RikOz

This is mostly idle curiosity, and probably just a matter of perception bias: I'm starting to wonder if there is some sort of stealth ToHit debuff that gets applied when a melee character finds themselves surrounded or when a ranged character is attacking in melee range. I'm on a scrapper or brute, and I'm rock'em sock'eming my way through the mobs, when for one reason or another I inadvertently get myself backed into a corner, surrounded by three enemies, and suddenly I can't land a punch to (literally) save my life. I'm on a blaster or sentinel, and I'm bullseye-ing those two Skulls hiding behind that car over there, every shot successfully hitting. But then the third Skull runs right up in my face, and when I try to zap him I suddenly start shooting holes in the sky. Very frustrating.

Ah, so the same design philosophy that led to level 5-6 characters who only have two attacks getting put up against orange-conning Arachnos lieutenants that spam Web Grenade, which slows the recharge of those measly two attacks. (Talking about the first part of the Shining Stars missions.)

The last two times I have done the Hero Morality Mission, "Fire in the Hole", the spawn position of the kidnapped NPCs has been a bit wonky. I'm supposed to rescue the Company President, the Receptionist, and the Security Guard Captain, in that order. The second two don't spawn until the previous NPC has been rescued. This is usually fairly straightforward - I encounter each one in succession as I proceed through the mission map. The last two times, however, have been a little weird. I found and rescued the Company President fairly early, on the first floor of the map. After completely clearing the first floor, I proceeded to the second floor via elevator, where I located and rescued the Receptionist. Then this is where it's weird: the Security Guard Captain spawned back on the first floor in a previously-cleared room. The first time this happened, I thought the mission had completely bugged out. After rescuing the Receptionist, I finished clearing the second floor without ever encountering the Security Guard Captain. Assuming I had simply missed him, I spent a ridiculous amount of time going around and around the second floor, looking into every single nook and cranny, trying to find the spot I must have missed. It was only in frustration that I went back down to the first floor, made my way back to the mission entrance, and re-explored the whole first floor, finally finding the Guard Captain in a room I had definitely already cleared. The second time (just now), I remembered the first time, and after the Receptionist I just went back to the first floor and there he was, in that same room.

I'm really starting to wonder about these Circle of Thorns missions and the mob spawns therein. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with the algorithm that populates the maps, or if I've just had a (long) string of bad luck. Basically, I dread CoT missions because every map is just wall-to-wall daemons. You know, the ones with the massive ToHit debuff. And sometimes the spawns are close enough together that I end up with six of those things on me at once, stacking the debuff, and there is just no hope of hitting anything when that happens. Very very few of the "human" CoT mobs by comparison. I don't remember it being this bad on live, so maybe I'm just having bad luck? I can't carry enough ACC insps to overcome this.

Weird. I was having this issue for a while after I first installed the game, but then it went away after an update and I assumed they'd fixed the problem.

God yes. Like that Shining Stars Part 2 mission where Grym sends you to kill Clockwork. You're level 10, and there may be a few you can kill atop the buildings just west of the university. And there may be a few on the buildings near the arson building past the tram station. And there may be a few on a couple other buildings. May. Be. All the other Clockwork in the zone con red or purple. If the level-appropriate ones aren't there, you can be hunting for a very long time. I especially hate it when I'm trying to see if a particular contact has a story arc available, but first I have to do an unrelated street sweep for them. I'm half convinced that this is just a "gimme" mission to get out of the way so that they'll give you their phone # so that you don't have to travel all the way back to them after the first story mission. An issue I think could have been better solved by simply setting the first story mission in the same zone as the contact. (Seriously, why does every contact send you clear out of their zone for every mission?)

Somebody once decided to calculate the size of the Eastern Kingdoms by literally running on foot from Booty Bay to Silvermoon City, in the most direct route possible, estimating the character's running speed, and timing how long the trip took. His ultimate conclusion was that the continent of Eastern Kingdoms was about the size of ... Manhattan. Of course, it was designed without flight in mind, and so they were able to use tricks of geography and terrain to make the whole thing seem much bigger than it actually is, as long as you're ground-bound. I was rather gobsmacked one day when I happened to be in that demon-infested canyon in Ashenvale (can't recall the name off the top of my head, but it's where you have to kill a couple big named demons) on a character capable of flight. I flew straight up out of there and realized I was like 200 yards away from Orgrimmar, as the crow flies. But when you're ground-bound, it feels like those two points are a long way apart.

Would it be possible to modify the Tequila client in such a way that inadvertently clicking on the big Homecoming logo will stop launching Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge by default, and instead use the browser I have chosen in my Windows settings? I mean, I already have Firefox open, and the Homecoming sites bookmarked in Firefox. There's no reason to launch a specific, hard-coded browser, especially when I already have another browser open. I've noticed that launching a second web browser takes freaking forever for some reason, so I have to wait a stupid amount of time just to close an application that I didn't want open in the first place. I occasionally run into other software that forces IE, and I always wonder, "What, is this 1997?" (I realize you guys aren't the ones who coded Tequila, so maybe this is something to pass on to those responsible).

