RikOz

I think that half the problem, across the entire game, is that the mob AI is set up to use their powers as if they're fighting on a team, but the AI is primitive enough that it has no "situational awareness". So instead of using team-oriented powers in coordination with their "teammates" and the current situation, they instead fire off these powers at either predetermined hit point levels, or completely at random. A good example is enemy teleporters. Their teleportation isn't used in any tactical manner - they just randomly pop away, often reappearing halfway across the map - and that frequently results in a tactically terrible situation for them: instead of being a part of ganging up on you, they pop away at the start of the fight and then reappear after you've defeated the rest of their "team" and now they have to fight you alone. Those Sky Raider Engineers have about the only tactically sound AI team power use in the game, since they try to get their FF up as soon as they see you.

How about some hot girl-on-girl action!

Field Agent: Countess said that Flaminatrix was hot on the paper-trail to the Protectors. Vigilant: I know. I half expect Flaminatrix to pop their face in here any second. (I show up) Field Agent: Oh man, I HATE it when you're right!

Right, but when the mission-giver says, "they got Juan Jimenez too", and he's a known contact in the same zone, it's pretty clear they're referring to that specific Juan.

On the topic of random hostage models in general, I've been thinking for a while that the original devs could have at least implemented something to ensure that named hostages, at the very least, would look the same every time. Randomization is fine for generic hostages in "rescue 5 hostages" missions. But when you're rescuing a specific individual with a proper name, it ought to use the same model every time. This is especially egregious in that Kings Row arc where that named woman is about to be executed, and it turns out that Juan Jimenez has been captured as well. Bad enough that the named woman has a different model each time, but Juan Jimenez is an actual contact in the zone with a specific model, yet he's still randomized inside the mission.

This was a weird one. Last night one of my alts had a mission from Unai Kemen in Peregrine Island. I can't remember which one, but it was one of the random missions he offers before he offers the first mission in the "To Save a Thousand Worlds" arc. One of those repetitive "go to dimension X and close some breaches" missions. I ran up to the appropriate portal and, just as I clicked on it, another player sprinted (or possibly super-speeded) up from behind me (probably didn't even notice me there) and bumped me right off of the little bridge/walkway that leads to the portal. I landed on the floor in the pit at the bottom of the portal. When I glanced up at my mission/nav window, the text had changed from showing the mission objectives to "Mission Failed". Yes, I failed the mission without actually setting foot in it. I realize this is probably impossible to solve, since the chance of another player bumping me at the precise instant I clicked on the portal was one-in-a-million, but it's worth a shot. since it basically cheated me out of an entire mission.

Okay, here's the out-of-combat: In combat, after using Blinding Feint as the opening strike, so just the bonuses from BF: And, finally, from a different combat, after completing the Empower combo: So it would appear that my scrapper is actually getting the Empower bonuses. The actual bug, then, is that it is not being recorded in the combat log for some reason.

What exact info are you asking for? In the Combat Attributes window I have this: To Hit Bonus: 82.39% Damage Bonus: 18.50% But that's just standing there, not in combat.

I've already reported this here: ... but maybe some other DB scrappers could check their logs for this as well. Here's the relevant bit from my DB brute's log, with text that does not appear in my scrapper's log: Your Empower combo further improves your damage and To Hit for your next few attacks!

