Sunsette

March 28

22 minutes ago, JasperStone said:

holds ....what holds....

The loving embrace of death, it sounds like.

March 28

This is pretty much exactly what I would expect for a remote bomb. It's referring to the detonation being by remote.

Contrasting types include proximity and time-delay.

March 28

On 3/26/2024 at 3:58 PM, MoonSheep said:

shouldn’t be that hard - sounds like someone had a fear power that was causing her to run

I believe that if you run that fight with no one who has a taunt whatsoever, Mary will run constantly if you don't have the DPS to burn her very fast or the controls to hold her in place. Have experienced it a few times.

March 23

If you use Burst of Speed (Blaster power) or Jaunt (travel tray from Speed of Sound) with powexeclocation macros under the following scenarios:

To travel in a lateral direction other than forward
To travel in a direction while the camera is held down (whichever camera option is bound to right mouse on modern) that is not the same angle as when you began to drag

Then your character gets weird facing. Relatedly, the face and playerturn commands don't seem to do anything in conjunction.

This behavior is not true for combat teleport. I'm not sure if it is true for teleport. I forgot to test original teleport before I specced out of it and I've done five respecs today so I'm a little tired. ^^;

March 23

Like it says on the title. These seem to use the same basic stance as the Slide animation, which we can fight in, so it could be very nice if activating 'Fly' or 'Hover' just caused them to become blank powers that cost no endurance and provide no benefit, but change the 'stance' in which we fly.

March 21

I'll say that I think a lot of the strays that optimizers catch here, while unfair, are mostly rooted in unpleasant experiences with specific individuals, especially in other games, and "rat race" communities. I've had my fair share of those negative experiences too.

In general, we're all best served, I think, by respecting that everyone has different things they take from the game and that while all these things are valid, balancing their service is quite difficult! 🙂

It's okay to not care about performance, and it's okay for performance to be a dimension that matters to you, and it's even okay for performance to be the only metric you care about -- though this game is a solved equation in that regards and I don't think it's very interesting to most such people.

March 21

3 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I think there's a small, but vocal clique in game and on the forums, that demand moar power from everything and they will rarely be satisfied until you can punch the lights out of Emperor Cole with six slotted brawl. To that small cadre, the fun and quality of the AT, power sets and combinations thereof is if no importance.

This is a pretty dismissive and uncharitable take.

Most of the people I know who are extremely good at building in this game -- and I don't include myself, I'm pretty reasonable in some particular areas but I'm no master -- have their mechanical appraisals entirely separate from what they actually enjoy playing. I have been privy to discussions a few times about how rarely any builders actually play fire blasters, for example. It is widely agreed to be the best blaster for most things due to the sheer damage differential. It's also agreed to be boring to many of those same people.

You don't see many complaints about Dual Pistols either despite it being one of the worst performing blast sets by the numbers. A lot of acknowledgements that it is weaker, sure, but it is mechanically and immersively a lot of fun to many people -- most blaster builders I know have at least one that they enjoy playing -- and it still does enough of what it needs to do to feel good to play. "Feel good to play" can have a lot of variables for a lot of reasons!

Balancing is very hard for so many options and up to this point, most of the game's content is sufficiently easy that it doesn't deeply impinge upon its quality for attempts at fixes to be higher priority than they are. On that much, we can agree. But we don't need to impugn anyone for being dissatisfied with a particular set's performance. Lumping everyone who is dissatisfied with the performance of a set as powermongers simply isn't reflective of reality. You might not care about it, and that's great for you, but that's only one style of play.

I don't have a particular opinion on kinetic melee; it's not a set I've ever played, I don't know how it "feels" to me -- but I'm sympathetic to the general concept. I've been in the position of dearly loving everything about a set except its performance and being bitterly disappointed a few times. Sometimes the devs agree, sometimes they don't seem to.

March 21

KM is still generally agreed by a lot of the builders I see to be on the weaker side, though Stalkers have a stronger version of it. There's a fairly popular recent thread giving detailed suggestions for an overhaul in the suggestions forum.

However there are a lot of weaker outlier powersets and only so much time and resources. Most of the underperformers have yet to be touched at all.

March 21

34 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Athletic run and inherent Fitness pool, along with some enhanced Sprint

Just FYI, that combination gets people to about 60 MPH with 50+5s. Speed. Normal Speed Cap is 92.5 MPH; Super Speed can get to 120 MPH.

I don't know numbers on minion speed.

March 21

Appreciate the correction @lemming -- you're right, I haven't used Group Fly since I came back. I think striking Grant Flight from this list of suggestions makes sense.

