AmazingMOO

Every so often, there's a change to the game that instigates a wave of respecs. The most recent, of course, is the change to the Fitness pool. Some players have literally dozens of characters to respec after such changes.

Some players even fear or dread the respec process because it's easy to get confused or make mistakes. Undertaking a respec shouldn't be something that a player does with no consideration, but the process itself is often so stressful that players who should use it fail to do so.

I've personally been listening to friends and teammates as they've been respeccing since i19 came out and have heard a few key requests over and over again. These are usually in the form of 'I wish the game did x'.

- Respecs, Enhancement Management, and the Costume Editor shouldn't hide your chat bars

- You should be able to save your progress in the middle of a respec and return to it later without committing.

- The game should output a list of your build order-- what powers you took at what level and what slots you took at what level, and possibly even what enhancements you have in which slots. Titan Sentinel is currently filling this need, but in the past players have either had to keep track of this themselves or reverse engineer it.

- The respec should not rearrange all the powers and macro buttons in a player's power tray.

- If a player is happy with a respec they've done on the test server, they should be able to import it without going through the entire build process.

(The simplest way I personally can think of for this to happen is, again, the game to export a list of your current build. It would also import the same kind of list to 'automatically' spec a character if the list is 'legal' in terms of selection order. This also opens the door to allow 3rd party planning utilities like Mid's to create the same kind of list.)

- The various different kinds of respec tokens can be confusing. Jack Wolfe and Arbiter Lupin should act as 'Respec' assistants. They should explain the differences between the different tokens, allow the player to choose which token they're going to use, Veteran, Earned or Free, and possibly offer some help dialogue about respecs-- particularly on how to copy the character to the test server. Jack Wolfe is easy enough to reach for all heroes, but Arbiter Lupin is in a somewhat harder area. Additional respec assistants could be added to other easy-to-reach places like Pocket D's Tiki Lounge, the Port Oakes Arena, or even Oroborous.

We've already seen at least one modern fortunata inserted as a sybil into Sister Solaris' enclave. It'd make all kinds of sense to have a Fortunata dressed as a 'Red' sybil there. Likewise, the Hero Corps rep could have the toga and sandals outfit in blue and grey, with the HC symbol as a pin on top rather than as an emblem across the chest of the standard tights.

The Midnighter greeter is somewhat more appropriate as an anachronism since he's supposed to greet the new time travelers and explain what's going on. He could even point out the disguised service NPCs.

Whither the noble RN, purveyor of potions, medicines, and other inspirations? In Paragon City she's been sighted in the many small hospitals that cater to heroes, handing out her multi-colored power-candy.

In the various hazardous areas, she's known as the 'Combat Medic' and wears dandy new tech armor to go with her dangerous new job. Lest any be confused, it's red and white to accent the traditional 'Candystriper' epithet.

In ancient Cimerora, the modern medecinier masquerades as one of the village healers, handing out mundane medicine that must surely seem magical to th... WHAT THE CRAP?!?!

The description for the blaster version of Shockwave reads as so:

Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Smashing/Energy), Foe Knockback, -Res(All)

The description for the defender version reads:

Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Smashing/Energy), Foe Knockback

Neither lists -Res in the detailed info, nor do they seem to general a visible debuff indicator.

Several different people in different locations, including myself, are experiencing pretty severe lag on Victory. It's in different zones, including instances.

My netgraph bar is a forest of tall yellow spikes, and I'm just hanging out in PI in front of Portal Corps.

Are we having network hardware issues, perhaps?

Since the most recent patch, I've been hearing one thing over and over again:

"Trapdoor is impossible now."

Of course he isn't. He's not even hard as an elite boss goes, but he highlights in very specific terms what's possibly a new development direction, or perhaps even a new encounter theme for City of Heroes.

Out of curiosity, I took some, shall we say, very specifically optimized characters to fight him solo. These are characters that are slotted to the extreme end for teaming, including a sonic/sonic defender, an ice/ice blaster, and a dark/ss tank. In each case I was able to defeat Trapdoor with no temporary powers.

