Fade

Thursday at 11:33 PM

I'm torn: I like the idea, but I also want to engage in some vulgar tangential ranting. So many decisions!

April 11

It's not a bug, but it is a very weird power. As Rudra said, it has two components - the first is a knockdown and a chance to stun, and the second is damage.

But they also have different ranges. The knockdown component is a targeted AoE with a 20 foot range and a 15 foot radius, but the damage component is a 55 degree cone with a 20 foot range.

If you're executing the power at max range (20 feet) from your target, who is standing in a cluster of enemies, they will likely all be affected by the knockdown portion. The damage portion won't affect anyone farther than the initial target, because they'll be outside the cone portion.

Edit to add: And if you use the power on an enemy in melee range with you, flanked by other enemies in melee range with you, it can be easy to miss the enemies to the sides of your target with the damage portion because the cone is very narrow at close ranges. The knockdown portion will still hit all enemies in melee range with you because the targeted AoE will just hit everyone within 15 feet of your target.

April 4

I'd like to throw in Bio Armor as a contender. When colored red, it works really well visually for blood manipulation, either with or without the carapace visuals. It works great for a more biological type of vampire than a mystical one, though my Bio Armor vampire has a magical origin and it still fits well. And mechanically it has a few "absorb from your enemies" type powers that fit the theme very well.

On a melee archetype it would pair well thematically with Savage, Dark, or any weapon set you could imagine your vampire using. I haven't tried it on a Sentinel yet so I don't know if the theme holds up as well, but Dark and Water would be obvious choices. For all archetypes, it's a slightly less intuitive choice, but Psychic powers are something vampires are known to use and might make a good thematic pairing.

March 20

If I could offer an alternative for Group Fly that I don't think I've seen suggested before:
Change the Group Fly power to only affect pets by default. In addition, grant it a travel power popup tray, like you see with most of the other travel powers, that includes the current functionality of Group Fly for everybody. The popup Group Fly should be a toggle that costs zero endurance to maintain but can only be active while Group Fly is active.

In my mind, this implementation wouldn't meaningfully change anything for people who want Group Fly to work as it does on other players, but would improve the lives of every Mastermind that wants to use it just for their pets (and everyone who teams with them!).

March 14

8 hours ago, Uun said:

It's because they would have to create new Kick animations for each weapon set. All pool, epic and non-weapon set primary/secondary powers cause redraw for the same reason. Brawl is the only power for which they created the extra animations.

That said, the Kick animation is already there for many of those weapon sets - you can see it when you use Brawl. You can even see how it's the exact same animation as Kick, but it doesn't put the weapon away.

It just has to be tied to Kick as well, with whatever flag the power needs to not despawn the weapon.

As for the "change the animation" part of the suggestion, only if it's an option. I like Kick the way it is and even use it sometimes.

February 27

3 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

Are there any other powers that are both limited duration/with a cooldown, and cancelable?

As of page 7, Telekinesis in Mind Control. And I believe either Spirit Ward or Enflame (or both) from the Sorcery pool may work that way as well.

February 26

7 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

No. All powers cannot be made perma. Regardless of the reasoning or justification or lore or backstory, the game is built around powers that have differing levels of application, and to make short-term debuffs perma unbalances the whole concept.

I don't see this as a request to make one of these powers (such as Detention Field) perma, I see it as a request to make the power cancel-able early. There are toggles in the game that can only be active for a maximum duration and then are shut off and put on a cooldown, and I think powers like Detention Field would be an excellent candidate for the same treatment.

February 26

I'm with you there - to be honest, I mostly intend to unbind the inspiration keys because I'm using F1-4 for other functions. But I'd also like the game to not lie to me, and for the system of showing the current bound keys to be consistent like they are now with the powers bar. Ultimately I wouldn't consider my suggestion to be "high priority", but I don't want it to be completely forgotten either.

February 26

In the newest page update, the power trays were updated to showing the keybind associated with the slot. I'd like to request the same functionality for the inspiration tray, showing an updated keybind if one is created.

February 26

I definitely have this problem too - usually I accidentally set an ally as my map waypoint (W). Luckily setting a map waypoint is not the end of the world, but it is definitely annoying. I think once or twice I may have nearly removed someone from my friends list (R) or global friends list (E). Removing from the global friends list asks for a confirmation, but removing from the character-based friends list doesn't!

I think the proposed solutions are good ideas. Another possibility could be that the right click context menu should only come up if you right click on your target, instead of right clicking on any random thing.

/unbind overriden by Keybind Profile · February 22

Oh, ok. I stand corrected.