March 20

2 hours ago, PoptartsNinja said:

Scirocco and Ice Mistral go good, and either move directly into Brickstown or preferably move into Faultline for hopefully a new midlevel anti-Arachnos TF (maybe Ghost Widow can send the Wretch after them or something, or Red Widow does something to prove herself worthy of taking over Scirocco's spot). The patron unlock could be tied blueside to having this TF badge.

Mirror Spirit and Blue Steel move into Skyway and take over the Synapse TF. Back Alley Brawler moves into King's Row, and Swan takes over Brawler's spot in Atlas Park.

Synapse and Mynx move to Brickstown and take over the Manticore TF (Synapse's backstory is all about Crey, so putting him in that position makes sense).

Red Widow takes over Scirocco's place. Red Widow has vague CoT ties, so some Circle mages/demons join Arachnos replacing Mu Mystics (just picture some Wolf Spiders wearing Circle of Thorns bits). Most Mu mystics scatter to the four winds but some join Longbow and others spread to other factions like the Warriors, Carnies, or Malta. Red Widow gets a patron pool with a magic or demon-y theme, maybe letting non-Masterminds get access to the whip attacks.

Wyvern gets a big glow-up (to lv 40-50), Manticore and Wyvern take over Agincourt, reducing Longbow precense in Nerva or putting them in direct conflict with Wyvern in Agincourt. Manticore either continues to hunt Crey with a new redside SF, or focuses on Red Widow's new Thorn Spiders / Arachnos Magi. Red Widow's patron/destined arc involves fighting high level Wyvern, and maybe ends in rescuing Lord Recluse in a future where Evil Manticore has taken over.

Not sure about the Red Widow paragraph for a few reasons -- the Mu Mystics are iconic, deeply tied in with Arachnos now, and Mu'Drakhan was poised to become the new patron -- but overall this is a lot of great ideas I love.

March 20

38 minutes ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

As for 'thrusting', that's really not an accurate representation because these enhancements would be optional replacements in existing slots, as the feedback revision post linked from the first post indicates.

I'll cop to misreading this; not a failure of your writing, I simply failed to read correctly. I think dropping the 'slot' terminology will improve this, though.

Within the space of 'new options for Judgement and Lore slots', I can get behind that for reasons already expressed, though when new mechanics are involved deeper than a reskin of existing Judgement or choosing new pre-existing mobs to copy to the pet summon framework, I'm pretty wary.

March 20

27 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Don't replace Group Fly. As much as I hate it when I find myself affected by it, it mainly serves as a reminder to go talk to Null. Group Fly and Team Teleport are probably the most useful means for a MM to get their pets around and keep them near at hand.

Group Fly as it currently works does not work very well for an MM for aforementioned reasons relating to radius and positional report update frequency; it works, but it does not work very well.

I have no answer for the fact that Grant Flight would be worse in the specific scenario of actually using Group Fly in fairly static situations with large leagues, other than the fact that my characters are littered with jetpacks now as-is. It also suffers in the scenario of MM pets dying rapidly over and over, but that's... a larger issue that I cannot touch on meaningfully within the scope of this thread.

March 20

4 minutes ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

let me start with im old and my memory is faulty

so please forgive me if im remembering wrongly

i seem to recall the nina pets having super jump baked into their skillset

if so, would giving all pets SJ help a bit?

Hey! You're fine. 🙂

All pets have some level of super-jumping (I'm not sure if comparable with literal Super Jumping, it's my least-used travel power) baked in, they are just very reluctant to use it unless their pathfinding is very certain there's no way to get there by staying grounded.

March 20

CoH likes to pride itself on the kindness of its community, as well as how it is more thoughtful than other MMOs -- but this discussion would fit right in on the WoW general forums.

March 20

1 minute ago, BurtHutt said:

Red side is better. For sure. I couldn't be bothered to watch OP's video or whatever logice he'/she may try to apply in that video. I'm just here to say OP is wrong.

...the video is pro-red-side. So I guess you're a true-blue fan, then?

March 20

I don't think the change to how binds are stored is a positive as far as end-user experience, but I also think the number of people who are willing to interact with binds at that level are small and the system is already user-unfriendly as it is. Most are not going to begin by reverse-engineering a bind file in 2024; they'll begin with a discord discussion, a wiki page, a reddit guide, or if google permits, a forum thread. So at a practical level, I don't think it's a large issue.

March 20

22 hours ago, gabrilend said:

heh wrong crowd I guess 🫠

Yeah this sort of chill longplay video plays better with younger crowds usually who are more accustomed to leaving videos on off to the side and checking back every now and then. Forums trend much older. I enjoy the choice of music, it's very mood-setting. I think if I were the sort that enjoyed longplay/streaming, this would be great for me to get to appreciate at least part of red-side -- sadly, I am not quite as young as I used to be. 🙂

I think you'd want less emphasis on gameplay and UI and more on the vistas and environments with it advertising for red-side rather than for City, and I do agree with cutting out the PowerShell opening, but I think there's something to this.