The difference between being able to fight him successfully and not being able to defeat him boiled down to two things: I was willing to think about how the encounter worked and was then willing to do what was necessary to beat him. It doesn't sound hard. The mission gives you all kinds of hints and clues as to what's needed, so it wasn't very hard to actually do, either.


The wonderful Apex Taskforce is another example of this new theme. In the second mission, players are given some broad visual clues as to what's needed to survive and then defeat the arch-villain at the end.

The reactions of players to those clues has ranged the gamut. Some people outright ignore them and are then frustrated that they can't win by the tired old rotes they're used to.

Some people misinterpret them dramatically. For example, I've seen more than one taskforce leader demand that players not fly during the encounter. Why? Because, 'it makes the death patches appear in the air where you can't see them to avoid them when they kill everything below them'.

AOE spheres be damned. Battle Maiden's death patches have become 'columns of death' that can reach from floor to ceiling.

Of course not only is misinformation spreading faster than a bootless truth, but the encounter is singling out those who lack an understanding of how certain parts of the game works.

Those who understand or are willing to learn about how the game works, however, and are also willing to take a look at the encounter as something that requires thought and action they may not be used to are quickly finding themselves with the 'Already Dead' badge and some other fun shinies.


"You are NOT gonna win this fight by standing still and clicking your power buttons over and over again. You're gonna THINK and you're gonna MOVE, or you're going to lose."


Good job, Devs. I appreciate the fun new content. And kudos to the players who get it!

David,

One of the things that just eats me alive is lack of footwear. It just crawls all up and down my back to see the boots the Carnies and circle succubi wear and knowing that I can't put those on my own characters.

(I saw someone else mention Carnie masks. I'd love to have a similar, but untextured mask.)

Crey office-ladies get a variation of the heels texture without the strap around the ankle. I'd love to have that variation available.

I like fighting EBs and EB-scaled AVs. I'm really pleased that we have the option to see them over and over again via the wonders of oroborous.

But... Mender Ramiel's arc is a one shot, I guess due to the reward at the end.

Would you guys be so kind as to do something like what was done with the Warwolf whistle to make it so that the arc can be redone by those interested in fighting the enemies?

Apparently, if you have a mixed team of any kind when attempting to enter the Winter Realm, you get immediately booted and never get to fight the Winter Lord in his icy realm of segregation.

Be advised.

Recently, the conversation in game turned to the 'And they WONDER why all the villains are coming blueside!' conversation that we've all heard a few times by now.

I quietly admitted that I was considering bringing my brute back to the Blue side. Again. Now that I CAN do heroic content I find myself not really caring about doing the villainous content.

This prompted me to think about what I enjoyed about the Red-side game. And what I really like my villainous characters to do is steal stuff. I enjoy the missions that are thefts and base invasions to jack some artifact or superweapon. I enjoy mayhem missions. I really enjoyed the recent holiday tip mission to steal the Malleus Mundi.

I really enjoyed a certain arc by the renowned Mr. Gagne, an author I'd been keeping up with before he started doing CoH AE arcs.

The arc in question is "The Do-It-Yourself Casino Heist Project by @Twoflower Arc ID: 404549". It details a Hollywood-blockbuster style overplanned heist that goes wrong, with quite a bit of Mr. Gagne's signature humor thrown in.

Villainous content doesn't *have* to be all violence and destruction, murder, ****, and toruture. It doesn't *have* to be 'really hero content'. It can be fun, audacious, and epic while still being exciting and lighthearted.

I know that there are quite a few villains out there who really have problem with the villainous content being not dark enough for them. However, I'd rather there were more arcs that put the player in the position of Danny Ocean or Jack Sparrow instead of Calligula or Hannibal Lecter.

The problem I have with Paragon-Earth Penny being Vanessa's daughter is that Paragon Vanessa has always been shown to be pretty far to the right on the Kinsey scale-- she seems to prefer women almost exclusively and treats men as inanimate objects. It's not impossible for such a person to have a child, but the circumstances under which she would do so and then not want to keep the child are a little troubling.

Did Vanessa and Wu get smashed at the same party and have an 'Oh hell, what did I wake up next to?!' morning? That's about the best scenario I can think of.

