MistressOhm

Dude, keep your inter-archetypical purple prose out of this! 😛 Seriously, a Swashbuckler ranged/melee hybrid would be fun. Gimped to hell having a few tools from many disciplines and no specialization, but still fun.

I thought it was elephants that had long memories, and ravens that never forgave. I'm CONFUSED!!

To begin a demorecord, ingame: /demorecord <name_of_file> ==> name_of_file.cohdemo in your COH 'demos' folder. Your character, and all other characters and NPC's in the area, are defined, their poses, animations, movement vectors, activated powers, everything. The zone is specified, along with the sky (day or night, and is updated to 'move' the clouds by displacing the sky texture). The camera position is defined, and if you move the camera around (zoom in or out, or pan in any direction) that gets recorded also. Once that initial Big Chunk Of Data is written, if you activate a power, summon pets, change poses, this is all recorded. The same with other players and NPC's in the zone. EVERYTHING that the game would render to you during play, gets recorded. /demostop ==> Stops the recording and closes the above file. To play back a demo, you invoke the CoH Game Client in "demo mode", specifying the filename. The game client starts, and immediately replays the scene. You would use FRAPS, ORBS, Twitch, nVidia's recording client, or other screencap/streaming software to 'capture' the playback and save it on your hard drive either as a movie clip or a series of stillframes. The power is in the .cohdemo file. It's a text file, and can be edited. You can change coordinates of the camera, and whatever it's looking at (the game only looks at you, but this isn't a hard and fast requirement for demo's). You can cut and paste other characters to the scene from their own .cohdemo files. You can delete extra characters, add NPC's, or change the zone or in-zone coordinates. Don't like the sky or lighting? Change it to something else. Want to be looming behind Veles's shoulder when he's talking to Morana and Atta? You can do that too. At one point I believe someone had come up with a demo-EDITING program, that calculated all the math to do the above, but if you're a masochist, you can do this in Notepad. A noted vlogger and demo editor on Live, Samuraiko, held a panel at HeroCon 2008 outlining her process. Links to the clips are provided, but since a lot of her content has vanished from Youtube since, they may not be valid any longer.

Just to put a thought into brains about AWS - while OVH currently charges for hardware (run as many hosts on it as you like as long as you don't max out what the hardware can support), AWS often goes for usage, which means that the more people play, the more CPU cycles are consumed, the more network packets are transmitted, and the more RAM memory is occupied... the price goes up. This WOULD force HC to scale down operations and consolidate servers, because a lot of people on a few hosts would be a cheaper overall cost than a few people on a lot of hosts and therefore being charged a larger base cost. Neither one, however, would be a better deal than the OVH "use this hardware" cost. Something else to consider: While Amazon does provide "close hop" connection to Content Distribution Networks (fat-pipe network providers like Level3, Convergys, and AT&T), they would charge a LOT of money for CDN edge connections in the multiple-terabit range. And if HC had to branch out into another AWS superfarm (say, on the Eastern seaboard instead of just Oregon or San Francisco), any intra-network traffic between the servers would be crossing across the country, possibly internationally, and likely charged for it, whereas if they're in the same datacenter, no one's going to meter that nearly as closely - communicating via fiber to another server in the next rack is NOT an expensive thing at all, and any company that did charge by the gigabit for internal dataflow would soon be lacking in customers.

Yes, demoedit can do that. Poses, power effects, auras, the whole nine yards. Demorecord files are text. Once you record a sequence, you can tweak parts of it (or insert other characters from their own demorecords) before re-rendering it in the game engine. You can move the camera around, "change the scheme, alter the mood, electrify the boys and girls" if you desire. And since it generates a sequence of still images (like an animator does for cartoons or anime movies) any one of those stills can be your screenshot.

How long was the character in question logged off? A day? a week? Several months? The longest I've had a character sit 'idle' is 55 days. When I logged back on to that character I had five bars worth of patrol saved up. I used it all in about an hour of street sweeping. Another character that had about two bars worth, I lost it all because I'd forgotten that I'd set them to higher notoriety, and encountered purples in a mission instance. Two Wakes later, those two bars were gone. 5 minutes, tops, to earn the equivalent amount of Debt to zero it out. NOW... I am NOT saying there Should Not Be a toggle to turn Patrol on and off. If there was one, I'd not use it, but that's no reason to say not to put one in. However, what I am saying is, that no toggle currently exists, and because the Patrol XP mechanic encourages people to Not Play All The Time (you know, real life concerns) I believe that getting HC's devs to burn limited manpower and coding bandwidth to implement such a switch is ... not likely. Thus, since this is the second time you've chosen to basically rant about this one minor feature, and apparently NOT understand or appreciate the work that would go into coding your desired feature, testing it, balancing it, and making sure it didn't break anything else... yeah, I'm not sympathetic. Sorry.

