Zombie Man
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Posts
10412 -
Joined
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Triple slot Tarpatch and Hasten for Recharge. There, Tar Patch for each spawn.
Pull spawns onto Tarpatch with Darkest Night.
Stand there and spam Twilight Grasp with it's new enlarged AoE to keep pets alive as they eat the foes.
Winning! -
The neighborhood boundaries are marked on your map. Additionally, there will be a system announcement when you enter a neighborhood. You have to kill them in that neighborhood they're supposed to be killed in.
You often find what your looking for on the borders of neighborhoods. And if they're not actually in the neighborhood, pull them in. -
Quote:It was put in to stop me.Originally Posted by The_Masque
Bascially if someone aggros him then trys to run away by going out the door ... or over the wall= instant fail.
I am sure they put this in to stop people from trying to pull him out and around the outside to get the master badges.
In pre-Beta, I pulled him over the wall and none of the adds followed. There, beat up Marauder without worrying about the extras. The Devs promptly made that a YOU FAIL! condition. -
Incarnate Slots are introducing basically 5 new Powers for each of your Toons.
Even for the solo-only casual player, after a few months, they'll be able to unlock and slot the first tier of all 5 powers. So, think about that. Solo-only casual player able to unlock 5 new Powers. Pretty friendly, unless, of course, if one expects to have all the Powers of the Universe at their disposal through limited play. To have more, you have to invest more. To expect solo-only casual players to be top tier is unrealistic.
To those who are casual Team players. They can expect to unlock and slot the first Tier in about a week or two, even hitting second Tier or third Tier rather easily. Solo-only players who are *hard core* could probably do the same.
But what about that rarefied fourth Tier? Well that's meant for hard core players who Team. It will take them even at full-out grinding about a week to get there. And, most probably, they have several 50s to work on. So, this is months of activity even for them to "do it all."
The idea here is that initial entry is relatively easy. But further progression in each slot is exponentially more difficulty. This gives access to the casual and a goal to the hard core.
The problem is when people who limit their play as only being casual or only being solo-only expect to have access to the same reward as people who put in tons more time and effort.
That being said, there *could* be another path for hard-core solo-only, but, this being an MMO, the first path to be worked on is Massive Multi-player. -
And that is why on Leagues I lead, we do the Turrets before the courtyard because:
1. I don't want anyone to open the courtyard door giving Marauder a chance to leave and the trial to fail.
2. People remember to do the turrets before going into the building. It's easy once you clear the courtyard to forget about turrets. -
How far are you along for the crash-the-server 50 times badge?
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Quote:On the Warehouse map, after you hit the southernmost location, if you go west, as the map shows, you'll be going through the elevator shafts... don't... IT'S A TRAP!!! (i.e., difficult to navigate).Originally Posted by Rylas
Instead, after hitting the southernmost cache, backtrack north and take the first left, heading west and pick up the path there and you'll be golden. -
Quote:Here..Originally Posted by Stormclaw
That said, I would be very curious to hear more about why it's supposed to be so difficult. I'm not trying to be overly critical, I admit I have little idea how their engine works under the hood, but I'm just curious. I'm a programmer and designer myself with experience in OpenGL/D3D coding, networking, game engine design, etc etc. The fact that there are so many powers in this game, the majority of them colorable in some fashion, makes it seem strange that there'd be a handful of powers that are so hardcoded that they can't be touched at all. If it were merely a problem of the textures being pre-colored orange or whatever, that wouldn't be any trouble at all to greyscale them out and add a tintable flag, so I can only assume there's some kind of more low-level problem, like perhaps separate ordered lists of tintable and non-tintable power IDs that would be thrown out of whack if any of them were changed... I dunno. Would be interesting to learn more though, as unlikely as that'd be.
Quote:Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
It's already been said, but close to a year and a half after the feature was green-light. I couldn't tell you how exactly much of that period of time went into actual work on power customization. It was more start-stop as the tech was created around it, and we had to work on content for other issues. But, I believe our first working prototype powers were for Fire Blast and according to the revision history, that goes back as far as 5/15/2008.
