Arcanaville
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I was going to say that an advantage KM has over most other tanker options (Stone and SS being the exceptions) when it comes to supplementing Willpower's weaker RTTC taunt aura is Focused Burst. Its a ranged single target attack, but because it has gauntlet it has an AoE taunt around its target. So in effect KM has a ranged attack that doubles as a ranged taunt. That's a useful for aggro control in that it will likely knock one target down and draw the attention of surrounding targets significantly out of melee range. You could, of course, do this with taunt itself but this gives you essentially two ranged taunts and one of them deals damage.Originally Posted by StratoNexus
It is also noteworthy that this set has a 17' gauntlet radius in Concentrated Strike and a 13' gauntlet radius in the range attack Focused Burst.
RT is also ranged, but its iffy as to whether the knockback acts counterproductive to the taunt generated. It depends a bit on the AI settings of the critters being hit for one thing.
Ironically, of the five grades given to Kinetic Melee in that guide, none of them seem to apply specifically to aggro generation. Focused Burst is not an AoE, although in terms of aggro generation its actually a ranged AoE. I certainly wouldn't give it a C-. Relative to the other scores there, I think KM deserves at least a B- if not a B. -
Quote:Other answers to that question.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
I once asked forumers: "If you had a gun full of bullets and that gun was completely above the law in every way, what would you do?" Of the almost a hundred answers, only one person said "Waste the bullets before anyone gets hurt".
I think it's a brilliant answer. Again, I don't want to say that there's a right answer. If posts are mementos, however, I'd put that one on my wall.
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Quote:I confirmed the behavior of the power by setting up AE missions that allowed me to test each part of the power, and recorded those to watch in slow motion and examine by log recordings. I set up a number of tests by arranging spawns that were in round clusters, close to being in lines, etc, and watching their behavior.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Can I ask how in the world you figured out the actual mechanics behind this?
One trick I learned specifically for testing this power was to make a ranged custom critter and set up one character (in one account) to knock them back out of range. They would then move up into range, stopping at their nominal range. The result was a group of critters shooting at me from range all almost in a perfect line. Then I would log in acct #2, stealth into the mission, and jolt the guy at the end of the conga line and watch the power work its way up the line. Those kinds of things were very helpful in confirming how the power worked.
Interestingly, I learned this sort of trickery from farming Empath back in the day. You wouldn't think that would be a learning experience, but then again I don't think anyone was really doing it quite the way I was.
However, I should point out that I didn't figure out how the power worked that way. I confirmed how the power worked that way. I figured out how the power worked by ... actually in this case I can honestly say that I had a need to know, so Castle told me. In general, though, my stock answer is I'm a really really good guesser. That being the only answer I can post. -
Quote:Sorry, I forgot to mention something which came up in beta, and it slipped my mind. I slightly misspoke when I said arcs were like shooting power bolts. Actually the "arcs" are actually AoEs with a target maximum of one.Originally Posted by Jabbrwock
Arcanaville, I have a question. Does the chain effect work as Tex's diagram suggests, where a missed single jolt stops itself and all children, or does it keep going until it either hits its 15 target cap or until all jolts have missed or died due to lack of eligible targets? His testing suggests the latter case - that if one of the first two branches fails, the targets will in all likelyhood be jolted by branches spawned from the other one. That would make it extremely unlikely for the chain to die out without either hitting its target cap or rendering all targets in range ineligible for jolting.
Tex, if my thesis is correct, the reason you never saw an entire half of the tree fail to jolt is because once you reach the bottom of the left side of the tree, assuming the right side failed, then you still have active jolts on all the targets at the bottom of the left side, and their only valid targets are the unjolted targets who would supposedly have been jolted by the right side. So unless you manage to kill *ALL* the jolts off to missing or traversing far enough away that there are no eligible unjolted targets, the chain won't stop until it reaches its target cap.