I like the base idea (but agree that flashbangs would be better than frag grenades), and also think that having three different looks (PPD, RIP, and Praetoria Powers Division) would make the set really shine. The question is though... this is a heroes and villains game. While we can create characters with police uniforms, would it make sense that ANY police agency from the three represented factions would assign a squad to follow a character? So having them be private security is a bit more story-cohesive. There's also a lot of overlap with Soldiers and Thugs, as well. As for a Clown MM set... umm... no mimes. That's all I ask, is no. mimes.

That's part of why people tune their builds. You can be OP, or have great staying power, but not both. End issues you are expected to manage, yourself, regardless of archetype. If you don't need an anti-KB or anti-mez toggle, don't run it. If you don't need a DoT aura between mobs, turn it off. If you can take something down with a T2 blast attack, don't use the T9.

Patrol XP is a benefit of a character's "Day Job" (what they do when You, the Player, are not making them be heroic or villainous). It's basically "Rested" XP that you get from other games, where time logged out charges a meter so when you log back in you have a period of time to level faster. There currently is no mechanic to 'turn it off' because it's considered a Gaming Ergonomics and Safety issue. You can toggle XP gain on and off. That's it. If you want to delete it, go to a high-level zone, no armor, no auras, with a tray full of Wakes, and punch a purple mob in the face. Burn all the Wakes to rez in place, get faceplanted. When you're out of Wakes, rez at hospital and restock. If the zone is high enough, you should be able to turn that Patrol XP into XP Debt (what you get when you're defeated) within a few minutes, not an hour. Or you could use it as it was intended. Get into a mission arc. Join a task/strike force. Level up a few bars. It'll get burnt either way.

The Stamina bar exists to represent your character getting 'tired' or out of juice after using their powers, either extensively, or powerfully. having the Devs tweak End usage so that no one never actually 'runs out' would defeat the purpose of having it.

Passed you $25, every little bit helps... 🙂

SR also comes with a passive speed/recharge booster later on in the set. It's not as good as Speed Boost or AM, but it's ALWAYS on and doesn't cost any END.

-Bonk!- Off to horny jail with you, Snark old man. 😛

Thus the joke.

Whoever told you "Electrical Blast isn't good" was waaay wrong. It might not be the highest damage output, but as a Defender, the immobs, holds, and inherent End Drain complement the Storm Summoning primary - you also get a small End 'refund' on most of your blasts when they hit, which helps keep the End-thirsty nature of Storm Toggles running. The big weakness I've found is, most of Storm's debuffs take a couple of seconds to kick in, which means you're vulnerable to "alpha strikes" when you piss off an entire spawn. I usually lead with the Immobs/Holds, to keep melee'ers out of melee and forced to rely on whatever ranged attacks they might have. THEN I set them up with the debuffing. Once you get high enough to take Thunderous Blast, TAKE IT. There's no more end crash from using a T9, so it becomes your "kill the little ones, end drain the bigger ones" opener. Slotted with a Ranged AoE Damage set like Bombardment, it does a stupendous amount of damage, throws in an occasional "set things on fire" proc, and the inherent End Drain of the power itself usually empties the tank on all but EB's in one shot. I would actually move your Vigilant Assault set above to either your T1 or T2 blast. You'll use it more often, which means that +Absorb will have many MANY more chances to proc. It's... okay? in TB... but I think you'd get more mileage out of Bombardment and set up a small fast-cycling attack to boost you and your teammates's health bars a little. Not sure why you're putting a Superior Defender's Bastion in Lightning Storm. It's a pseudo-pet summon, so you'll only get the proc benefit when you summon it (the pet itself gets all the boosts, but I don't think it gets the proc chances). You can make it perma with a recharge IO (no need for Hasten with that), maybe some extra damage and possibly throw in a KB/KD conversion IO to keep mobs from being yeeted about. Hurricane is END HUNGRY. So it's good that you focused on two Endurance IO's. Dampened Spirits is decent, but I ran with the full set of Dark Watcher's Despair. Hurricane is all about debuffing -toHit, but having something that debuffed -recharge was good too. Entomb in Tesla Cage - I'd actually swap the IO sets with Shocking Bolt, tbh. That +Mag 2 proc will see a lot more use in the lower tier power, and if you don't get the proc on a boss, follow up with Shocking Bolt and stack the hold. Question: Why no Short Circuit? It's true that with Hurricane running you'll likely not have mobs in range, but you will run into Repel-resistant mobs (Carnie Strongmen, for example) that will get close enough to whomp you before finally being pushed away, and having a way to drain End from melee'ers makes for less pain from the melee'ers. EB's, AV's, and monsters also say "...what? SRSLY?" to Hurricane's Repel effect, and yes you WILL want to be up close and personal with them to debuff their -ToHit so you may as well have SC handy to zap them while you're doing that. Gale... yeah it's skippable. It's basically a knockdown/knockback cone. Slotted with a KB/KD conversion and an ACC, it makes for a useful and cheap "sit the hell down" power, but if you need the power pick for something else, it's not build critical by any stretch. Stormfending Team Play - You're not the healer. Don't play as one. You're a herder and a debuffer, it's your job to make sure that whatever you come across, cannot hit your team, either because they can't aim thru a windstorm or they're too busy running away from a dust devil, or they're being knocked on their butts and chilled to the bone. That said, you don't want to blow spawns apart, you'll want to circle the edges, maneuver things up against walls and then back off just enough so they don't slide upward and end up falling back down behind you. In cave maps, be extra careful of overhangs, as you can stuff mobs under them so they stand up outside the map. Then they're untargetable and that's a hassle.