In game, it's kind of hinted around that Wu Yin really doesn't want to discuss Penny's birth or her mother. The conception in and of itself could certainly be played for laughs, but the complete absence of a pregnancy, birth, and all the other complications that would see Wu Yin raise Penny from Vanessa's backstory seems like a HUGE omission to just retcon in.


There have, of course, been far worse retcons. I'm gonna call shenanigans if it's not handled with at least a little believability, though. It'd almost be more believable if Penny was the daughter of Praetorian Vanessa or another dimension's Vanessa. Heck, the two Pennys could be twins, even.

Since i19 hit, I've seen quite a few players complaining about issues that boil down to game and network stability. I've also been personally affected by some of these same issues.

- 'Inspiration Lag'. -- I and Mrs. Moo have been affected by this. I've seen it happen to other players. Basically, either the game client or network connection between the client and server is losing commands to use inspirations. The inspiration may even appear to be used before popping back into the tray. This is especially noticeable on the new Praetorian Lab maps and when masterminds give inspirations to pets.

I recently watched an experienced team leader die because the game wouldn't accept his use of green inspirations. He wasn't under any kind of status effect; he was just trying to hold agro in a situation with a little more damage than his powers would allow for and was prepared for it, if not for the game's failure. I personally died while stunned on a taskforce despite pounding breakfrees and green inspirations. The game simply never got around to accepting that I was using those breakfrees.


- Frequent crashing to desktop -- Since i19, the game has become significantly more prone to crashing for myself, Mrs. Moo, and all the players I've spoken to. The most common crash is a simple quick exit to desktop with no other symptoms. I've also heard players complain of the typical 'Sound Loop' crash we all know so well, especially in crowded areas. On a recent Rikti Mothership raid, I overheard more than one player warn their group that 'I've got looping sounds and am about to crash.' or something similar.

Since the massive upswing in level 50 TFs, I've seen that it's pretty much expected that at least one person will disconnect per mission.


- Post-TF Market Crash -- One of the best ways to ENSURE a crash is to spend an hour or so on a full team and then go immediately to Wentworth's or the Black Market and attempt to start trading. I heard players complaining about this even before issue 19 was released, but have experienced it several times myself since.


- User-Interface Lag -- This has been a problem since before issue 19 as well, but has become very noticeable after due to the upswing in taskforces and raids. For any kind of power with a long recharge, the user interface becomes significantly de-synchronized with the server on crowded maps. Powers in your tray will show that they're ready to be used even if they're not recharged yet due to a slow server response. Buffs or debuffs show that they're active when not, and vice versa. The infamous 'Mountain Pass' map is the single best place to experience this effect, but I've also seen it during the 4th mission of the same Imperious Taskforce, during Rikti Mothership raids, in the Hive during a Hamidon raid, during Lady Grey's taskforce, especially in the Abyss map and on the last map, and any number of places during Dr. Khan's taskforce, even after the map has been cleared of enemies.

In most cases, this appears to be a problem with the map or enemies on the map since the issue doesn't affect some similarly-sized maps from other taskforces (I've had no such lag on Statesman's taskforce).


- Disappearing Game Geometry -- This is another long-standing issue, but one that's become significantly more noticeable since i19 launched. In certain maps, vast parts of the rooms will disappear and hide any enemies standing there. This is most noticeable in the last mission of Lady Grey's taskforce in the portal room where Herodotus and Honoree appear, but I've also seen it affect the Thorn Tree room and parts of Cimerora's 'Imperial Plaza' map.


These problems are fairly common, and some of them are longstanding, but with the new emphasis on level 50 content introduced with issue 19, they've become exacerbated and are growing more and more frustrating.

It's time for a 'stability' pass on code for both the game client and sever. Please review as much of the game's infrastructure as possible to make it more stable and responsive, especially for teams of eight on an instanced map.

Spoilers ahead:










During Mender Ramiel's arc, you'll be sent to take a certain item from Trapdoor. He lives in the Council map that's used at the end of the Ernie Hess taskforce. You go down lots of shoots and then go to where the giant MechMan USED to be on a platform in the middle of the lava.

