Range limit on defeat credit

[srmalloy]

I had taken my Seismic/Energy Blaster out to Boomtown to work on her defeat count for Council War Walkers, and was sailing around the base with Boost Range up sniping out the walkers. After two orbits and fourteen downed walkers, I checked her progress bar, and it hadn't moved. I wasn't getting defeat credit for the walkers.

 

With Boost Range up, I could shoot from over 270 feet out. If I wasn't getting credit at that distance, where was the limit? 200 feet gave credit, 220 didn't. 210 did, 215 didn't. I finally narrowed down the limit to 212 feet -- at that distance, defeating a walker gave me credit toward the badge count; at 213 feet the defeat isn't counted.

 

Given that I was able to make longer shots with my AR/EM Blaster back on Live, although I have no recollection of whether I was getting badge credit for defeats at that range, I have to wonder how long this limit has been in the game, and the various ways of getting around it that I'll have to experiment with as opportunity presents itself. For example, if I'm shooting from 250+ feet away, will having an invisible teammate near my target give the team, and therefore me, defeat credit? However, that doesn't change the fact that a single character defeating a mob with no assistance from any other source of damage will fail to get credit for the defeat if they're too far away from their target. Boost Range lets a Blaster snipe from well in excess of 200'; you should be able to get defeat credit as long as you're the one shooting.

[srmalloy]

Feh. And pets don't count. I was tooling around Striga with a Demons/Plant MM, designating targets for my demons and flying on to the next target, and I don't get defeat credit unless I'm within 212 feet of the target at the time they go down.

[GM Crumpet]

On 2/28/2023 at 12:42 AM, srmalloy said:

Feh. And pets don't count. I was tooling around Striga with a Demons/Plant MM, designating targets for my demons and flying on to the next target, and I don't get defeat credit unless I'm within 212 feet of the target at the time they go down.

It's been like that a long time. Especially the pets thing.

[SeraphimKensai]

It's definitely interesting to know the exact max distance for rewards. It seems a bit strange that although you can kill mobs at greater than that range and you are not rewarded, but I suppose there's almost no risk to you at that range in the first place.

[Astralock]

This is also why Brutes and Tankers tend to receive far fewer Vanguard merits on zone mothership raids than instanced mothership raids.

[srmalloy]

50 minutes ago, Astralock said:

This is also why Brutes and Tankers tend to receive far fewer Vanguard merits on zone mothership raids than instanced mothership raids.

Well, that would answer the question of whether a nearby teammate would suffice to get credit. Pity.

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

It's been like that a long time. Especially the pets thing.

What makes it hard to understand is that you get the "You have defeated X" message, and you get the XP and inf for the defeat, all the way out to the maximum range you can attack from... but the badge credit cuts off at 212 feet. It should all be triggered by the defeat of your target, and if you're being told you defeated them, and getting XP and influence for the defeat, you should be getting badge credit, too.

[srmalloy]

On 3/1/2023 at 9:14 AM, SeraphimKensai said:

but I suppose there's almost no risk to you at that range in the first place.

Necro'ing the thread a bit, way back in the early days of the game, when Cryptic was still the development house, Jack Emmert, co-founder and chief creative officer, who oversaw the development of CoH, made the pronouncement that "Range was a Blaster's defense". This was mostly true in the early part of the game, but the revamp that gave virtually every NPC mob in the game a ranged attack -- and one that often outranged a Range Boosted Snipe -- it has become considerably less so. Some of my characters have been hit by mobs firing pistols at ranges of 240 feet and up.

[lemming]

I'm not against there being a range limit on the credit so that someone sitting in portal corp isn't getting monkey credit for one example, but it should be within any ranged attack plus wiggle room.  Say 500' in outdoors, but no limit in an instance?

 

Though I'm also thinking, it's not harmful to get the badge credit.

 

It's also not completely consistent since I've gotten some badge credit with some mobs.  (For some reason, I think Sally might be one)

[srmalloy]

9 hours ago, lemming said:

I'm not against there being a range limit on the credit so that someone sitting in portal corp isn't getting monkey credit for one example, but it should be within any ranged attack plus wiggle room. 

There was briefly a bug back on Live where there were a couple missions where you received XP for clicking on the mission glowies; the bug was that the XP was awarded to all members of the team, regardless of their location; it was, IIRC, a mid-30s mission, so you could have level-1 characters standing in Atlas Park on a team for these missions, and have them receive tens of thousands of points of XP from a team member in the mission (in IP, Talos, or FF) clicking on the glowies (since the mission goal included a boss defeat, you could click the glowies, exit the mission, reset it, and repeat). This exploit put the most extreme AE farm to shame, producing characters ready for SOs in ten or fifteen minutes.

[UltraAlt]

On 3/1/2023 at 12:14 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

It's definitely interesting to know the exact max distance for rewards. It seems a bit strange that although you can kill mobs at greater than that range and you are not rewarded, but I suppose there's almost no risk to you at that range in the first place.

 

@srmalloy

 

I think this was in the game almost from the get go on the streets in regard to team mates.

I think it was to prevent lower level characters from sitting at the tram while sidekicked and getting XP from kills from mentors/teams street sweeping in the same zone.

I alway found this a bit odd since you were able to do it inside of a door mission - that is to say, door sit and get credit for the work done by the rest of the team.

 

There was a real push to stop street sweeping altogether on live, which seemed pretty weird by the time holiday events rolled around which would cause even more server strain than street sweeping. I mean compare a team or two street sweeping in a zone to Halloween Event Leagues in Peregrine Island at Hotel 666.

 

I think what my tired mind is trying to getting at is that the "kills give credit" distance for the pets is the same as the "kills give credit" distance for a teammate. 

[UltraAlt]

On 7/3/2023 at 11:19 PM, srmalloy said:

 Jack Emmert, co-founder and chief creative officer, who oversaw the development of CoH,

 

.... and Champions Online (created based on the work already done for the Marvel Universe MMO that fell through), and DC Universe Online... and producer of Star Trek Online ... and a 2nd Marvel Universe MMO that fell through ...

He really, really wants to make a Marvel Universe MMO apparently.

 

It's pretty funny to me how tight CoH was and Homecoming is (rightfully so because of the pirate nature of its existence) of copyright infringement - when in DCUO there are Marvel name supergroups and Marvel named characters all over the place. DCUO online is practically Marvel Online except for the actual heroes and villains being NPCs in the game.