I think a big part of the complaint is that, when there are enough people in AP, it seems to interfere with mission mobs spawning. No Hellions to slap for Matthew Habashy's first mission, no Arachnos Commanders spawning for the second Aaron Thiery misson. As far as just having too many people, I think one improvement would be to disable the Tailor function on Miss Liberty. I've had several instances of having trouble clicking on her to train levels because of the solid wall of people standing around her fiddling with their costumes. Hey folks, there's an Icon right over there -->

Some of this is getting downright silly. Last night I exited a mission just one bubble shy of leveling, so I figured I'd do a bit of streetsweeping to get that last bubble. Spotted two yellow Warriors. Ran up to them, and before I even landed a blow on the first guy, the second guy said, "Farewell!" and legged it out of there. I didn't see where he ran off to, so after defeating the first guy I just moved on to another small group. I finished up that group, and when I looked around I saw that the runner had come back, and was standing there by himself. So I ran over, landed one punch ... and off he went again, making no attempt at all to fight back. Seeing that he ran into a fairly large group that I didn't feel like dealing with, I again moved on to a different small group. And again, the guy came back and stood in his original spot. So I tried one more time, and he ran off again. There were no -Recharge or -Endurance issues for him. He just preferred running over fighting.

Whoa, cool - that was one of my favorite swords, and I used it in a couple transmogs! Glad to hear the story behind it, because I always wondered about the name since it's not one I'd ever heard in the lore.

Yes! As I mentioned in another post elsewhere, when I get a Council streetsweeping mission in Steel Canyon, I want to ask the contact, "Why? Looks to me like the 5th Column has the situation well in hand!"

In ten+ years of playing WoW, I participated in a "current content" raid exactly once. It pretty much cemented raiding as something I just wasn't interested in. Aside from one boss where my job seemed to be to stand there and mindlessly flail at the thing for 20 minutes until it finally fell over, the other encounters featured what I came to call, "mechanics for the sake of mechanics". Stuff that made no sense whatsoever, other than being an arbitrary obstacle to overcome. Like this one boss in Naxxramas who hung out it a room with an exploding floor (Self: Why the hell would he even have that?), which was overcome by the physics-defying expedient of all 25 people in the raid group occupying the same physical space to stand in the one, tiny, "safe" spot on that floor. Or the giant stone golem boss in Ulduar who is, for some reason, guarding an impassable chasm, and whose body, once he's defeated, falls over and serves as a bridge that now allows you to cross the chasm.

Something WoW does better that I haven't seen mentioned: Sheer variety of enemy mobs. You can easily encounter twenty or more completely different things to kill within a single zone. And then 20 more in the next zone. Literally hundreds of different things to fight, all uniquely animated and with their own fighting styles.

Yeah, what's with those things? Are they programmed to always run around behind you?

Could be. In Steel Canyon, at least, I'm going to say "overwhelming blue light". I was just there on a character with a blue & yellow costume (the colors of the Ukrainian flag, as the character is Ukrainian) and the night lighting turned the yellow to a sort of brownish color, which is what you would expect at night. But it "enhanced" the blue parts of the costume into a rather lurid, glowing blue. In this case, the costume is just "tights", with a blue & yellow pattern, so no reflective metal pieces.

Story arc: The Freakshow War Contact: Tina Chung (in Founder's Falls) Mission: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Tina_Chung#Break_up_the_meeting This mission is bugged. It's an "open map" mission, with the specific mission area sealed off with a forcefield. The goal is to defeat all of the Council and Freakshow mobs, and take out the leader of each group. Problem: Not a single Freakshow mob on the map. Council absolutely everywhere, but no Freakshow. Also, neither group leader appeared - I assume that, since they were supposed to be negotiating a deal, the two leaders would have been together. I went to the trouble of flying along the forcefield, to mark out the entire border of the map. A lot of the enclosed area was covered in water, but I covered every inch of dry ground until I ran out of mobs to fight. I also flew to the tops of every building I could, just in case, though I didn't actually expect to find anything up there because putting the mobs up there would have made the mission impossible for non-flying characters. I checked every place I could at ground level in case there were mobs in open areas under the buildings. I was in this mission for nearly an hour. No Freakshow, no leaders. I gave up and autocompleted the mission.

Okay, I've personally confirmed a bit of what I wrote above. I've logged out one of my Natural characters in the Steel Canyon Natural store, two days in a row, and made sure she was near the front door, or at least closer to the front door than the back counter, when I logged her out. Both times, upon logging back in, she was right where I left her, rather than ending up stuck behind the counter.