During the fight, you'll receive messages that Trapdoor has Bifurcated and is regenerating himself. Each Trapdoor Bifurcation that spawns substantially boosts the original's regen.

There are a few ways to take him down while solo. He's not got a very high damage output and is relatively squishy as EBs go. His ability to boost his regen is really his only real strength.

Method 1. Knockback - The best and most reliable method I've found for keeping him from spawning Bifurcations is to knock him around like a pinball. He goes down like a line of dominoes if you keep him on his butt. Lots of folks seem to dislike knockback for some strange reason.

Method 2. -Regen -Regen debuffs like Twilight significantly reduce his ability to heal, even with bifurcations around him. He'll go down pretty steadily if you can get these dbuffs on him.

Method 3. Line of Sight The Bifurcations don't move around a lot, but if you can keep Trapdoor moving after you where his Bifurcations can't see him, they can't boost his regen.

Method 4. Lava Lava damages Trapdoor quite a bit. If you pour on your own damage while he's standing on it, you can frequently overcome his regen if he only has one or two Bifurcations around him.

Method 5. Hallway If none of the above work for you, try pulling him out into the hallway. He'll still spawn bifurcations, but they'll usually appear out in the main room instead of in the hallway with you. If they do appear in the hallway, take them out quickly and get back to your main target.

As the City of Heroes game world grows more complex and new systems are added to the game, the user interface has grown to compensate. There has been a continual effort by the development staff to clean up the more problematic areas of the client, but the fact remains that there is a LOT of cruft in the UI, some of it dating back to beta or before. There's a lot of crap simply in the wrong place. As much as I hate the fact that it would take away from development of content, there needs to be a revision and a replacement of some of the window elements. As evidenced by the release of i19, the interface itself is starting to confuse players, and that's not a good thing.


Most of the main windows 'Branch' off the Health/Level Bar and open up sub-windows of their own. Some, but not all of these windows are available from the 'Menu' menu. This is pretty counter-intuitive and leaves some players trying to figure out to navigate their way to the window they want. It was somewhat manageable when the interface was new. Now that we've added to it a bit, it's a maze.

The chat window can have up to 5 open windows, all of which can be subdivided into topper and lower halves, and can be given many tabs containing chat channels. However, only the first chat window can attach to the team window.

Enhancement items get a bar to themselves. Inspirations get a box to themselves. Every other kind of drop goes into the recipe or salvage window, which is a tabbed interface.

Enhancement management, Costume Editing, Supergroup Settings, and Bio Registration all get their own subscreens. Everything else comes up windowed-- including the Base Editor and the Architect editor.

Global Chat management happens in TWO places. The moderator interface is under 'friends', but channel search happens by right-clicking the chat window and selecting it from the context menu there. Neither of these is in the main 'Menu' menu.

Pet Controls, Recipes, Salvage, Combat Attributes, and Incarnate Abilities are also not accessible from the main menu. Pets branch off the Team window, for some reason.

The three 'starting' macro bars in the Tray window cannot be reshaped or torn apart like the additional floating macro bars. Some players deal with this by closing the tray entirely and stacking three or more floating bars there. However, you lose the ability to see when your various inventories are full without having them open.

The Powers window itself is a mess within a mess. You can't actually activate powers from within the powers window. Clicking on a power slots it in a tray slot if one is available. Most Primary and Secondary power sets have nine powers in them. They each get their own column. Day Job Powers, Accolades, Temporary Powers, Incarnate Powers, Inherent Powers, Inherent Fitness, Pool Powers, and Ancillary Powers all get crammed into the third column. Scrolling through this column can easily cause the two 'main' power sets to scroll out of the window-- which is not resizeable at all. Even if you regularly use Temps, they tend to stack up. A few of them are semi-permanent, like the alignment powers. Inherents also tend to stack up thanks to booster packs and vet rewards. It's entirely possible to have more than two dozen inherents.

The visual queues given by the various 'Branch Points' are pretty inconsistent. The branch points for the Inspiration and Enhancements bars turn green if they're open and red if they're full. The branch point for 'Powers' works similarly, but the other two branch points, Salvage, and Recipes do not. They'll turn red if they're full, but never green. The branch points on the chat window work similarly, but not quite the same. 'Team', 'Friends', 'Super', and 'Email' turn green if those windows are open. Email turns red if you have ANY email, read or not.

