MiDs continues it's years long downhill slide

[BjorJlen]

17 hours ago, Snarky said:

so, MiDs tells me it needs to update i update

 

then it tells me errors are everywhere

 

i delete, reinstall "the latest"  which twlls me there is an update, but never actually updates, and the new sets are not in the program

 

 

Hey, sorry about your Mids problem good Vamp. I know for some it's a "pulling hair out" situation, so I can emphasize with you (though as you have no hair, you've already beaten them to the punch)...

   After following the instructions of just deleting the Mids folder itself and updating the DotNet 8.0 Desktop Runtime and DotNet Framework 4.8 files myself, it too works fine for me as well now. And fyi, updating those files is a lot easier than updating Mids these days, sad to say. It was a slight pain in the butt to do this, but if "I" can do it, I am sure after drinking a cup or two of warm blood, you'll be able to as well. I have faith in the Snaggletoothed one.

   Ohhh, and you are right though... looking at my Mids folder, I too do not have a Zip file within it either, just the MRBBootstrap.exe like you have, and it doesn't work for me at all to boot (Pun intended lol). So take a break from it, and come back to it when you are ready to (if ever), especially if the powers that be fix Mids with a new, improved, and easier working update. But keep the faith bud... This too shall pass... 🙂

 

"Nothing helps us build our perspective more than developing compassion for others." - T

[Hedgefund2]

My own approach to Mids is to wait weeks after an update to see what the word is among the player base.  If all is good, then download.  If not, keep using what you had.  My uses are simple, I just want to see final in-game numbers and check for rule of 5 violations, that kind of thing.  I've seen some people with "home grown" build planners that omitted doing these basic things and I'm not going to make that mistake.  I can get antsy when there's a major powers update, like this last one but for new sets I always take everything and slot SOs and by the time I'm ready to respec there's Mids stability.  So far.

[Apogee]

I just ran the install on my new laptop and had zero issues.  Sounds like there are some errant files or registry entries that are causing problems.

[Snarky]

19 minutes ago, Apogee said:

I just ran the install on my new laptop and had zero issues.  Sounds like there are some errant files or registry entries that are causing problems.

so you are saying the reason it is not working is because something is wrong?   interesting.  very interesting.

[Apogee]

10 minutes ago, Snarky said:

so you are saying the reason it is not working is because something is wrong?   interesting.  very interesting.

 

Well, first I am saying that a clean install works fine.  Second, I am saying look into your registry or the Mids file structures for any files or entries you may have missed.  Or just throw your hands in the air and give up.  

[Snarky]

7 minutes ago, Apogee said:

 

Well, first I am saying that a clean install works fine.  Second, I am saying look into your registry or the Mids file structures for any files or entries you may have missed.  Or just throw your hands in the air and give up.  

i have a few skills in unlife.  I can draw, paint, play basic guitar, use Calculus, play chess, speak a little German, drive heavy equipment, discuss philosophy, and a few other skills.

 

I am not good at socializing.  I am not good at whatever "look into your registry or the Mids file structures for any files or entries you may have missed" this is.

 

 

[Skyhawke]

It's probably just a loose nut on the keyboard causing the problem. 😇

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Slightly disingenuous considering it's a volunteer project run by people who have to build on what's gone before and collate their data from multiple sources.

 

Yes it can be periodically problematic but IMNSHO it's an invaluable took that helps me enjoy the main game immensely.

 

Patience young vampawan

 

Yeah, no, that's bullshit.  The databases aren't the reason Mids' has turned into a steaming heap.  It's everything else that they've been doing.  They fucked up the GUI in every way short of disabling it completely.  They switched to Edge Webview, which is ridiculously resource-intensive, in a push to redesign the foundation in a way that would allow them to pull power data directly from the game files, but after all of these years, they're still making entries and changing things manually.  And the way the program uses those databases remains unnecessarily complex in a pointless attempt to be a perfect copy of how the game works, yet instead of simplifying and streamlining, they keep making it worse.

 

There are bugs, like memory overflow crashes when you try to delete an entry in the database, and Mids' original misspelling of mutual as "mutal" that are still unaddressed despite all of the things they've been doing to "modernize" the program.  And functionality drops every time they do idiotic things like locking Uniques in a way that disallowed using them in the alternate build, and scrolling no longer working like it used to because they felt a pressing need to put an extra ten acres of empty goddamn space behind a scroll bar, and stats jumping all over the place in the info panel when you're trying to compare different powers.  Their attempt at redesigning the program threw away so many useful options and viable features, and we can't even work around the losses easily.