That's not the same thing as being a single target attack, because when you shoot a single target attack, if it hits it hits, and if it misses it misses and its over either way. But when an AoE fires at a group of targets, and it has a target cap, the AoE will try each and every target within its radius until it hits its target cap. So if there are multiple targets within Jolting Chain's 15 foot jumping radius, it will get several tries to "find" a target. If it misses them all, that arc will indeed die, but if you are at 95% tohit, or even above 90%, then as long as there are at least two *valid* targets within range the streakbreaker will guarantee the arc will find a target and make the jump.
I mention "valid" targets because as previously mentioned, an arc cannot jump to a target that has been hit by another arc within the last five seconds. But if you unleash Jolting in a dense spawn, the odds are pretty good that you'll eventually connect with all 15 targets, just because for an arc to "die" it has to miss *every* legitimate target in range. That either requires all targets to be currently "invisible to arcs" or your tohit has to be low enough for even the streakbreaker to be unable to save you. -
Quote:Yes, but with a catch. Because the jolting "immunity" only lasts for five seconds, it is possible for the arcs to "loop back" to other targets deeper in the chain.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Thanks. This is all very helpful. Am I understanding correctly that you're describing a binary tree, like the one below, where the blue marker would be the first target?
In other words, I hit target A. Target A fires an arc at target B 2 seconds after getting hit, and an arc at target C 4 seconds after getting hit. Target B then shoots an arc 2 seconds after it was hit, which is 6 seconds after A was hit. That arc *can* loop back and hit A, because A is now free to be hit again.
Because the arcs will tend to target the *closest* target that is still *valid* to be hit, you can get interesting looping chaining effects as jolting chain worms its way around a dense spawn of targets. -
Quote:Even regular citizens have the right to take reasonable action to prevent or stop a crime from being committed. Where their right tends to end is tracking criminals down after the fact and beating the crap out of them.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Neither. Unless I was a police officer or other law enforcer, I would only use my powers to save people from fires/disasters/etc. I have no right to take the law into my own hands or usurp the role of people trained to enforce the law.
The interesting problem is that most normal citizens that are victims of a crime or otherwise entangled in one can often reasonably claim that their lives were potentially in danger. If you were bullet proof, say, you couldn't make that claim. You could be standing in a 7-11 while it was being robbed by a man with a bazooka, and at no time could you claim that you had to act to prevent harm to yourself. You could claim to be protecting others, but if there were no others around, it can get weirdly murky as to the legal latitude you have to stop a crime when you aren't personally threatened.
Might be better to be blaster than tanker in the legal sense. -
Quote:This tends to be true. Its not mathematically mandatory.Originally Posted by Kasoh
Any system that has options allows for Min/Max because mathmatically, one option is always superior to the other. If it isn't, then it isn't really a choice. If you've ever bought a larger box of cereral because its cheaper by the ounce, congratulations you've just min/maxed your shopping list.
Here's a trivial example of the principle: you have two options. Option A: your attacks do extra fire damage but you become vulnerable to cold attacks. Option B: your attacks do extra cold damage but you become vulnerable to fire attacks. Its a valid option with no min/max potential.
This is actually much easier to do in PnP games than MMOs because in MMOs the player generally gets to choose what situations they encounter, whereas in a PnP game its usually a human GM that gets to decide that. So in MMOs the player can pick disadvantages that are meaningless because they subsequently avoid them without penalty. In a PnP game, a good GM will not let players get away with that.
However, this is sufficiently difficult that few games seriously attempt it, and none that I've seen actually get it right. But its not mathematically impossible. -
Quote:I'd probably end up going with the Batman option. I'd bind myself to a moral code to prevent myself from going too far, but it would be my moral code, not someone else's.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
Let's say that you, yes you, at the computer reading forums, wind up with the super power and super smarts to be a "Cape". Like DareDevil, Spiderman, or Batman, your identity is constantly sought, but you're so cool that no one can figure you out. Yes, this puts you above the law.
My question: Do you, like Superman, bind yourself by the moral code and legal system of your city like a Hero? You set an example and are the ideal citizen, but your unwillingness to cross the line restricts you from many many methods of information gathering and arrest. As a result, you remain a virtuous ambition of many, but less criminals are caught.