Okay, with further observation, this seems to simply be an "issue" with any costume pieces that are supposed to be highly-reflective metal. Another of my alts has one costume that uses the "Metallic 2" chest and legs, as he is a reformed, former member of the Gold Brickers, now operating as a hero. In normal lighting, these pieces are shiny and golden, but in outdoor night lighting, he looks more silver as all the yellow washes out. So I guess that's fine, except that his back piece (can't remember what it's called, but it's the same piece the Sky Raiders "Porter" mobs wear - I use it because it's the closest I can get to the Gold Bricker flight pack) is made of a much less reflective material, and so it retains it's bright golden color in all lighting conditions and ends up looking really out-of-place and "stuck on" at night. Likewise, a "robot" character I have uses the Enforcer chest and legs, which are also highly-reflective. Silver is the base color, but I used yellow for the pattern, and the pattern vanishes at night. So basically this is just a side effect of a piece being made of shiny, reflective metal, and I'll just deal with it or find a way to work around it.

I ended up starting out in Founder's Falls with Jose Escalante as my initial contact. Do that guy's missions ever lead to a story arc? He seemed to be alternating me between Council and Devouring Earth missions, with no apparent connection. It also appears that he sent me on the same "mini-arc" twice, on the same character, involving rescuing this Tyla woman - who is from another dimension - from the Devouring Earth, and stopping the DE from invading her dimension. At least I'm pretty sure it was twice on the same character, as I don't have another character high enough yet to be fooling around in Founder's Falls. In any case, I gave up on Jose and went to work for Tina Chung, and she got me into a story arc right off the bat.

I've noticed, in quite a few Day Job locations, that if I log out near a door, when I log back in my character sometimes appears briefly (like, a split second) outside, the door opens, and I reappear inside. Basically, you log back in and it goes through the "enter the building" animation. My solution to this is to try to position my character far away from the door when I log out. The Natural store has the odd distinction where the door behind the counter is a functioning door, for whatever reason. So if you log out right near the counter (where you would be while buying enhancements), you're close enough to that door that the game wants to make you re-enter through it. So try making sure you're near the front door when you log out, see if that helps. I suspect (though I'm not a coder) that, in "reality", there is exactly one instance of each store (notice that every store of a type is exactly the same inside). That's why there's often that little "loading" bit after the door opens - the game is shunting your character into that one copy of the store, regardless of which zone you're in. So, when you log out in the store, the game makes a note of which zone you're in, and then notes that you're in the store. So when you log back in, it first loads you into the proper zone, and then moves you into the store. And for some reason, being close to the door triggers the door animation.

I've done what you suggest, multiple times on multiple characters. Leave, come back, still no mobs. Sometimes there are other players there, all doing the same thing I'm doing: standing around wondering where the mobs are.

Nope. The color changes going from indoors to outdoors and back again.

I've encountered an odd - and irritating - color glitch with the "Valkyrie" costume pieces. This doesn't seem to affect other types of costume pieces. Here is what the coloring should look like on my character using the Valkyrie pieces. Note that her basic chest piece, under the Valkyrie "chest detail" piece, is not part of the Valkyrie set, but I've used the same colors. However, under certain lighting conditions, notably the "night" lighting in Atlas Park, Kings Row, and Steel Canyon (so far), all of the yellow completely washes out, leaving the yellow parts looking white, and the orange parts looking red. And notice that this does not happen to the underlying, non-Valkyrie chest piece, nor to her head pieces, which are from the Carnival of Light sets: It seems to be completely unique to the Valkyrie pieces. Alas, I realize there's probably not much you can do about this, but I figured I'd throw it out there just in case.

I play a few villains, and the thing I've always noticed is that it just feels the same as blueside, just with different stories. There's a fundamental issue that I see: Heroes are (generally) altruistic. They do good for the sake of doing good. Any tangible rewards are just bonuses, not the primary motivation. Villains, on the other hand are (generally) greedy. They do crime in order to gain some tangible benefit. They rob a bank to make money. Except, robbing a bank or stealing an object for the purpose of selling it ends up feeling like wasted effort when the only evidence of "loot" is that it says "loot" in the mission completion text, but the character doesn't actually obtain any loot beyond the same standard rewards a hero gets for doing the opposite mission. Villainous "victories" are hollow. Even if the villain's goal is to obtain "power", to become the most powerful villain ... why? Just for the sake of being more powerful? A hero obtains more power so that he/she can help more people and defeat bigger threats. Villains obtain more power to ultimately benefit themselves in the material sense, but that never happens. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of the MMO genre, that neither opposing faction can ever actually "win". The status quo has to be maintained for gameplay/balance reasons.