 

It's a fucking dumpster fire.  When it even works, it borders on unusable, and they made it uglier and less stable.  They took a functional program and fucked it up, and people have been patiently waiting for that to pay off.  Years later, it's still getting worse with every update.

 

Turning a good, useful tool into shit for free is still turning it into shit, and "they're volunteers" doesn't grant an exemption from criticism either.  They're fucking everything up, and have been for a long time.  Do not try to justify that, or tell us that we should smile, nod and let it go.

[jprewitt73]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

i have a few skills in unlife.  I can draw, paint, play basic guitar, use Calculus, play chess, speak a little German, drive heavy equipment, discuss philosophy, and a few other skills.

 

I am not good at socializing.  I am not good at whatever "look into your registry or the Mids file structures for any files or entries you may have missed" this is.

 

 

 

Honestly, pen and paper work just as well without having to deal with uninstalling/reinstalling/updating/checking discord/hoping for random Facebook posts to fix Mids. It's what I've been doing for a while now. 

 

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Slightly disingenuous considering it's a volunteer project run by people who have to build on what's gone before and collate their data from multiple sources.

 

 I get that it is a volunteer effort... but it is probably better to describe this as an amateur effort. This isn't meant to be insulting! I'd be an amateur myself if I tried to mess with the code (n the development side, although I have been paid for database design and GUI design/coding in another life). I've managed dozens of software development efforts, with budgets ranging from a few thousand dollars to nearly a million dollars... so from that PoV I think I can genuinely say that I'm unimpressed.

 

Since I long ago stopped using it, I'm not qualified to point at anything specific (see @Luminara post above, I guess) but from many years back I could see that MIDS was being really sloppy and resource-intensive... and (again, from long ago) I felt that the package should have been a lot more "local" and less reliant on requiring users to install development kits or .NET frameworks, or whatever. I'm capable of doing those things, but even in 2020 it felt like this was a losing battle (for me, obviously I can't speak for the folks messing with it).

 

2 hours ago, Hedgefund2 said:

 My uses are simple, I just want to see final in-game numbers and check for rule of 5 violations, that kind of thing.  I've seen some people with "home grown" build planners that omitted doing these basic things and I'm not going to make that mistake. 

 

I use a simple excel template where the only smart thing it does is count slots and add up whatever bonuses I want to track (Recharge, Accuracy, KB protection, whatever). I've somewhat internalized the enhancement values from the sets I typically use, and if forget (or don't know) the base values of a power I'll double-check City of Data against the game. It isn't providing anything like the functionality of MIDS (of any era) but it suits me.

 

The one thing I used MIDS for was from an earlier era of the game when I'd specifically try to optimize attack chains with timing and recharge effects... but in practice I found I couldn't really trust such numbers (except at ~50) so I kinda gave up shooting for perfect min-max attack chains. For some powers that I commonly use in different builds I've probably only got (at most) three different slotting choices (at level 50), each one solves a different 'problem' better than the other two choices.... so in many ways I've already constrained my build choices without need MIDS to convince me I've made the 'best' choice.

 

I am aware that I make one common 'mistake' (waste really) that a program like MIDS would help me minimize... I occasionally have overkill on slotted accuracy (+global accuracy, +ToHit)... but in practice this just means that I could change something like a single piece from Accuracy/Range to Damage/Range... and I figure this out from in-game testing instead of trusting the computer.

[Scarlet Shocker]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

 I get that it is a volunteer effort... but it is probably better to describe this as an amateur effort. This isn't meant to be insulting! I'd be an amateur myself if I tried to mess with the code (n the development side, although I have been paid for database design and GUI design/coding in another life). I've managed dozens of software development efforts, with budgets ranging from a few thousand dollars to nearly a million dollars... so from that PoV I think I can genuinely say that I'm unimpressed.

 

 

As you and others point out, it's imperfect. But as you have ably and eloquently also stated, nobody's under any obligation to use it.

 

Personally I'm a bit of a fan - it makes my life much easier to get the best out of my toons and enjoy the game to the max.

 

Are they amateurs? I do not know - I've no skin in the game other than as a user but I've always found the team responsive, helpful and appreciative of any input I've given them. But it's worth pointing out that a massive chunk of this project is run by amateur volunteers who give us a great gift and countless hours of joy. Mids and the team behind that are part of that joy in my book.