I have been thinking for some time now that the "Empower" combo is not functioning on my Dual Blades scrapper. Since I also have a DB brute , I noticed a while back that, when I use the Blinding Feint attack (the Empower combo finisher), my brute gets a "Build Up" animation, but my scrapper does not. That prompted me to look more closely at my DB scrapper. Here is a portion of my scrapper's most recent combat log, where she is performing the Empower combo. The combo attacks are shown in bold: [22:54] You hit Storm Shaman with your Power Slice for 58.03 points of Lethal damage over time. [22:54] You hit Storm Shaman with your Power Slice for 58.03 points of Lethal damage over time. [22:54] Storm Shaman MISSES! Lightning Bolt power had a 21.24% chance to hit, but rolled a 92.65. [22:54] You hit Storm Shaman with your Power Slice for 58.03 points of Lethal damage over time. [22:54] You activated the Nimble Slash power. [22:54] HIT Storm Shaman! Your Nimble Slash power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 56.15. [22:54] You hit Storm Shaman with your Nimble Slash for 126.06 points of Lethal damage [CRITICAL]. [22:54] You gain 4,168 experience and 1,945 influence. [22:54] You received 500 Psychic Incarnate experience for your Lore slot. [22:54] You received 500 Physical Incarnate experience for your Destiny slot. [22:54] Storm Shamaness MISSES! Lightning Bolt power had a 28.74% chance to hit, but rolled a 84.23. [22:54] Power Slice is recharged. [22:54] Nimble Slash is recharged. [22:54] You're too far away to use Ablating Strike. [22:54] You activated the Ablating Strike power. [22:54] HIT Storm Shamaness! Your Ablating Strike power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 37.96. [22:54] Typhoon's Edge is recharged. [22:54] You hit Storm Shamaness with your Ablating Strike for 152.46 points of Lethal damage [CRITICAL]. [22:54] You hit Storm Shamaness with your Ablating Strike for 78.13 points of Lethal damage over time. [22:54] You hit Storm Shamaness with your Ablating Strike for 78.13 points of Lethal damage over time. [22:54] You activated the Blinding Feint power. [22:54] Your Blinding Feint attack has increased your attack and damage for a short duration. [22:54] HIT Storm Shamaness! Your Blinding Feint power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 76.79. [22:54] You hit Storm Shamaness with your Blinding Feint for 116.7 points of Lethal damage. [22:54] You hit Storm Shamaness with your Blinding Feint for 116.7 points of Lethal damage [CRITICAL]. [22:54] You hit Storm Shamaness with your Mako's Bite: Chance for Lethal Damage for 73.53 points of Lethal damage. Notice that she receives the buffs inherent in the Blinding Feint power, but there's nothing here about the Empower combo. So, I logged in my DB brute to see what happens with her. Here is the last bit of her combat log, after completing the combo: [23:07] You hit Penumbra Elite Adjutant with your Blinding Feint for 58.47 points of Lethal damage. [23:07] Power Slice is recharged. [23:07] Your Empower combo further improves your damage and To Hit for your next few attacks! The bold, colored text shows the brute Empower combo's buffs activating. This text is completely absent from the scrapper's log. The "POWER UP!" text flashes on-screen when the scrapper performs the combo, but according to the log, she's not actually getting the benefit of the combo. This would seem to be a major issue for DB scrappers.

I'm about to hit 54! (Sunday is my birthday IRL...)

I've been feeling for quite some time that ranged attacks in general have some sort of hidden, stacking accuracy debuff when used in melee range. My main is a blaster, and I see all the time that I can be pew-pew-ing enemies on the other side of the room, nailing them nearly every time, but as soon as some of them get all up in my face, I start blasting holes in the ceiling. The 5% miss chance no-matter-what is also kind of comical when there's a massive level difference. I mean, my level 50, T3 incarnate blaster hurls a purple-IO'd fireball at a crowd of level 6 Hellions in Perez Park, they all go down in one shot, except for that one guy who emerges completely unscathed. And half the time it's the specific mob I had targeted. Actually, I'd swear that, half the time, my targeted AoEs hit everything except the specific mob I had targeted. On a general note, I suspect that the accuracy thing in this game just feels out of proportion when fighting enemies that are just a bit above you. That is, there's too big of a power difference between adjacent levels, so that a mere +1 level difference is a relatively large improvement in damage and defense. Specifically, this is when compared to other MMOs (and let's face it, it's likely that CoH is not the one and only MMO that most players have tried). In WoW, for example, you stand a chance when fighting a single, basic mob up to 5 levels higher than you. Sure, you'll do less damage to that +5 mob, and that mob will do more damage to you, and it will require some skill, but it's not an almost hopeless fight. In particular, a WoW +5 mob doesn't have such a massive defense advantage that you simply can't land an attack. And, yeah, it works in the opposite direction as well. If I level up inside a mission and I'm now +1 to the mobs, I suddenly turn into a lawnmower and they're the grass, even after the level-up inspirations wear off. This leads to metagaming the system so that, when I know the next mission is tough (a good example would be the Midnighter mission to rescue Lady Jane, which is often filled with the big, debuffing daemons), I'll deliberately disable XP gain to freeze my character just a hair shy of leveling up while in the current mission, and then turn it back on before entering the next mission, to guarantee that I'll level up on the first or second spawn and give myself a big advantage for the rest of the mission.

And it's an open field! It's not like he's getting hung up on the furniture!

Here's my main villain, Bruised Violet, in her current costume. Rolled one year ago today! Also, she's walking because she's kidnapping Akarist, and she couldn't run more than about 15 steps without having to stop and go back for him because he can't keep up (they really ought to do something about that - some escorts keep up just fine, others just don't).

Overheard a Hellion as he was involved in breaking into a building: "This better be worth it. Last time we broke in, all we found was Synapse dolls."

Indeed. I've seen, any number of times, a mob yelling about how he's going to tear me apart as he runs away.

