuff is likely to hit in half the time. And then you're 15% likely to be hit, and the third one lands even faster. Before you know it, your defense is below zero and romans or whoever are chopping you to bits. This is commonly called Cascading Defense Failure, or CDF. If your defense is above the softcap by some modest margin, you can take a hit or two and not get into a CDF situation, and possibly stay above the softcap long enough for the earliest debuffs that hit you to expire.

I run a lot of +4 content across multiple zones, and I don't see it happening. I used to see this commonly and then I recall a patch specifically calling out this problem as fixed and since then I haven't seen it at all. If there's specific content where this still happens, maybe so. Otherwise, I'd like to see proof it's still widely broken.

I'm pretty sure this problem was fixed. I haven't seen it happen in a long time.

I put star ratings on quite a few people I've teamed with. Star ratings are held privately on your computer along with notes one may have added about a player. These are by global name, and no one else sees the star ratings you assign to others. I would like to see the star rating, if any, I have assigned to player in tells they send to me. When I recruit for a team and receive lots of requests to join, I'd prefer to give priority to those whom I've given good ratings to in the past. I could pull up my notes individually on each player, but usually there's a lot of them and I'm pressed for time. If the character's name in the tell response was immediately followed by any star ratings I have for them, that would be helpful. Similarly, if I receive a tell from someone to join their team, I'd like to see if I've already assigned stars to them in the past without needing to pull up notes. Finally, I wouldn't be opposed to having an option to see those stars everywhere in chats. I could see reasons against this too, so I suppose I'd be ambivalent. I mainly would like to see them for team-forming. I suppose having the /search window include a column for my star ratings would be helpful too.

I'm glad you all check this issue out quickly and thoroughly.

Yes, it would be nice, but it wouldn't work well in our current game. It would need more systems like cover from obstacles, facing/orientation advantages and vulnerabilities, elevation and slope mechanics, and so on. And once it had all those, if it didn't play havoc with the old code base; then we'd end up with hard-core team runners and rigid "get on voice and obey" mindsets. Really what I'd think would be more doable would be simulating a command hierarchy in the enemies we face, so that "bosses" have similar effects as commanders making decisions and directing troops, and not just the toughest of equally uncoordinated mobs. And many missions ought to have surveillance points and such, so that once the player team is 'discovered", enemy forces inside the mission react in some not-stupid ways. Give players an advantage for controlling a choke point. Or vice-versa, make players decide whether to take a position by brute force, or try to flank it. Generally have a series of systems and interactions happening that players could choose to interfere with or use to their advantage. Meaningful decisions to make above and beyond the order of keys to tap in sequence to maximize dps. Maybe it's best left as something to dream about for future games.

I would rather like to see enemies acting smarter tactically rather than getting stat buffs. it's very doable to make smarter AIs, and it's been done before. The problem is they very quickly become much, much better at it than players. The computer's ability to observe and understand the situation, process and evaluate options, and execute them in a coordinated manner far exceeds a team of players' (ref: Boyd cycle). The challenge for developers is to simulate how the enemy as a group would behave as if it were players with similarly limited abilities, and that's hard to get right. So we end up with harder enemies you have to Trinity to death, or boss-mechanic gimmick systems, that make you pat your head, rub your belly, and sing a tune at the same time to win.

I don't have a lot to add. Opinion-wise, I don't like games with mandatory trinity systems. Honestly, aggro systems to me are a crutch for developers unable to tune mob AI elegantly between totally stupid and overwhelmingly smart. One thing I will stress is there's a critical distinction in my mind between games with: 1) Defined roles for which game mechanics were implemented around specifically to create distinct niches for players to choose from. and 2) Emergent roles which arise from interplay of complex game systems designed to follow first-principles or produce some degree of verisimilitude. The first one tends to be weird and kludgy to my mind, usually not making sense in its own right but existing only to make sure whichever predefined role the game has are distinct from each other. I dislike having to fit my play into someone else's limited ideas of how it will be fun. I love (2) when it happens, because it also provides for room for more complex tactics and strategies to be developed apart from "Tank will aggro the boss, dps will beat down its hp, and healers will keep us all live while we do it."