There's a lot you could try. Invuln would fit for an Iron Giant motif, plus the effects make for a well-detailed paint job. 🙂 Energy Aura or Electric Aura might also work, as a forcefield or dampening field. Regen could work as automated repair systems. Willpower would simply be "that's just the bodywork you're scratching up, bub". Just about any of the Sentinel armors would work, thematically, altho most of the Transformers didn't have effects, just weapons. I've two big mecha characters, one is a walking fire engine (Water/Cold Dominator), and the other is an alien ship (Energy/Gravity Dominator).

It has definite potential! One of the things that I'm sure would be impossible without a much larger Dev workforce/budget, but if done could lead to a lot of such imaginative powers, is to decouple power effects from character animations. We see a FEW animation variations in some powers (different snipe poses and so on). But imagine being a Storm Summoner who instead of waving her arms about, uses a staff or cane? Instead of an ice blaster projecting freezing water vapor from their arms or body, they wield a futuristic cryo-rifle? Things like that. The Animations exist for these things (how many have the Blackwand as a legacy power on their characters?) but it's a matter of figuring out how to tune the game engine to project effects from a prop rather than from the avatar itself. And the reverse is true. Assault Rifle, only using something like Deadshot's gauntlets. War Mace, but no mace, instead the character's hand has morphed to a metal studded ball and they're whirling it about like Energy Melee? All kinds of possible variations. BUT... we first have to figure out how to code it... and right now HC doesn't have the dev bandwidth to chase that down.

Controller sets typically perform "at a distance" with a few PBAoE effects thrown in. So while one could theoretically have a stun-heavy "nightstick" controller set for up close, it'd be hard to extrapolate that to anything out of melee. Ranged weaponry is more do-able, such as a beam-rifle based control set that projected energy barriers, sapper effects (Ah! Sapper!), and so on. Possibly a lasso or bullwhip set, or gadgets (bolos, boomerangs, smoke bombs, and the like). Since we've seen 'chaining' attacks with some sets (effect jumps from primary target to secondary targets and then back to caster), I'm sure one could use that logic to throw a boomerang and have it hit multiple targets before returning to the thrower.

*salutes the Snarkish One* Kudos, man. People in little cars do some STOOOPID shit around big trucks. Me, I'm on a bike, I'mma give you all the room you need. Bikes + bogeys = BIG mess to clean up.

*cough* demoedit *cough*

Someone chose the Vig or Rogue option on a tip mish. Word gets out, and people will comment!

I solo'd Walker's mission arc. On a Stormfender. I ... fail to see the problem.

