Captain Powerhouse

Notes not at hand but nothing changing on snipes, Trip Mine getting love, Targeting Drone dropping the recharge buff and getting a small continuous +dmg buff in addition to a big damage buff to the first attack done from out of combat.

The changes are pretty much ready, but we are holding things until I finish work on dominators. There is one final pass on Devices too. I was hoping to have that ready for testing by now, but RL has gotten in the way, the last couple weeks have been a bit bumpy.

PvP rules are the most proliferous source of bugs in power data. BTW thanks for compiling this, may take a bit to get it all fixed up, but its not being ignored, just need some internal stuff taken care before another power patch can be queued up. Keep up the good work!

There are plans to get those sets finished. We dont want to half-ass it, though. We wont just copy another power's fx and call it done. We will borrow particles, so some FX may look "at home" with similarly themed powers, not unlike how Rad Armor shares many particles with Rad blast, and Soul Noir dark theme borrows particles from Dark Control. We will just not just slap energy blast fx to Wrist Blaster, Blaster Drone, or whatever the final name for that power ends up being. Animation time matching is mostly an issue with powers that are already in use, these powers are new so changing the animation is not out of the question (although changing the animation time will always mean pvp attributes also need changing.) Biggest challenge is Bollas in the Utility Belt, as it already has a half-done cool animation with no fx that seems to expect a rather complicated fx script, plus is missing a flying animation (may force the power to only work on the ground.) Gadgetry is also underwhelming thematically, plus, anyone can buy a lame jetpack. Feels very redundant with Utility Belt and available temp powers, so the current plan is to re-conceptualize it as Cybernetic Enhancements (sounds a bit more techy, in contrast with Utility Belt's nature theme) with the flight power being based on Iron-Man like thrusters. The current plan is to develop them one by one, but it will take time.

They actually did. AR snipe animation has not been touched since shutdown. They never got around to changing the Cast Time in the power definition, but the actual animation was rooting for 1.67 seconds during that final week of i24 beta, before all servers got killed.

Funny you should mention this, because over the years this was not the first attempt at making snipes more useful, and triggering fast snipe based on range was one of the first things attempted. It was also the most universally detested. Runner goes away, suddenly the snipe cast time changes without notice. Someone knocks something out of fast range, the same. To make things worse, the game has no way to base the ring highlight on target attributes, so its not possible to light up the ring to let the caster know he is close enough for a fast snipe, other than to try.

I have talked to Leo about this in the last few days: Assault set buffs are top priority right now. Dont have a full list to share yet, but in Energy Assault in particular looking at shortening the cast time for Total Focus, increasing the recharge and damage for Power Burst significantly, and possibly make Power Boost be a bit more like Gather Shadows.

Few "quick" answers: Decreasing the range was something I went for because at least in my game play style, more range messes with me. My chain will always be ranged capped to the shortest range attack in my chain, I don't like starting an attack chain and realizing my next attack requires me to move closer (remember when Cosmic Burst was 60ft?) But we heard the feedback, no bueno, we reverted it. This is why we test. The recharge was due to quite strict design rules the live team followed and we stick by. There is a damage formula, leo posted it here somewhere. If there is no special mechanic binding a power, if it behaves just as a regular attack, it is meant to do regular damage. That formula dictated the quick snipe be either lower damage or higher recharge. At the end, now we settled on adding a ToHit based special mechanic to justify higher damage at 12 second recharge. Why not allow Aim/BU to trigger in-combat mode? For one, not everyone have those (power boost would only do that if you have a ToHit power like Tactics running.) Plus, this thread has already shown the bonus damage is desired, and you do have to try out taking out an annoying Lt with Build Up + Aim + Slow Snipe. So far, Leandro has been working hard on making the new Snipe set desirable so it does not feel like a penalty to go for it to get perma-fast-snipe. On the delay, I covered this in an earlier post but there is a delay on some of the snipes that was not there before. That delay is still inside the 1.33 window. Outside of beta, currently, the attack fires at frame zero, before your character even moves and does the fire animation. Then you stay there, immobile, for 1.33 seconds. Now it happens at frame 17 (0.56 seconds into the animation) and you then have another 0.76 seconds to wait for the cycle to end. Note there is the context of the shutdown there. They got fired, Millar wanted to push the issue so those last few weeks of uptime everyone could play with what was done without the limitations of the singular test server. I doubt he would had tried to push it as it was without more work had the game not been abruptly shut down.

I don’t like to announce things because it always comes back to bite me one way or another, but Dominator assault sets will get attention, as will Assault Rifle, Dual Pistols and Psi Blast. I don’t have full details yet, though. Honestly, biggest challenge is doing anything that is not seen as a nerf and results in hate. Reduce recharge time for a more fluid attack change somewhere? PPM Nerf. Redice cast time for increased DPA? PvP nerf. Increase recharge for increased damage? Rotation nerf. Regardless what is done, someone will hate an aspect of it. But i want all dominators to be on similar balanced footing and I’m not looking to nerf them, especially because it’s near impossible to implement the new assault sets that I have on my queue when existing ones are all over the place.

If you excuse me, I need to run a spyware check on my computer...

I may be able to explain what you are perceiving as "slower." The cast time for Sniper Blast has not changed, it still is 1.33 seconds. However, if executed in fast mode, it would just shoot at frame zero, then a few frames later it would execute the arm movement, and stay there, slowly waiting to lower the hand for about 1.33 seconds. Basically, the entire FX and animation were all out of sync. The animation for all the 1.33 second snipes was altered so that now you lift your arm, point, and at frame 17 the shot is fired, then much quicker, but without skipping frames, the arm is lowered in place. The game internally runs at 30 frames per second, so 17th frame would be 0.567 seconds into the attack. That may give you a sense that things slowed down, but it also means you now spend less time after the shot rooted doing nothing. I understand that this may be a bit disorienting, but almost none of the interruptible sequencers were designed with the elimination of the interrupt window in mind. Only ones I think actually did OK were Blazing Bolt and Ranged Shot. Assault rifle was given a whole different animation in fast-mode, and this became way too apparent when the default animation at character creation was changed to display the fast version. Rest assured this does not change the DPA of the fast snipes.