There was also time spent on creating and refining tools and scripts to process the monstrous amount of data before we even dug in and started manipulating that data by hand. One of our programmers wrote a python script that parsed through power definitions, collected all of the animation/FX scripts associated with each power, dug in those and found all of the FX scripts and all of the particle scripts, copied everything over to a separate location (where they could be changed without affecting the original FX/Particle scripts), and renamed/relinked all of these things. That script alone made this feature possible. It took me literally about a week to manually prepare a single powerset consisting of 9 powers while the script could crunch through an entire Archetype in a matter of minutes.
Ultimately, we ended up with 1,200+ customizable powers (counting duplicates across multiple ATs), 2400+ FX scripts, and 6,700+ particle scripts. Every single one of which was at one point edited by hand.
As a feature, it's got a much longer history than even that. I did a lot of fruitless experimentation around the same time as weapon customization. There's also some code in the FX script for hue shifting that pre-dates Issue 8 (when I started). I don't know all of the reasons why Cryptic didn't want to move forward with it at that time or when exactly they made that decision, but ultimately we ended up taking a very different approach to the whole system.
[edit]I should have thought about this before, but all the work with the power FX/particle scripts was only one portion of this whole system. There was also design work done in terms of what the experience of customizing powers should be like, what the costs would be, how the interface would work, lots of back end work to store that data on characters, get those customized FX from the server to everyone's client, and of course the whole power customization window interface integrated into the new character creation workflow. Every player power definition was updated to reference these new visual FX scripts, we got new blend modes for the particle system to make using the 'dark' themes more intuitive, work was done to make customized FX work in demorecords, the list goes on and on. All together there were a half dozen people who contributed a serious amount of work into this system and as we approached the launch of I16 many more joined the effort to get it birthed.
And we've only done primary and secondary powers.Quote:Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
Fun facts:
To date, power customization for Primary and Secondary player powers has involved- 1,241 individual powers.
- which use use 1,620 FX scripts
- which reference 5,144 particle scripts.
I'm still trying to nail down an exact date for when we started working on this, but so far the earliest reference I can find is from a document created in March of 2008. I know there were some meetings before that document was made, but I can't find the date or meeting notes from the initial "Lets do this!" meeting, which I would consider the official start of this massive undertaking.
Unofficially, I've been trying to figure out ways to do it since around Issue 11, but every idea involved new tech and a tremendous amount of data parsing...two things that simply would have never happened back then with the size of our team.
Obviously, we haven't been working 100% on this since we started. A bit here, a bit there...time taken for other Issues, bug fixes, booster packs, etc. But we've been working on it pretty focused for the last 6-8 months. -
Aren't you involved in several threads already on this very subject?
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Since we're wishlisting, I'd like every aura that does insignificant stuff to not show at all.
Does Sprinting really need an aura? Does a 5% def bonus really need an aura.. even in PvP?
Large scale fights already become a big white cloud of blinding light due to the overlap of so many powers and auras. There is no need for everything to have an aura, not even in PvP ("Run! I can see he has 5% Defense bonus!!") -
I'm now getting a lot of hanging that eventually resolves itself half the time if I wait long enough. And when it does resolve, all the other open tabs waiting also resolve.
Which tells me it's more a forum server/software problem. -
Server-side lag always benefits the player. It's like you've sped up. It also allows you to move faster since the server will often accommodate your moves and update itself to what you're doing. Things that would require split second decisions can be done at a more leisurely pace.
It benefits you until your powers have refreshed in your tray, but not by the server's time, so, you click on buttons that do nothing at the moment, or, you move so far that the servers say, "I really don't think so, so, I'm moving you back *here*" and you rubberband. -
Quote:Why do they rock the Heal Aura at the Markets? Grrr...Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I just have to ask, is there a specific reason people forming trails feel the need to spam heal auras and rain powers and throw short-duration buffs on anyone within range? Because that causes unnecessary lag for everyone, RPers and trial runners alike. You can't tell me that not doing it will inconvenience anyone.
And to the OP: It's spelled ridiculous. R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S. Pet peeve of mine.