The new interface for incarnate abilities looks superficially like it's going to continue the 'craft a button and drop it into a slot' metaphor that the rest of the game uses. However it doesn't really do that. It gives you a 'create' button, but doesn't have any kind of drag and drop capability.


I have a few suggestions for cleaning this all up.

The first thing I'd do is move the various subscreens into windows. Not only does it make the design more consistent, but it allows the player to use the rest of the client while accessing the features in that subscreen. Players don't lose the ability to see NPCs or their chat windows while combining or slotting enhancements.

The place where this may prove the most difficult is the costume editor. There's a metric ton going on in the costume editor and as City of Heroes' 'Hook' feature, it really does *deserve* to be a full-screen thing. However, give players the option of bringing up at least the 2D UI over the top of it, as they can with the base editor. This will allow players who enjoy editing their costumes to spend more time in the costume editor without missing chat from friends, super groups, or global channels.

Second, I'd do a bit to rationalize the way the various windows are accessed. Even if the branch points are retained, all windows should all be accessible from a main menu. Rather than retaining the various branch points, I suggest re-working the menu system altogether so that it groups the various windows thematically. For example, a 'Chat' menu could bring up 'Main Chat', 'New Chat Window', *'Email', 'Channel Search', 'Channel Management' and 'Friends'.

Keeping or adding options to open these windows in right-click context menus is not a bad idea either.

The Powers Window is the place where the most work needs to be done, in my opinion. First, it should really be moved into a tabbed interface, like the other windows with a myriad of options. The 'All' tab would certainly still be useful, but having tabs for 'Primary', 'Secondary', 'Temporary', etc... would make it a lot easier to manage. When shown in the 'All' tab, I'd personally like to see a tree view similar to the recipe interface that shows the Power Button, a brief description of what the power does, and then buttons to activate, slot it, or get detailed information on it. Information about when you took the power or how many slots it had would make respeccing easier as well, something players have been asking for.

Something like:

I *believe* in taking fitness on a character only if it fits the concept. A martial artist who trains daily is going to have increased stamina and health. A sorcerer who wields magic-- not so much. Accordingly, I currently slot for endurance usage and take advantage of the various recovery bonuses available through IOs on most of my characters.

However, in a short amount of time, that will all be moot. The concept of 'Endurance Management' goes out the window and the newly re-retooled Inherent Fitness Pool is here to stay.

Unlike many of you, I'll only have a handful of characters who need to respec around inherent fitness. Most of my characters will simply have a handful of new slots in which to drop a single IO. I've embraced the change and have been working for Numina's, Miracle, and Performance Shifter procs to drop in to place when the day arrives. (Tuesday, maybe?)

Interestingly, I've still run into a few odd situations with my respecs:

- My Cold/Dark defender has a Miracle proc slotted in Frostwork. I've mentioned to teammates that this is to 'keep me honest' so that I hand out Frostwork as often as possible. Reworking my defender's build to move that Miracle over into Inherent Health has left me genuinely worrying about changes I might make or need to make to my playstyle.

- My archery/psi blaster has a Numina's proc in Drain Psyche. It's otherwise slotted with Numina's and Efficacy Adapter for Franken-slotted fun. Breaking up the set of Numina's, however, will leave me without the 12% regeneration bonus having a pair of them grants. I'm either going to have to work in another Numina's IO or rethink my slotting entirely.

- Likewise, my Dark/Invulnerability scrapper has a Numina's proc in Siphon Life. She's also heavily optimized for 'Necromancer' type play-- depending on taps and drains for a great deal of her survivability. While moving the Numina's to Inherent Health, my initial testing showed that she still gets some distance out of it that play style. Still, I'm not entirely sure that having inherent fitness won't make it rather redundant. I'm going to have to test several builds before I come to a conclusion one way or the other.


If you're speccing from a fitnessless build to a build with inherent fitness, what difficulties have you run in to?

- Crey in Founders' Falls have Nemesis dialogue and Nemesis snipers backing them up.