March 20

1 minute ago, Fade said:

Change the Group Fly power to only affect pets by default.

Unfortunately, I believe that goes in the same bucket of 'not feasible' -- I have definitely seen this specific suggestion made before. It would be the straightforward option, but unless something changes significantly in the code framework, apparently it is not plausible.

March 20

4 minutes ago, sbloyd said:

I think just flipping Group Fly and Team Teleport to Opt-In at Null rather than Opt-Out at Null would fix the problems with those.

The devs have said this is not technically feasible without breaking their use for pets. It is weird to me that it is not, but I am not a programmer.

Group Fly and Team Teleport also kinda suck to use in most contexts due to their relatively small radiuses juxtaposed with this game's laggy position reporting.

March 20

These are tightly related concepts and issues so I think they have to be addressed at the same time.

Moderate Problem: Pets are Too Slow and Have Bad Pathfinding

Mild Problem: Few like Group Fly or Team Teleport in the Game as They Stand

Step 1: Passive Mode Grants Athletic Run

Now that Athletic Run is automatically granted, it's part of the baseline expectations of the game. If you're a Mastermind, you are immediately outrunning your poor minions when you first toggle it on. When a pet is in passive mode, they should automatically gain speed comparable to Athletic Run + Sprint. If pathfinding could be improved somehow that'd be nice but that's unlikely to be an easy fix. We can just keep micromanaging goto macros as long as they're faster about it.

~~Step 2: Replace Group Fly with Grant Flight, a Dismissible Power~~

The targetable buff mechanic is annoying to keep up with in other contexts, but if you made this a 10-minute duration buff that flashed a warning on the recipient's screen at 1 minute remaining, they'd have time to remind the user they need a refresh. It wouldn't be much of a pain for a mastermind to keep these going for their whole brigade and could still provide uses in other contexts. There's a firesale on jetpacks anyway. Grant Flight should be able to keep up with Fly at the same slotting, and not grant Afterburner.

Edit: Note that simply changing Group Fly and Team Teleport to be default-off at Null has been ruled out by the devs as technically infeasible due to side effects that disable their use on pets entirely.

Step 3: Server Tray Power: Teleport Pets

Server tray power gained on taking Teleport Target, instantly calls all pet window pets the user has active to their side. 30 second cooldown unenhanceable.

Step 4: Replace Team Teleport with Dimensional Anchor

Long-recharge click power that grants a single target additional teleport protection.

Step 5: Increase the Duration of Grant Invisibility to 10 Minutes

2 minutes is pretty annoying to micromanage on minions or a party; 10 minutes relieves that while also reserving the benefit of AoE toggle auras for powersets.

March 20

5 minutes ago, Azari said:

Yeah exactly. +Tohit for combat TP doesnt even make thematic sense.

*teleports behind u*

nothin personnel.... kid

*kicks u*

---

Sticking to western comics I am pretty confident I've seen Nightcrawler use teleport to get the surprise on someone often, too.

Conceptually, yeah, defense for CT makes sense (even though it's fraught balance-wise) but so does +to hit.

March 20

20 hours ago, Lockely said:

I believe Ice Mistral was supposed to replace him as one of Recluse's top lieutenants. I agree they should finish that arc, because his patron arc is him trying to be a hero and you stopping it. The only reason he's still there is Paragon Studios wasn't able to finish it.

Ice Mistral was pretty heroic in that arc, while Mu'Drakhan has a personal story about seizing power away from Scirocco. I would be surprised if it ended with anyone but Mu'Drakhan in charge.

March 20

4 minutes ago, Player2 said:

I'd rather have the ability to teleport to map coordinates (set pinpoint or user defined) within your range than have another defense power. Would be really useful to teleport back away from a group to a safe spot without having to teleport past and then around walls... just boom, right to it.

As cool as this would be, given how bad the pathfinding AI and collision detection already are, I suspect it would be nearly impossible to implement in a way that isn't just fodder for game-breaking glitches.

March 20

Sorry, but I would be much more interested in additional thematic-focused options in Judgement and Lore slots than literally anything else that could possibly be done with the incarnate system at this point. I like the existing incarnates for the most part but they already struggle to fit in with many character concepts, and it's extremely difficult to devise further extensions to the system that won't make it worse.

I also disagree with the idea that Judgement is a 'melee' slot -- judgement is a mass damage with side effects slot, and most of the options are overwhelmingly ranged.

Also cannot emphasize how much I would not want shapeshifting powers thrust on my characters.

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