Fun > Efficiency. <3

If you have Teleport Target, you can port your Singularity pet into the middle of a pile of foes for extra bonus hilarity. Also, if you're /kin and use Repel, there is a sound mod by Solarverse which makes Repel's sound less annoying. It's listed as "Repel Less Annoying SFX Mod" in City Mod Installer. Edit: Also good if you just team with kins who use Repel often.

There are two different KB->KD procs, and it used to be that one worked in Singularity and the other didn't. They might both work now, I don't know for sure. With KD->KB in it, Singularity is AWESOME!!

I'm tempted to flesh out the Mentoring Power Pool idea and put it in suggestions.

Since this was yesterday...

A comedic variant would be AWESOME

It might be neat if there was a Mentoring Power Pool. It would have a power that you throw at a lower level player, which if they accept it, would set up a sidekick/mentor relationship. Within this relationship, the mentor could do helpful things for the sidekick, like break a hold, buff their to-hit, heal them, increase their damage, share fly, jump, running, or teleport to the, etc. All these would be powers with reasonably short durations and ranges, and have cooldowns. In no specific instance could a sidekick be buffed by more than the difference between their and mentor's stat, less a small difference. There might even be a few extra attacks granted to the sidekick, like an especially strong brawl, or a rock to throw, or whatever. Maybe the mentor could pick an option from the pool with a small set of attacks that the sidekick would get. The mentor could even slot this option with enhancements, and the sidekick would get those attacks with the mentor's enhancements. I could see options for melee, ranged, and defense. Each option would have a couple of things in it for the sidekick to use; Melee might have a punch, kick, and pbaoe slam; Ranged could have a single target throw, a targeted aoe grenade, and a snipe; and Defense might have a def/res toggle, a mez click, and a heal. Normal "Super-sidekicking" would still operate at the basic purple-patch level like it does today. But a particularly powerful high-incarnate mentor could really help out that level 3 sidekick with the more specific pool relationship. Such a pool could be one you have to spend a pool choice on, or it could be made inherent for everyone.

Sometimes those lockouts last for hours.

Guilty on the first count, not so much on the second. The reason I open many Superpacks is one can make money doing them by claiming and selling the ATOs. There's no dopamine rush because the drops average out very consistently, I don't even look at the card while I open them. Bopper has a thread detailing exactly what drops and in which proportions: Edit: Making money of them is a combination of the profit from things you can claim and sell, such as ATOs, reward merits, brainstorms, boosters, etc., and the cost avoidance by using other things that drop, like using the Free Tailor Sessions instead of paying the tailor influence for costume changes.

They're not directly purchased, they're automatically placed in the email claim system by the game when you open a Superpack. All items from Superpack openings go into this email section. If one wants to share converters, boosters, catalysts, or other kinds of tradable special salvage between characters, it's more efficient to use salvage bins in bases.

A variety of things like this drop in quantity from opening Superpacks. These 5000+ were accumulating over years of buying and opening packs. I'd like to pull them out and sell most all of them, but it is truly tedious, especially since the email claim system is rate-limited -- you can only click the button to claim them in intervals of a few seconds. If you try too quickly, or even accidentally too quickly, it will fail. And not only fail to claim one item, but often lock you out of claiming any items for hours.

I don't miss Sidekick Tetris. Yet.... ... has a certain draw. Even if all it did was boost that chosen lower level player's to-hit a little bit, it would make it more fun for a lower level to be on a high level team. How might it work?

If the player is just spamming Fold Space, it can make quite a mess, which is probably responsible for some of the sour attitudes about it. They're justified in that sense. But if you are aware of where you are, where your teammates are, where the mobs are, and have a tactical sense of the situation, it can be awesome, or even a game changer.

Yeah, I agree. Some of this stuff might be difficult to change and the number of people who appreciate the QoL from it would be fairly limited. I feel like in the original Live CoH, the paragon devs would eventually have fixed it all up, since the email claim is a key and limiting user experience element for whales getting their value from spending real money in the shop. The system they made looks to me like a "first effort to get something running", which didn't receive any feedback/refinement sprints.