 

Perhaps they need some particular skilz that they're lacking - if you have such, why not volunteer your services? (Not aimed at you personally but anyone who can do wrodecangling)

 

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

Yeah, no, that's bullshit.  The databases aren't the reason Mids' has turned into a steaming heap.  It's everything else that they've been doing.  They fucked up the GUI in every way short of disabling it completely.  They switched to Edge Webview, which is ridiculously resource-intensive, in a push to redesign the foundation in a way that would allow them to pull power data directly from the game files, but after all of these years, they're still making entries and changing things manually.  And the way the program uses those databases remains unnecessarily complex in a pointless attempt to be a perfect copy of how the game works, yet instead of simplifying and streamlining, they keep making it worse.

 

There are bugs, like memory overflow crashes when you try to delete an entry in the database, and Mids' original misspelling of mutual as "mutal" that are still unaddressed despite all of the things they've been doing to "modernize" the program.  And functionality drops every time they do idiotic things like locking Uniques in a way that disallowed using them in the alternate build, and scrolling no longer working like it used to because they felt a pressing need to put an extra ten acres of empty goddamn space behind a scroll bar, and stats jumping all over the place in the info panel when you're trying to compare different powers.  Their attempt at redesigning the program threw away so many useful options and viable features, and we can't even work around the losses easily.

 

It's a fucking dumpster fire.  When it even works, it borders on unusable, and they made it uglier and less stable.  They took a functional program and fucked it up, and people have been patiently waiting for that to pay off.  Years later, it's still getting worse with every update.

 

Turning a good, useful tool into shit for free is still turning it into shit, and "they're volunteers" doesn't grant an exemption from criticism either.  They're fucking everything up, and have been for a long time.  Do not try to justify that, or tell us that we should smile, nod and let it go.

 

Feel free to come up with something better

[Andreah]

I try not to use it. I'll be charitable and say the UI is 'counterintuitive', and on a native 4k monitor, it's too small to read. Fortunately, a player can get perfectly fine performance out of a build put together organically. 

Edited Thursday at 08:31 PM by Andreah

[Skyhawke]

I still use it regularly, but every so often it will crap the cradle and just refuse to work after an "update". I've uninstalled and reinstalled it a lot. So far, it keeps reinstalling and working afterwards, but I've seen some wonky errors crop up. I don't think I've ever had to get rid of folders or hidden files, just uninstall and reinstall. Now, I'm going to ask a question and it's meant to be absolutely serious (I do that occasionally) and not a smart ass remark. So, here goes: Did you turn it off and on again? I know, I know, but we all know that a good reboot fixes a lot of crap. I'm sure you have, but humor me.

[Snarky]

6 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

Yeah, no, that's bullshit.  The databases aren't the reason Mids' has turned into a steaming heap.  It's everything else that they've been doing.  They fucked up the GUI in every way short of disabling it completely.  They switched to Edge Webview, which is ridiculously resource-intensive, in a push to redesign the foundation in a way that would allow them to pull power data directly from the game files, but after all of these years, they're still making entries and changing things manually.  And the way the program uses those databases remains unnecessarily complex in a pointless attempt to be a perfect copy of how the game works, yet instead of simplifying and streamlining, they keep making it worse.

 

There are bugs, like memory overflow crashes when you try to delete an entry in the database, and Mids' original misspelling of mutual as "mutal" that are still unaddressed despite all of the things they've been doing to "modernize" the program.  And functionality drops every time they do idiotic things like locking Uniques in a way that disallowed using them in the alternate build, and scrolling no longer working like it used to because they felt a pressing need to put an extra ten acres of empty goddamn space behind a scroll bar, and stats jumping all over the place in the info panel when you're trying to compare different powers.  Their attempt at redesigning the program threw away so many useful options and viable features, and we can't even work around the losses easily.

 

It's a fucking dumpster fire.  When it even works, it borders on unusable, and they made it uglier and less stable.  They took a functional program and fucked it up, and people have been patiently waiting for that to pay off.  Years later, it's still getting worse with every update.

 

Turning a good, useful tool into shit for free is still turning it into shit, and "they're volunteers" doesn't grant an exemption from criticism either.  They're fucking everything up, and have been for a long time.  Do not try to justify that, or tell us that we should smile, nod and let it go.

they are the experts, i am sure they know what they are doing.