Also, it's spelled T-R-I-A-L-S. :P (*Lots* of people doing that. Just do a forum search on "trail".) -
Quote:Actually, with the Incarnate Powers showing up in the Tailor Window indicates they've made progress on the one of two fronts in making Pool Powers customizable, namely, the UI.Originally Posted by Angelxman81
Not going to happen.
Never.
Devs are too busy with Incarnate stuff from now till the servers are down forever.
No way they can finish power customization for APP/PPP, Power pools, HEATs and VEATs (and hey, Masterminds).
Pity, this is on my top 3 wishlist:
1. Character model overhaul.
2. Finish power customization.
3. New powersets!
The other front is conversion of the Pool Power animations into tintable versions. BAB said each one had to be done individually and there was no was to automate it. It was as time intensive and doing new ones from scratch. So, I don't know where they are in getting this done. -
I vote stupidity. Never underestimate stupidity.
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Quote:Besides this map needing updating... isn't there in the southern part of the Warehouse map open elevator shafts to another level (in which there are no caches)? Does this path avoid that?Originally Posted by Rylas
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Quote:Really? We're still on this urban myth that there are tons of folks looking to grief these things?Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
This map is awesome. Now all we need to do is keep trolls from griefing our Mo attempts.
Let's get are terms set first: Griefing is not just being stupid or scrapperlocked. It's when someone purposely tries to ruin whatever you're doing.
Now, how many times has that happened to you on an instanced event? -
Wait. I thought we were supposed to hate the Lore pets?
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The Chalet should be open all year round. This way, except for 3 weeks out of the year, RPers have place to go that's out of the way.
The Pocket D would seem to be a 'RP area' if it wasn't made into an amenity-heavy zone with missions. But as long it has an Arena, personal Vault, co-op hub-ness, Valentine missions, base portal and beacon, insp vendors, tailor, etc... it *can not* be considered a 'RP-designated' area, officially or unofficially. Pocket D itself is role-played by its design into a game-mechanics heavy zone.
That being said, the RWZ is a better zone for starting Trials. It has more amenities and probably a larger population cap.
Quote:False reasoning.RWZ great place to start a team. access to a store to sell off enhancements and unwanted salvage you get during a trial, a place to buy inspirations to replace ones you used, and even access to crafting tables and you base. PROBLEM everyone realizes that and so many leagues form there the lag in horrible and some of your league members can't even get into the zone your in. You wind up playing music RWZ trying to find one with enough room for the whole group.
That is true of any zone that becomes a de facto staging area for iTrials. I've seen that happen to Midnighter Club which has mostly been given up on as a staging ground for that reason. -
Got my MoBAF with PuGs.
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Quote:Yep. At least, all the /petcom commands. They do not accept /petrename and /petsay commands.Originally Posted by Cheetatron
Lore pets take MM style commands?
That's what Save Windows Options button and commands are for.Quote:Originally Posted by Vega
Try playing that setup on a smaller resolution screen. You'll be fixing it. Then switch back to your larger screen. You'll be fixing it again. Attached stays attached and in place. All these floaty windows is getting to me too. I would love the option to lock them in place.
No matter which computer I'm at the local settings are saved such that typing:
/wdwloadfile wdwzombieman
Will put all the windows where they should be. (I use that system for character-specific setup. Just using /wdwload will do the same or hitting the button in the Options window.) -
The goal would be for the standard operating procedure be that each BAF goes for every Astral Merit possible by not shutting off Towers and defeating them at their spawn points and not letting any prisoners escape and clearing all ambushes before the final defeat.
You also save about 4 minutes avoiding 'pull time.' -
Don't forget: At least two more iTrials are in the pipeline. If you're getting burned out. Take a break and wait for the other iTrials especially if you have other 50s to deify.
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Well, tray 4 isn't lined up exactly, but you can use windowscale to get all the buttons the same size, or to get the tray the same size. Unfortunately, you can't have both.
As for not being attached to the edge, the space gives me a chance to click there if I have to, whether on a foe or to place a reticle for a power. This way, I don't have to look down first.