Or do you, like the Punisher or Rorschach, put vengeance and justice above needless laws and don the title of Vigilante? You are feared and reviled by citizens. You sail blind without a moral compass, and you have few allies. As a result, however, you are able to drop the crime rate significantly.
I guess my question is: How much can one stretch their moral code in the name of stopping crime before it's unacceptable? And if the answer is "Quite a bit", could it then be argued that Vigilantes are better heroes than Heroes?
Annnnd go. -
Quote:Hmm, rare and not known for synergy? Traps/Energy defender comes to mind.Originally Posted by KonekoMeow
The latter is more what I'm looking for, but if they are super uncommon and also good, then that's cool too. I just think a few of the "rare" ones named, are not so rare because they actually mesh nicely. They are just "rare" in comparison to like... Fire/Kin trollers. Haha!
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Quote:Fair enough. But what about the maitre d's in the Pizza Huts in Vancouver?Originally Posted by TroyHickman
They're proud of their sausage.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
His girlfriend Praetoria slept with the casting director.
I'm still trying to figure out why the maitre d's in the Pizza Huts in Vancouver don't wear pants. -
The stacking rules are a bit complex in this game. Here's the basics:
1. An effect can be flagged to stack - meaning you can keep applying it and both applications will apply to the target additively - or not stack. When an effect is flagged to not stack, this means any attempt to apply the effect twicefrom the same caster will fail. This doesn't affect multiple casters using the same effect.
1a. Odd bug: when you zone, you are "destroyed" and "recreated" in the new zone. So leaving and/or re-entering a zone means you're now a different entity as far as the game is concerned. Thus the oldest stacking exploit in the game: buff outside the mission, zone into it, and then buff everyone again. Used to be used a lot with things like FF bubbles and sometimes Kinetic buffs.
2. If an effect is flagged to not stack, if its cast on a target that already has the same buff from the same caster it could alternatively either simply fail to do anything at all, or remove and reapply the original buff. If it fails, nothing happens. If it reapplies, the new buff takes the place of the older buff, and essentially the new buff has a new duration.
2a. Odd bug: because remove and replace was and is not atomic in the game engine, you could have a brief instant where you didn't have the buff at all. Perma-Eluded scrappers in particular noticed this bug back in I2 when they discovered there was a brief moment of vulnerability right in the middle of the backflip when they reapplied Elude.
2b. There was tech added recently to bypass this bug, whereby its now possible for a buff to simply extend or replace the duration of the existing buff, so the game doesn't have to remove the old one and replace it with the new one.
3. Regardless of how effects are coded to stack or not stack, the rules only apply when the effect comes from the exact same power from the exact same caster. Meaning: if you have two attacks with -10% defense debuffs, and they are both coded to not stack, each attack can still land the debuff and they will stack with each other. They may be numerically identical, but the game counts them as two different debuffs. They "stack" but as far as the game engine's stacking rules are concerned, they are not "stacking buffs."
4. Stacking rules affect individual effects, not powers. Each individual effect of a power can be configured to stack (or not stack) differently. A power might buff damage and defense, and the damage buff could stack and the defense buff could not stack.
5. In general, most debuffs in attacks stack. Most self buffs stack. If an ally buff recharges very fast and has very long duration, its likely to not stack. Certain things are less likely to stack: ally defense and resistance buffs in particular.
6. Technically, the game engine stacking rules only apply to "effects" of powers. There are certain things in the game that aren't "effects" per se, and obey completely different and special rules. For example, the "bruising effect" added to Tankers recently is actually a *power*. When a tanker applies Bruising to a target, they are giving the target a temporary power that debuffs the target's resistance. This power itself obeys a special rule: the target can only have one copy of it at any time. Because all tankers have the exact same effect and try to grant the exact same power, no tanker can "stack" this effect onto the same target with their own attacks, and for that matter no two tankers can stack the effect onto the same target. This isn't part of the normal stacking rules of the game, but a special effect engineered by the devs. -
Just FYI, I don't have time to do it right away, but I'm going to review every entry with my name anywhere attached, and also review things like MA specifically and try to get updates posted to the thread in the next day or so. Thanks S_F for keeping the list alive.
