RikOz

Oh yeah, I mustn't forget my Canadian character, Tonya Toronto:

The test isn't specific to CoX. I was thinking of a couple possible scenarios: A game that allows "friendly fire", and you unintentionally kill a teammate or otherwise friendly target. A game that isn't specifically a PvP game, but allows open-world, free-for-all PvP. An example would be Diablo II, which was essentially a single-player game, but had the option of playing online, and anybody could choose to attack anybody. So you might simply be playing online for the social aspect, or the ability to trade items with other players, and not be interested in PvP at all, but you could still be attacked and killed (and have some of your stuff taken). In that situation, the killed player did not "volunteer" to get killed. I "involuntarily" killed somebody once in WoW. I didn't play on a PvP server, but there were certain areas in the game that offered certain currency rewards and accepting the quests there would automatically flag the player for PvP. At the time I was doing those quests, it was "old content" and the currency rewards were small, so there weren't ever many players there. But the unspoken norm was that people were just there to get in, quickly do the quests, and get out, and players of opposite factions generally stayed out of each other's way and did not attack each other. But you still had to fight NPC enemies. So this one time, in a completely freak coincidence of timing, I was tab-targeting NPCs and hitting them with ranged attacks, when an "enemy" player came flying past on his flying mount. I never saw him coming, and he probably never saw me, but the timing was just exactly right so that, instead of my tab-target selecting the intended NPC, it selected the other player just as he appeared in my vision, and my following ranged attack one-shot killed this much lower-level player. I imagine he was all "WTF just happened?" I felt so bad about it that I noted the character's name and then rolled an opposite-faction character so that I could drop him an in-game e-mail to apologize.

Hmm. The wording on this question is ambiguous: "The involuntarily killing of other player characters should not be part of the game." Does "involuntarily killing" refer to, "Oops, I didn't mean to kill that guy" or that the dead guy did not want to PvP?

Bravo! Particularly for the Rush reference. My all-time favorite band since 1980. Mind if I share this on the Geddy Lee/Alex Lifeson Fan Club Facebook pages?

Blood Brother Slammer in The Hollows: "No, she didn't say that. What makes you think she said that? Did she say something?" A "Suspicious Citizen" in First Ward. This isn't worrying at all: "You always hurt the ones you love, and I love you so, so much." (No idea who they were talking to. I didn't see the NPC, I just spotted the line in my chat box.)

Indeed, I'm not a fan of "artificial" constraints that are only there to increase the playtime/logged-in time. I mean, really, this having to take a tram from zone to zone in a game universe where people can fly under their own power stretches credulity until you realize it's entirely because of loading screens. Taking the tram accounts for the loading screens in a way that flying to a zone border and then waiting through a loading screen doesn't. I recall reading that one thing that immediately set World of Warcraft apart from the competition was the absence of loading screens between zones. You could simply walk straight from one zone to the next with no waiting; the only loading screens were when you traveled between continents (and later, different dimensions), or entered instanced content. The only comparable travel issue in WoW was that, in the early days of using flight paths/"taxis", you could only fly one stage at a time. Take a flight from A to B, then another from B to C, and so on until you reached your destination. But they had changed that before I started playing that game, so that, now, you just have to pick your destination (or the closest flight point to it, if you haven't yet "discovered" a flight point in your destination zone) and the game will calculate the best route to take all in one go. I've had the same thoughts. Even with mission maps, there are certain rooms that almost never contain enemies or objectives. I'm also continually surprised at the utter lack of utilization of the buildings in Founders Falls. In over three years on Homecoming, and at this point having more than fifty alts of high enough level to spend time in FF, I have encountered exactly ONE mission, on one occasion, that has sent me to a building door in FF. Every mission I've obtained from a FF contact either sends me to buildings in different zones, or sends me to caves or sewers in FF. I've accepted alignment tip missions while in FF, and if the mission requires entering a building, it sends me scampering off to a different zone. Any radio missions I've accepted in FF strictly send me to caves or sewers. The only explanation I can come up with is that FF appears to be primarily a residential zone, and there are no "apartment building" maps. There aren't many "commercial" buildings at all, and certainly no warehouses.

There are some bugged ranged effects--particularly noticeable when fighting Council--that come from a completely wrong direction. Like, the Council hoverbot directly in front of you fires a rocket at you and the rocket comes screaming in from somewhere off to the side.

There are a fair number of other missions--some vigilante alignment missions for example--that have you planting bombs that you have to "find" first.