/unbind overriden by Keybind Profile · February 22

The basic issue: /unbind seems to be overridden by the now-functioning "Keybind Profile" system. Tested by trying to unbind "C", which closes the chat window by default. Also tested by trying to unbind W and I can still run forward.

The story: In trying to rapidly fix all my Combat Attributes across all my characters after the new update, I created the following commands in a text file:

Quote

C "monitorattribute To Hit Bonus$$monitorattribute Damage Bonus$$monitorattribute Recovery Rate$$monitorattribute Endurance Consumption$$monitorattribute Recharge Time Bonus"

shift+C "monitorattribute Ranged Defense$$monitorattribute Melee Defense$$monitorattribute AOE Defense"
alt+C "unbind C$$unbind shift+C$$unbind alt+C"

Loading that file and using those commands all worked great, but after using alt+C to remove the new binds, I found that pressing C now reverted back to the original function of closing the chat window, rather than having C do nothing at all.

I manually attempted to use /unbind C as well, which did nothing.

I then used /bind C "" to remove the functionality of the key, which worked fine. /unbind C returned C to the "close chat window" function.

I also tested /unbind W, which did not unbind W.

It occurs to me that this might not be a bug, and that /unbind might be intended to reset the bind back to whatever is currently default, but to my knowledge that's not how the command worked prior to the update.

February 21

12 hours ago, MonteCarla said:

Fade is the worst though

😭

(But yeah, I would love the ability to turn off transparency effects for my characters. I find the semi-transparent models to look incredibly janky most of the time and would appreciate any way to minimize that effect.)

February 19

Sorry Shenanigunner, I think this one might be on your end.

I have no issues creating new chat windows, disconnecting them from the main chat window, resizing the new chat windows, creating new tabs, dragging and dropping them into the chat window, or even creating the halfway split chat window like I see in your image.

If the issue is being able to create these windows with slash commands, I have to admit I've never tried doing that and wouldn't know how to go about it.

February 18

Tested resizing a window while using quicklook, and its working great. Moving the chat window is also working great. No issues anymore.

February 18

8 hours ago, Number Six said:

If you don't mind, could you re-test on RC3.5? Copied characters from live should now default to "Classic", while newly created characters get "Modern" unless you've overriden it by saving default key bindings.

I can confirm that a newly transferred character gets none of the new control scheme changes. The profile under keybinds shows up as "classic". Characters that were previously on the beta server also have the "classic" profile and no longer have the new functionality.

A newly created character does have the "modern" profile by default, and has the same experience I outlined before - they correctly inherited my saved default keybinds, and the only new control scheme functionality they have by default is the quicklook on left click. This makes sense because it uses the new "LeftDragWorld" label, which I have not overwritten with my default keybinds.

I think that means it's working as it should be.

February 17

I've tested the control scheme changes with:

Characters that existed on the Beta server before Release Candidate 3
A character that I transferred from Live to Beta after the Release Candidate 3 update
A brand-new character created after the Release Candidate 3 update

Characters 1 and 2 had the new quicklook left mouse button features, new mouse movement functionality, new shift+# for the third tray buttons, and the new walking towards a turned camera (free-look) functionality.

Character 3 inherited my default saved keybinds when I created it and had none of these new changes except for quicklook, which seems to be bound to a new "LeftDragWorld" keybind rather than "LBUTTON" like I would have first expected. (EDIT: I think this part is a good thing and I like it.)

February 17

11 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

This is just my two cents, but I think changing the default power tray labels and key bindings for a 20 year-old MMORPG is a mistake. I mean, for me, it doesn't matter because the first thing I'm going to do when Page 7 launches is change everything back to the way it was and save it to my options.txt file. As options, they're fine. But for people returning from both live and earlier on Homecoming, changing the way a 20 year-old video game works by default isn't the way to go. It'll just cause confusion. City of Heroes is City of Heroes, not any other video game.

I think this one is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation.

New players expect certain things to work in a modern way, like the new "quick-look" feature, turning the camera without turning your character by using left click, which is standard in almost every other MMO I can think of.

On the other hand, existing players either will or will not like the changes based on their personal preferences. Hopefully people know to save their binds and options the way they like them before the update, and load them up after the update if they'd rather have things function as they do currently.

The "classic" default bind profile is probably the best way to handle the situation, though.

Which brings me to another point:

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

These changes only apply to new characters, and overridden by customized bindings that were previously saved.

Applying some or all of these settings on existing characters requires either resetting to the default bindings or manually applying the changes.