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Quote:His girlfriend Praetoria slept with the casting director.Originally Posted by TroyHickman
So far I understand everything about this thread except why there's a new version of Soylent Green starring Enrique Iglesias...
I'm still trying to figure out why the maitre d's in the Pizza Huts in Vancouver don't wear pants. -
Quote:I shoot target 1. I hit target 1. Target 1 now is affected by Jolting Chain. Target 1 will now shoot two jolts, A and B, two seconds apart. These are two completely separate attacks, like shooting power bolt twice. Each one has an independent chance to hit, because they are two separate attacks.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Thanks for sweeping in Arcanna. I'm trying to wrap my head around the math on that and totally failing.
The odds of missing the initial cast (at maxed out chances) are easy. They'd be 5%.
For the first jump are we saying that there are two die rolls, each coming from the initial target, and both have a 95% chance to hit? If so, and each has a 95% chance to continue to the next target, the odds that both hit the next target should be 0.95^2 = ~0.90, which means that 10% of the time one or the other chain would halt and half the targets shouldn't fall. If I understand what you're saying, that is.
Basically even if the power does check ToHit (which I now believe it does), it has way better odds to hit than what a lot of us were throwing around in Beta, which was ~46%.
[EDIT: Terminology.]
But they cannot both hit the same target. When a target is hit by jolting chain, it is flagged for 5 seconds in a way that makes it impossible for another jolt to target and hit it. It basically becomes "invisible" to jolting chain. So if jolt A fires at a nearby target and hits it, jolt B has to find another target: as far as jolt B is concerned, that target just vanished. Jolt B can hit another target, if there is another target in range. If there isn't, the jolt dies. If it misses, the jolt dies.
Incidentally, the jolting flag works for *all* jolting chains. Meaning: if a target was just hit by one of my arcs, it can't be hit by one of yours for five seconds. It can be, after that five seconds expires. -
Jolting Chain spawns two "jolts" on its target that are staggered by two seconds from each other. When the target is hit, 2 seconds later Jolt A is launched at a target. 2 seconds later Jolt B is launched at a target. Both of these will show up in combat spam as "Chain Jolt Jump 1" because those are both hop #1 of the chain.
Each of those will, if they hit a target, spawn two more. So if both Jump1's hit targets, you'll end up with up to 4 Jump2's, and then up to 8 Jump3's. However, there is a limitation on jumps: a jump cannot arc to a target that has been hit by a jump within the last five seconds. Also, jumps are not autohit. If a jump misses its target, it dies.
Because of the 2 second stagger and the fact that many people do not know each arc spawns two "child" arcs, the sequence of events can appear a bit confusing.
To reiterate: arcs have to hit, and they use normal tohit calculations to do so. But there's a lot of them staggered around, which can make it seem like arcs are taking multiple chances to hit a target when in fact its just that there are so many potential jumps to account for. And while jumps cannot arc back immediately to a previously jumped target, that prohibition only lasts 5 seconds, whereas the jumps will arc around for potentially longer than that. It is possible for a target to be hit twice by the jumping arcs, just not twice in five seconds. -
Quote:With all the detail sliders set to zero, I'm able to achieve 8,458,215 frames per second, albeit with a slightly higher loss of fidelity:Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Because players were complaining about low frames per second, there is now the option to lower the polygon count to zero and use just vector graphics. This is called Under Mode, or 'UM'. Running UM on an Intel integrated graphics chip can result in over 20 thousand frames per second.
Here is the RWZ in UM:
On the plus side, ambient occlusion finally works correctly with these settings. -
Well, the side-switching is nice although personally I think its excessive to make me run several dozen missions just to switch my Katana to my right hand.
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Quote:But then the cause wouldn't be the fury change. Theoretically speaking, changing the color of the attacks could also prompt a player to do something that ended up costing them a 50% loss in performance. But I wouldn't consider it fair to call that the cause of the problem.Originally Posted by Edana
Nothing is impossible if you can factor in stupidity as a driving force.