Brutes tend to have issues with Defense-based armor such as Ice, that prevents them from getting hit (Ice also slowed down the opponents Recharge rates, which means they attacked less often, a double whammy for Brutes). This set is ALL about making sure the opponents can't aim, can't see, can't figure out up from down, so it will definitely dampen how often a Brute gets tagged. Brutes gain Fury from getting hit (even if it doesn't hurt that much) which is why they do much better with Resist-based armors that mitigate the damage from being hit.

I've seen this happen on occasion, often it's a networking glitch between your game client and the server. It's not enough to lose the mapserver connection, but it IS enough to make things 'freeze up' and then just as you're looking at your modem to see if you've still got Internet, it starts working again. If you're using a VPN, try selecting an endpoint that's close to the server instance (for me it'd be Chicago or Buffalo, since my server is in Canada). That might make it worse, BUT it also means that any ISP shenanigans like traffic shaping or protocol-specific priority is smoothed out, cos VPN encrypted traffic can't be spied upon and then decided it's not as important as someone's streaming of HBO. Speaking of streaming, if someone else is on your home network, pulling down a 4k movie, they'll be using up a fair bit of bandwidth, and that could impact your play depending on how much you actually get from the ISP. Another consideration is, do you have any other game launchers running? Epic and Steam will occasionally decide to update something, and hog bandwidth at the network card, making the game get choppy and causing rubberbanding. At that point I alt-tab to desktop, open up whatever it is that's still running, and close it down. If it bitches about having an update in progress and do I really want to interrupt that? Oh yeah. I just found the problem. Lastly... if you're running on WiFi, make sure you don't have a ton of other devices on your WiFi net. Even if they're not actively communicating, your router has to hold the connections, and ISP/telco provided routers are REALLY BAD when it comes to wifi network connections. When I set up my house with WiFi enabled lights, each bulb needed a connection... and then my tablet started losing its connection when I'd turn a light on. >.> So now I have a separate wifi net JUST for home automation. They can fight over connections, leave my phone and my tablet alone, please. 😛 And yes, WiFi is radio-based, so.. are there a lot of other WiFi nets in range? These all use the same set of radio frequencies, and if two or more are on the same frequency, they tend to step on each other and degrade the speeds. Antennas and repositioning can help, there, but for best results... run an ethernet cable to the router. 🙂 If everything in the house is clean, you're on ethernet cables, your connection to the ISP is solid and has no issues, but this happens frequently, you might need to run an extended ping/ trace test in the background to the Homecoming server network. Because you can't be expected to watch it 24/7 and catch the glitches, it will have to be logged. Once you find a pattern with the connection drops (the trace should help you or a network pro figure out WHERE they're happening), you can then use that to open a ticket with your ISP. They can then take it to their main provider (Level3, AT&T, Convergys, etc) and raise holy hell that network connections are being bounced in East Podunk with disturbing regularity, and they need to send a tech out to replace a component. Yeah... this does happen, and it is that simple... but no one really pays close attention until that component starts throwing data packets on the floor. USUALLY it'll be a corporate tech making the call, but with the right 'evidence' an end user can get ISP's to follow up on their behalf, too. You just have to give them more than "it's not working".

Based on Telephone's outline, it looks like the added costs are going to physical hosts, NOT virtual hosts. This is a good thing, in that OVH isn't getting greedy about hosting instances, and just needs to charge more for physical storage, RAM, processors, and network interfaces. Also based on the server outline... it'll be really tricky to consolidate those, this is one lean operation. As was pointed out, Reunion is the outlier, and probably has more resources for that one server instance than the others... but it's a geographic necessity and can't be trimmed down either. I don't think paring the SQL hosts down would be wise, you need redundancy to keep data secure and up-to-date, and dropping one would open up a lot of risk (that's not even addressing the other elephant in the room, which is processing data transactions from thousands of clients in real time without a hitch.) I don't know the backup protocol they're using (backups vs snapshots/transaction logging) but since they're using the SQL in Europe as a backup target, I'm assuming transaction logs because transmitting full DB backups across an undersea link in a timely manner... expensive af. So THAT is likely as efficient as it's going to get, also. I have been able to donate a few times here and there, but will definitely try to get to the window more often. Even with 'retirement' putting a cramp on my budget (amazing what motivation to save you get when "what you have" has to last not a month, or six months, but possibly another 40 years), I can easily throw more money at the HC folks. Thanks to you, and kudos for running this game as well as you do in the budget you've set.