- Nemesis in PI have Crey snipers backing them up rather than Nemesis snipers.

- Seeing costume pieces that clip badly against the body of the model, when the number one excuse we're given for not allowing certain costume combos is 'clipping issues'.

- Fire effects on Superspeed. I'd have more SS character if I could ditch the 'burning' it creates. (Some day, via pool customization. *sigh*)

- Likewise, the bright white glow of Temp Invulnerability in the Blaster epic pool ruins the power for me since it can't fit in with the other effects. Please make Pool and Epic customization happen SOON.

- At 40, you can get many missions in PI that instruction you to fight Carnines *in* Peregrine island.. They are 3 possible spawn locations in the 'yellow' area of the zone where Carnies appear at 44 or below: On the two freight ships, under a wooden roof, and behind a hotel. These are still pretty suicidal to level 40s.

- The game has opaque tights, fishnets, but no sheer hosiery, despite other sheer pieces in the creator*

- Skin color bleeds through 'Tops with Skin' and 'Bottoms with Skin' colors, making them not quite match other pieces. (/bugged many times.)

- Flying down after falling *decreases* your velocity.

- Moving the camera up or down changes the direction your character is flying.

- The 3rd Person camera cannot be panned. It always points at your character's head.

- Zoning into your base while the map server is shutting down the instance gives you 'MapServerShuttingDown' error and closes the client rather than simply failing to zone.

- Charged temporary powers like the Revolver and St. Louis Slammer don't stack when you craft them more than once.

- The 'Cleavage' mark on the Bridal pieces makes female characters, especially those without a lot of cleavage, look like they have a dirty chest.

- Female Chest Details don't conform to the shape of the breasts.

- The Oroborous portal can only be summoned while on the ground.

- Players who are attempting to use a long animation teleport are interrupted by players using the O-portal.

- Carnival Illusionists can attack while phased. Honestly, I have a lot of problems with Phase Shift. I'd like it to work a lot differently.

- Reinforcing your morality drops any tip clues.

- The powers window has one colum, for primary one column for secondary, and the one column for temporary powers, inherent powers, pool powers, ancillary powers, accolade powers, and day job powers, Most column As and Bs have a max of 9 powers. Column Cs can climb above 60 powers easily. (At least they don't automatically scroll As and Bs off the screen any more!)

- Powers cannot be activated from the powers menu.

- Badges cannot be sorted alphabetically.

- Combat Attributes, Pet Controls, the Enhancement Management screen, and (coming soon) the Incarnate Slot management screen cannot be accessed via the menu. Rather they are clickable text labels on other windows.

- Chat cannot be seen in the Enhancement Management screen or the costume designer.

I'm not usually one for sharing any kind of information online, but this is honestly pretty darn slick. Good job.

Okay, the servers are going to be in the U.S.... in the same data center with the U.S. servers. Yet only EU accounts can access EU Servers and US accounts can access U.S. servers.

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh... *tsk*

It seems like the EU guys are really happy about this, but from an IT perspective it sounds pretty dumb, why not just give 'em the whole steak rather than a bone and let 'em access the US servers if'n they want? I'll even go so far as to say EU account holders could have exclusive access to the EU servers.

For me, Superheroes have always been about multiculturalism, so seeing a German, French, or UK SGs running around on my server would be a wonderful thing.

I'm really quite satisfied with the Origins Pack and feel like it was worth the $10.

Iron Rose: My MA/Regen Scrapper on Victory is using the Leaves aura to fit her status as a person who's become a fertility figure via science rather than nature. I'd like to anchor it lower on her body, but it still looks very good.

Holly Star: My Energy/Energy blaster switched from the starburst glow to the Atomic aura around her fists. Holly's powers work by creating microscopic wormholes to teleport energy into her body. The teleportation is supposed to generate blue-tinted Cherenkov radiation. I also wanted to give it a curling affect to make it reminiscent of particle traces. The atomic aura accomplishes this quite nicely.

Glaice: My Cold/Dark defender is an ancient fairy witch from far northern Europe. She'll be getting the Cloak of the Eighth Circle as soon as I can get her back to FF to turn in her Nemesis helmets to Carson.