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Quote:The section in question, including the part you highlighted, suggested that because the OPs brute was less defensively strong, that limited the amount of enemies they could tank to improve Fury. Its illogical to assume that when faced with a Brute that they felt was less defensively strong (it "dies more easily") that they would keep pushing it into those situations where it would die repeatedly.Originally Posted by Edana
They did. In the section you originally quoted at that.
Furthermore, while its possible to conjecture that a 20% loss in damage could be the difference between survival and death in a *single* spawn, it still doesn't explain the loss in leveling speed because the difference between the two would be the difference between being dead and ending the fight at low health, which produces a bad situation on the very next spawn (rest, or die).
This could only cause an outsized result if the increased damage produced an alpha strike that was initially more lethal, generating front-loaded damage mitigation, and only for relatively small spawns. It could have a disproportionate effect on blaster leveling, say, at x1 or maybe x2. It would not have one on something like a brute with enough defenses to make it nearly meaningless.
If the person was playing their brute in a sustainable manner before the changes, then the damage loss would not just show up and kill them. They would see it coming from a mile away as each fight started with less health than the one before. It would not convert a steamroll into a death trap. -
Quote:It seems unlikely that the poster would have lodged all those complaints about the Brute changes and then failed to mention that on top of all of that they were dying all the time besides.Originally Posted by Edana
Not quite impossible; if they were tuning their difficulty setting right to the edge and only just managing to kill spawns in I17 then the slight change in damage output could result in them dying a lot to those same mobs and spending the entire time in debt. Twice as slow levelling.
Would only take a couple of seconds at a fateweaver to correct the problem, but people trying to prove a point can be remarkably stubborn about changing anything about their 'proof'. -
Quote:Let me know when you find an MMO that balances their game by buffing the strong and nerfing the weak because they didn't do a good enough job of making the difference high enough the first time.Originally Posted by macskull
Welcome to CoH, where the people who play and build smart are routinely screwed for the "benefit" of the rest of the players.
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Quote:Going back and looking at old data I have, I am quite certain that powers have always recharged after cast time has expired, never at the moment the power is cast. I can cover in various ways most of the existence of the game from late 2004 to mid 2009 with actual hard data, and not anecdotes (I have a variety of measurements of various things throughout that period of time which either directly measure power recharge or indirectly would show evidence of a change to how recharge works).Originally Posted by Beelzy
I apologize. I didn't realize that they changed it so that recharge started at the end of activation rather than at the beginning
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Quote:The problem with a multiplayer game that doesn't care about balance is that it must of necessity have no rewards tied to anything unbalanced. That's an axiom. If you don't believe it, your only recourse is to find people who are simultaneously game developers and who don't accept that axiom, and get them to make a game without that axiom. The intersection of those two types of people is, I believe, vanishingly small. I'm unaware of any multiplayer game anywhere created by a dev team that rejects that axiom, although I'm always willing to have one pointed out to me.Originally Posted by sleestack
I'd love to see this as well. And as for balance, I think it is vastly overrated. Just get in the general ballpark of "balance" and leave it at that. Sure, there will be people who will find the "best" power combinations and be all "uber", but I don't do that (it's booooooring) so I really don't care. Just make the game content varied enough so that characters of different power levels can progress. Not all character have to be equally powerful (or weak as the case may be). The Joker is severely outmatched by Superman...and that's ok.
Its not impossible to implement a multiplayer game that rejects that axiom, but you end up running into some very fundamental principles of game design that don't have obvious solutions when you do, and you usally have to risk millions of dollars before you know if your solutions have any chance of working. And if you fail, its extremely hard to correct that error.
The only kind of game I can conceive of that works this way is a Sims-like game that only rewards activity without regard for type of activity, so that power level is both unrestricted and meaningless to the game. -
Quote:That's ironic, given what I wanted to do with the power.Originally Posted by Marsquake2
It's quotes like these that make me glad Castle doesn't listen to Arcana as often as she'd like
*I* wanted to give you all a totally way cool version of the power, but Castle said
You can't handle the power! -
Quote:Just as long as you're not spamming Soul Transfer.Originally Posted by ShadowNate
My dark/dark scrapper would like to have a word with you concerning spamming Dark Regeneration.