[Troo]

12 hours ago, Luminara said:

It's a fucking dumpster fire.  When it even works, it borders on unusable, and they made it uglier and less stable.  They took a functional program and fucked it up, and people have been patiently waiting for that to pay off.  Years later, it's still getting worse with every update.

 

Turning a good, useful tool into shit for free is still turning it into shit, and "they're volunteers" doesn't grant an exemption from criticism either.  They're fucking everything up, and have been for a long time.  Do not try to justify that, or tell us that we should smile, nod and let it go.

 

Watch out.. Lumi is back from 'vacation' and coming in hot!!

[Maelwys]

 

20 hours ago, Snarky said:

could not find that  found this, which seemed open a;ready.  i "ran" it.  nothing happened

 

still cannot get it to do latest update  

 

MRBBootstrap.exe 2.41 MB · 4 downloads

  

19 hours ago, BjorJlen said:

looking at my Mids folder, I too do not have a Zip file within it either, just the MRBBootstrap.exe like you have, and it doesn't work for me at all to boot

FWIW: If you're checking for updates within Mids, and it tells you that there's an update available but nothing happens whenever you press the go button to download/install it... then there's very likely something up with your Bootstrapper.

Check your Windows Application Event Log (Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application).

Chances are that there'll be an entry in it that looks like this:

Faulting application name: MRBBootstrap.exe, version: 1.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x6854594d
Faulting module name: MSVCP140.dll, version: 14.29.30133.0, time stamp: 0x60ff28cc
Exception code: 0xc0000005

If so, then the issue is that the Bootstrapper (which is a separate application within the Mids folder that is only used to download and install updates) is erroring out because your PC doesn't have the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable installed. Download it at https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe then install, reboot, and retry.
(there are are alternative downloads of that distributable at https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x86.exe for 32-bit devices and https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.arm64.exe if you're running on a ARM64 device... but most folk here will likely want the x64 one!)

 

Lums is 100% correct in that Mids has now gotten to the point where even the devs are apparently having a hard time keeping track of just what you need to properly run it.
 

[Ukase]

I'm fortunate in that mids works for me. Still, I learn things about how to use it fairly often. 

That said, the numbers are what they are. In game, most of us can discern that we're using too much endurance (or not recovering enough - and those 2 issues are not quite the same thing) or we're getting hit too much and/or too hard. And it's not that hard to address those issues. Mids is kind of like a nice to have thing, but it's certainly not mandatory. 

For me, the biggest thing is the damage output or tracking max HP, or some other attribute I'm aiming to get as high on the character as I can and still have it be able to function. 

 

If I can't use it, I'll just have an excuse to not get bogged down with the numbers. 

[Luminara]

On 7/24/2025 at 4:07 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

Feel free to come up with something better

 

I did.  Use an old, working version and edit the database yourself.

[Luminara]

13 hours ago, Troo said:

Watch out.. Lumi is back from 'vacation' and coming in hot!!

 

If you're implying that I was banned, I wasn't.  I was bored, then I was fighting fascism and digging graves, and now I'm here again.  I do step outside of this place once in a while.

[Sovera]

Bit harsh a tone for something given free and that on top of everything else involving volunteers doing volunteer work they still have to spelunk the code and rely on players to find and implement changes. Because somehow they are still a project apart rather than part and parcel of HC.

 

And yeah, it sounds like I'm licking boots, but without Mids we would have no alternative. So that they keep swimming upstream to keep on delivering ought to be met with joy rather than grumbles because it's not perfect.

[Snarky]

40 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Bit harsh a tone for something given free and that on top of everything else involving volunteers doing volunteer work they still have to spelunk the code and rely on players to find and implement changes. Because somehow they are still a project apart rather than part and parcel of HC.

 

And yeah, it sounds like I'm licking boots, but without Mids we would have no alternative. So that they keep swimming upstream to keep on delivering ought to be met with joy rather than grumbles because it's not perfect.

As Luminara gave a detailed explanation about, and I will sum up my understanding...

 

They had a Working MiDs.  They made major changes.  ALL OF WHICH MADE IT WORSE.

 

Yes, they are volunteers.  Hooray?!?

 

 

[golstat2003]

On 7/23/2025 at 6:50 PM, Octogoat said:

It's working fine for me... (Please don't throw me out of the window I'll cry)

sure, we would never throw you out a window

 

(sharpens long butcher knife in the back room. . . For . . . Reasons. . . )

 

😈

[High_Beam]

I am the guy who gets tossed out the window cause it works fine for me and I have had maybe one problem with in in years.

 

[Ghost]