I much the same way. Not in the specifics (I always go left in Oranbega and blue caves, not so much on other map types), but in the general idea that I have a particular approach and method to my madness. It's part of why I rarely team or participate in group content. I do things the way I do them, because it makes sense to me, and when you add in more people it just confuses the hell out of me because I can't synchronize my "makes sense" with other people's "makes sense". EDIT: On outdoor maps, I tend to locate the perimeter first. I have a hard time making a mental map if I don't know where the edges are.

Heh. I didn't have much choice, as a Mac user. I dumped it soon after discovering CoH, but alas, that happened only a year before the shutdown. Dumped WoW again as soon as I heard about Homecoming 🙂 (Though I am on Windows 10 now, so I have more options, but haven't found any others that I liked.)

Speaking of the costume missions ambushes, those can annoy me because, a) sometimes they wait to spawn until I'm already engaged with another spawn, or b) I exit Icon, and then wait, and wait, and wait ... and they never appear. LOL, that Kronos Titan was a nice surprise! It occurs to me that the difference in timing between that and "normal" ambushes is that the Titan ambush knows exactly where you're going to zone in: at the specific mission map exit. Ambushes that spawn upon zone-in while you're traveling to a mission have to wait and see where you appear, since there may be multiple ways to enter the zone - tram, tunnel from a neighboring zone, base teleport, Wentworth's teleport, etc. - all of which have different zone-in points. Though it does seem that, if the code can look and see where you're exiting a mission, it ought to be possible to have it look ahead to see what "route" you're taking to a new zone, and have the ambush waiting for you. My main concern with the Titan Kronos ambush, when it happened to me, was that it was going to rampage through the zone.

I have a small suggestion regarding the ambushes that occur in the open world while traveling to/from a mission: Is there an easy way you could adjust them so that the spawn either more quickly, or closer to where the player character zones in? The problem, from what I have observed, is that these ambushes all expect the player to be ground-bound, stationary, and/or moving in a certain direction. This results in situations where I step off the tram in my destination zone, activate flight, and fly off toward the mission door, and the only clue I have that I've been ambushed has been a ranged attack catching up to me and hitting me when I'm a good 100 to 200 yards away from the tram station. I have spotted some ambushes as have been flying away, where they've zoned in 50 yards or more away from the tram station and are running in that direction as I fly over them in the opposite direction. In either of those scenarios, I have to circle back to find the ambushers and deal with them. But all of this leaves me wondering how many ambushes I have been completely unaware of due to the ambushers having no ranged attacks, or because I've simply managed to get out of range faster than they can fire off a shot, or I've flown away in the opposite direction from where they spawned. I simply haven't memorized which missions have these ambushes. When I played WoW, I always maintained a policy of "if I aggro it, I kill it", because I hated it when other players stirred up mobs and kept going, and the mobs would turn and attack me, and I didn't want to do that to other players. But in WoW, at least those mobs would be near my character's level, since quests in that game are usually confined to the same zone where I accepted the quest, and virtually every player in the zone was going to be at an appropriate level for the zone, so it was more annoyance than danger. That's not the case in CoX, where a level 30+ mission can send me to Kings Row, and I don't want to be the guy leaving a Malta ambush at the KR tram station for level 12 players to deal with. This could be solved by simply having the ambushers spawn closer to the zone-in point, and make their presence know sooner.

I my case, I tried exiting and reentering, but it didn't work, so I needed to relog. Unfortunately, in the map I spawned, the PP and her opponents were right in the middle of a narrow hallway, leaving no way to proceed without aggroing them.

What are these "amplifiers"? I've seen them mentioned 2-3 times now, but don't recall anything called an "amplifier" on the P2W vendor.

Some good ones here, but some of y'all are missing the qualifier in my OP: Habits that have no effect on gameplay. In other words, things you always or almost always do even when there's absolutely no reason to do it. In my example of always moving into an open space before clicking the mission's Exit button, I didn't even realize I was doing it for a long time, because it was so automatic. Now that I think about it, I suspect it's related to my years of playing WoW. In WoW, you cannot summon a mount indoors, or inside most raids and dungeons. Even outdoors, despite quests not being instanced, things like caves count as "indoors". So if you have finished your business inside a cave, you have to run back outside of the cave before you can summon your mount. In CoH, I think that translated to an automatic urge to move out of a confined space before "traveling".

Who has little in-game habits? Things you always, or almost always do, that have no effect whatsoever on gameplay? And you don't really know why you do it? Mine: Upon mission completion, I almost never immediately click the "Exit" button. I first step into a nearby open space, then click. That last hostage/glowie is tucked away in a side office or other little nook, and that's where I am when the mission completes? Step out into the hallway before clicking Exit. What's yours?

I'd like to have the loincloth belts worn by the female BP shamansesseses. Those seem to be normal human female models, as opposed to the custom models some enemy groups have, so I don't see why they couldn't be easily implemented.