Many blaster secondaries include two or more melee attacks, and in most cases at least one of them will be a Melee AoE.

One of my alts, "Seahawk", was a professional football player, but his sudden mutations disqualified him from the league:

Sunsweet overlooking Cap au Diable!

It's because she (Sunsweet, my dual blades villain) is happiest when she's stabbing: Mission entry text popup: "The long walk to this dump has made you angry. Most folks don't like you when you're angry. Most folks don't like you when you're happy either." Also: Luddite Friar: Figure 1 shows the difference between a 'Good Protest' and a 'Bad Protest.' Luddite Friar: The Bad Protest is the one with all of the head injuries.

Alt #121 is my second villain inspired by Nanowar of Steel's song, "Norwegian Reggaeton" Here is "Nordico Latino" (Dark Blast/Tactical Arrow blaster).

Well, this one is nothing spectacular, but I like the look I got. I also could not get the name I wanted. There was a rather irritating argument going on in General the other night, involving math, and somebody interjected, "Friends don't let friends use crystal math." I thought "Crystal Math" sounded like a great name, but what powers? Ah! Ice Melee + Stone Armor with the Crystalline appearance! Then for the "math" part I was going to add that Matrix aura. But, as I said, the name was already taken. Sooooo ... here's "Sovite" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovite) Oh yeah! He's Alt #120 :D

In the first year after the launch of HC, I rolled a whole bunch of alts in a relatively short timeframe, and I got right sick of the AP and KR arcs. So for a while I started "power leveling" just enough that I could skip straight to Steel Canyon. I used the "Bads in Space" XP farm. Now that I'm not rolling alts nearly as quickly (maybe 1-2 in a month as ideas hit me), I'm back to just leveling new alts normally via missions. Nowadays, my main use for XP farming with that mission is to jump into Bads in Space when the character I've been playing has completed a story arc and has ended up a couple bubbles shy of the next level, and I need to log out soon to go to bed. I hate to log out so close to the character leveling up, but I don't have time to run another mission or two, so I'll hit AE and fill those last couple bubble and get the level up.

I've been encountering an oddity with the various PBAoE melee attacks that have the animation wherein the character leaps into the air and spins 360 degrees, hitting every enemy in range: Battle Axe: "Whirling Axe" Broad Sword: "Whirling Sword" Claws: "Spin" War Mace: "Whirling Mace" Energy Melee: "Whirling Hands" There may be others that I'm not thinking of. Anyway, here's the issue. Very often (but not every time) I initiate the attack, my character goes through the animation, I hear the sound effect of the attack successfully hitting the target(s) ... but nothing at all happens. No damage is dealt, which would suggest that I must have missed, except that the "MISS!" word does not appear. The target(s) doesn't perform any dodging animations. No target is affected by any secondary effect that can apply even on a miss. It is especially noticeable when I use these attacks while surrounded by enemies, because when it happens, it "misses" every target in range. Missing every single eligible target with an AoE can happen, sure, but it's fairly uncommon for that to happen, and when it does I would normally see "MISS!" on every target. But when this thing happens, there is no feedback whatsoever--it's as if the attack simply didn't happen. Of course, I'm assuming that no target takes damage, because I don't see the health bar decrease for the specific enemy I have targeted, and of course the usual damage-dealt numbers are missing in action, just like the "MISS!" is missing. I'll note that, as with the example powers I listed, it is mostly happening with weapon powersets. Or at the very least, it's most obvious with a weapon set. It might be happening with Fire Sword Circle, but I haven't specifically noticed it with that set. The issue does not appear with Dual Blades "Typhoon's Edge" attack, as that power uses a different animation than the other powers listed. I also haven't noticed it with Katana's similar power, but that may also be using a different animation (not sure). I've observed this issue specifically with brutes and scrappers. I have both a Claws stalker and an Energy Melee stalker, but I haven't happened to play the Claws stalker since I've noticed this, and the EM stalker is low level and does not yet have Whirling Hands.