This part is somewhat misleading. Previously existing characters ARE affected by these new changes (especially noticeable with the changes to free look and moving forward, and the change to how mouse movement auto-run works), but loading a bind file saved before the update reverts them.

February 17

The /tray_always_shrink 1 command returns an "unknown command" error.

EDIT: After the post-update update, this is no longer true. Requires "power tray animations" to be enabled, but works fine.

February 16

One more voice for the "shrinking power icon support" chorus. This seems like the kind of thing that should be an option.

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

So, what exactly does this setting do? I've played with it some and can't figure it out.

There is a subtle "sparkle" effect that plays when a power is finished recharging by default. This disables the little sparkle.

February 8

To be honest, I've experienced this happening on occasion as well, with the Translocation secondary power from Mystic Flight. When I use my teleport bind and try to teleport across the map rapidly, I rarely see the same kind of issue as shown in the video. I always chalked it up to user error (in my case, trying to teleport too quickly before the first one finished executing) but it seems like my initial assumption might have been mistaken.

February 7

Try throwing "shield charge" in quotation marks in your bind.

/bind shift+t "powexeclocation cursor "Shield Charge"" just worked fine for me.

EDIT: I didn't read the thread very well! Didn't realize the issue you were having was based on it not going where you wanted it to, rather than not working at all. I didn't test it with a bind using a mouse click to activate, that might be a factor.

February 7

I really appreciate this change. It solves a number of the pain points I brought up in the last thread:

Being a one-time badge, instead of a daily repeatable bonus, does not incentivize repeating the same short TFs over and over every day to maximize rewards
While it doesn't solve the issue of roles not matching up with how archetypes actually play, it notably lessens the problem. Now any given character might experience the problem only once in their career, instead of potentially every day.

Perhaps a one-time bonus of aethers can be associated with the badges (or is it just a single badge for doing either team? I'd assume its two badges, but a bit unclear), like there are aethers awarded with the newest halloween badges. That would be a small, but still meaningful, injection of aethers into the economy accessible by lower level characters and newer players.

February 5

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

It's entirely possible to build a playable and effective toon using nothing but the information available in game. That's the entire point of this subthread, that we don't need to push players towards MIDS.

I totally agree with you there. MIDS is a nice program to use, I enjoy it, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) a necessity. And providing the most accurate information in an easy-to-understand manner is why that's the case.

Something I completely forgot to mention in my first post there is that providing numbers in the power descriptions doesn't have to be at the expense of descriptive language (or dots, if that's something people like better). A block that looks like this:

Damage: High (1.64)

Attack speed: Medium (1.33 seconds)

Recharge: Medium (8 seconds)

would be helpful and flavorful in equal measure. But if they're going to stay, the "Light"s, "Medium"s, "High"s, etc. should at least be re-evaluated to be consistent across copies of the powersets, and IMO across powersets in general, to be as truthful and accurate as possible.

February 4

3 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Or, to make it plain, I absolutely agree with the other posters. We absolutely do not want to flood new players with information they lack the necessary background and experience to properly interpret. And we absolutely do not want to give the impression that min maxing and/or build planning is a prerequisite for being able to play (or enjoy) the game. The kinds of folks who enjoy that kind of stuff will almost invariably either encounter it through osmosis or deliberately seek it out. We don't need to force it on everyone else.

Presenting too much information at once can definitely be a problem. But I don't think the "descriptive language" system of describing powers is any less overwhelming than directly presenting the damage scale, and it's less useful to boot. Any player, new or old, can see that 1.4 is higher than 1.2 and decide whether they care about that or not. But to this day I can never remember whether "Light" damage is supposed to be more than "Minor", or whether "Superior" is more than "Extreme". And in some sets, like Archery for Blasters*, you're presented with two options that are both labeled as "Light" (although the description of the power says one does more than another).

Personally, for power information, I'd like to see animation time be a described in that same block of text. Using Hack as an example again, I'd format it like this:

Damage: 1.64

Attack speed: 1.33 seconds

Recharge: 8 seconds

Giving players an idea of "this attack hits harder, but this one is faster" gives them the information to make a meaningful choice right off the bat, or they'll continue to ignore that description and pick based on the power icon like I often do.

*side note: Looking at the first two powers for Archery across multiple archetypes shows inconsistencies. For Blasters, both Snap Shot and Aimed Shot are labeled "Light". For Corruptors, they are "Moderate" and "High", and for Defenders, they are "Minor" and "Light". An objective, numbers-based system would help alleviate this confusion.

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