Okay, I've done this arc/mission enough times that it's pretty clear that this is more "incorrect original setup" than "bug" or "occasional glitch". Basically, it seems to me that the two hostages, Ken Kellerman and his wife, Kimberly Kellerman, should have their spawn locations switched. Not for any mechanical or technical reasons, but for "story flow" reasons. Ken always spawns first, somewhere on the first floor of this gigantic, complex laboratory map. Once you've rescued him and led him to the exit, he says: "You've saved me, and my wife. Thank you." Except you haven't saved his wife yet. She always spawns on the final level of the map (I swear it's the fourth floor, but maybe it only feels that way because of the size/complexity of the map), typically at a location most distant from the elevator. Once you've clobbered her guards, she says: "Oh, [player name]! Please tell me you can get Ken and me out of this place!" That phrasing seems more appropriate for rescuing Kimberly first (though I suppose it makes sense that Kimberly doesn't know you've already rescued Ken, but still). On top of Kimberly's line, the text in the objective list now says, "Lead Ken out!" It seems pretty plain to me that the original writer intended that Kimberly be rescued first, but an original developer inadvertently switched the spawn locations. A "Kimberly first" scenario simply makes more sense, as far as story flow. Oh, another thing suggests that Kimberly was meant to be rescued first. When you defeat Ken's guards, but before you lead him to the exit, Ken says: "This time, I'm sticking with you. The three of us have got to get out of here!" Like Kimberly's comment, this strongly suggests that, by the time you find Ken, you've already rescued Kimberly (and, I suppose, brought her with you as you fought through the rest of the map instead of taking her straight to the exit).

Yeah, I've noticed there are pop-up warnings when a vigilante or rogue exits a neutral zone like Pocket D or the Midnighter's Club, letting you know which "side" you're about to enter. So I was thinking of something similar for the base teleporters.

One thing I've noticed is that CoX's sound level seems to be completely disconnected from my computer's overall sound level settings. Specifically, it's louder than any other sound source on my computer. For contrast, World of Warcraft's sound levels seem to be well-integrated with my computer's overall volume settings. So if I had, say, Spotify turned all the way up, and WoW's sound turned all the way up, and had both going at once, the two things would be approximately the same volume. I could then adjust the volume of one or the other to get the balance I wanted between the two, and then use the volume knob on my speakers to control the overall level. But in CoX, if I turn the game's volume all the way up and also have Spotify turned all the way up, CoX's sound will completely bury Spotify. So I have to run with the Sound FX Volume slider dropped all the way down to 20%, while leaving Spotify turned all the way up, just to get some balance between the two. And yeah, I agree, some power sets are dramatically louder than others. It would be lovely if, at some point, our devs could do some sort of balancing pass on the various sound FX, as well as how the game's sound interacts with system sound.

Scenario: In one of my "hero" SG bases, alongside the the teleporters for all the zones heroes can visit, I added a teleporter for accessing Rogue Isles zones because my SG includes a couple vigilantes, and one hero-gone-rogue (she's not really a "rogue" - I changed her alignment because she has a vendetta against The Family and there seem to be more Family missions on redside). I ran into a problem when setting up this teleporter, because it seemed to not be working. I was setting it up with a hero character, and when I tried to test it to make sure the beacons had connected properly, I just kept getting the "This teleporter has no destination beacons. To activate this teleporter, create a destination beacon and place it nearby" message. This led me to think that the beacons weren't properly connected, and I wasted a lot of time deleting everything and starting over, two or three times. Needless to say, when I clicked it again, this time with one of my vigilantes, it worked properly. So my suggestion is to add a message for the benefit of wrong-faction characters trying to use the teleporter. For example, show the zone list as normal, but pop up a "you can't go there" type of message if they click on a zone. As it stands now with the current message, it just makes it appear that the teleporter is broken/not set up correctly.

Seahawk likes this new base decoration :D I've run across this situation a couple times now, in the same spot in First Ward: In both cases, the Resistance fighter and D.U.S.T. guy face-to-face, pointing their guns at each other, are complete statues, totally unmoving. Meanwhile, the other two are doing the normal AFK poses, changing poses as normal, but not attacking each other.

Looking up from the bottom of a very tall room in Oranbega, with lower graphics settings.

This. I hate the fact that, after every spawn defeat, I have to wait around to see if they're going to rez. Then I have the constant problem where, after doing a couple Freakshow missions, I do a mission with different enemies and it usually takes me a few spawns to remember, "Oh, I don't have to wait around".

Another fun example of mission dialog conflicting with randomized enemy generation. I was doing that mission arc where some Council robots have become self-aware and are trying to take over. I "heard" the following dialog that would make a whole lot more sense if it was being spoken by actual human Council soldiers: [NPC] Zenith Mech Man: These robots have gone crazy! [NPC] Zenith Hoverbot: We've got to get out! [NPC] Zenith Mech Man: Move, you morons! A similar one I think I may have already posted had a Council robot expressing its dream of some day joining the ranks of the Vampyri.