BackAlleyBrawler

Originally Posted by Jerikko

I'd like them to add a Super Hero version of dodgeball to PVP.

Originally Posted by Sapphire7

More stuff to do?

I'd love to see more puzzle related content, like the Midnighter scavenger hunt-thingie. Anything that you have to sit down and figure out. (As long as you can keep mouthy-but-well-meaning friends from attempting to spill the beans every two seconds..)

I'm sure some people would like mazes, maybe even with a time limit.. but I hate mazes and I hate being lost, so I wouldn't be one of them. :P (I know, I know, finger on the wall, and don't take it off, but that doesn't *always* work!)

Or how about games of tag, which can use the same "seek" mechanism that looking for the giant monster in the halloween/apocalypse event uses.. the distance counter in your compass.. you could be assigned a target (NPC, object, whatever) and it may or may not move around, and you have to go around and tag all the objects that you're assigned. (You could get *really* creative with this.)

And as for the above three ideas - make them worth small amounts of XP instead of badges. That way people don't just do them for the badge and then never do them again, it gives some small incentive, and it lets people earn XP in a way other than smacking baddies. In fact I have a pacifist character whom I have not yet broken out of the box, but whom I would like to attempt to get to 50 without ever having attacked an enemy. (Empathy, for those who are wondering.)

I also discussed an idea in global one day - what if you could go into public buildings? Any "public" building (one with a sign) would allow you to enter a random (office/warehouse/bank/whatever) map, with NPCs walking around, no enemies, and nothing to click on. If your mission gets assigned to that door, set your mish, and now you can enter. I'm not sure if mission doors are even capable of working that way, but it would be neat to be able to enter buildings that *aren't* currently under siege.

Originally Posted by Texas Justice

So, basically what you're saying is ... Costumes cause lag.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

As far as using trenchcoats and wings or multiple cape systems, that's a performance concern. I've not enough knowledge to guess how justified that is, but I don't think simply dismissing that is a smart move, especially since we're only guessing. It amounts to accusing the developers of utter ineptitude or outright lies, and that's not a step I'm prepared to take without some solid evidence behind it.

Originally Posted by Ashcraft

Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards

It's a bug and if I vaguely remember reading about it from patch notes or a developer sometime ago that it was at least acknowledged. Guessing it's been internally fixed for a while now waiting to get into a build.

Originally Posted by CaffeineAddict

Ok, so I officially have inside news from a spy at PlayNC who got one of the staff drunk enough to spill the beans on the full kit and kaboodle that is Demon Summoning.

They have broken away from traditional AT power models (including the standard mastermind build) and come up with something totally awe-inspiring and freaking ossim.
Juicy details as follows...:

Note that all pets were modified to similar mastermind levels of HP, resistance, defense, regen and rank.

Also note, that there is no pet upgrade available to this set, other than demon mastery.

Demon Summoning
Tier1 Power: Hordeling summoning (you get 3 adorable pets)
Lasher, Hurler, and Beserker.


Tier2 Power: Summon Random Crystal
You randomly summon ONE out of Pain, Vitality and Health crystals.


Tier3 Power: Summon Harbingers of Batzul (2 of)


Tier4 Power: Summon Magical Barrier
You summon a magical barrier at a fixed location. Should you or one of your team mates fall in battle, they may ressurect by choice inside the magical barrier (instead of going to hospital). However the first to use it will need to break out also.


Tier5 Power: Summon Hell Frost (1 of, at higher levels will be 2 of)


Tier6 Power: Summon Succubus


Tier7 Power: Summon Envoy of Shadows


Tier8 Power: Summon Blade Prince


Tier9 Power: Demon Mastery
You cast this power on only ONE of your demon pets, and they are granted a mastery bar (similar to the brutes fury bar).
Should your demon fill his mastery bar (approximately 30 minutes of battle), he will transform into his respective master form, for a total duration of 5 minutes.
If the pet dies before transforming, the buff is lost. After 5 minutes of transformation, the pet vanishes and will need to be resummoned.

Demon Master specific transformations:

Hordelings and Harbingers - transform into Batzul


Hell Frosts - transform into Caleb


Succubus - transforms into Lilitu


Envoy of Shadows - transforms into Baphomet


Blade Prince - transforms into 8 Minor Shadows


________________________________________
*DISCLAIMER* all information is top secret, 50% of is wishful thinking, and the other 50% is completely dreamed up.

I just figured I'd throw something out there to feed the need for the ever impatient/hungry crowd that are dieing to know what is demon summoning going to look like.

*runs and hides*

Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper

Heroes get access to Dice7 after completing the Hess TF
Villains aren't allowed to cheat at dice

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

But you could do something that looked better on higher rendering systems and degraded gracefully to something that showed some effect on lower systems. I'm assuming the entire basis of Ultra Mode is based on that assumption. Unless VFX components have restrictions on that sort of thing the general environment doesn't, I would think you could spawn a swirly vortex that rendered "correctly" on higher cards and rendered a simpler static effect on lower end cards.

Is there a design directive that essentially states things like Ultra Mode can improve environmental rendering, but all power effects and similar graphics must be designed to reasonably render on the lowest supported video card? In other words, no "Ultra Mode" power effects?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Separate from the semantic point that Sam pointed out, your statement above is not true either. They attempt to "support" the minimum system requirement, but "support" only means the game will still run on that system in theory. Even without Ultra Mode, the current game engine will not run on the minimum system specification with all features turned to maximum. The minimum system is too slow for that.

What the programming team does, and is supposed to do, is target the *best* system that nevertheless won't completely orphan the stated minimum supported system. In other words, if they can add a feature that degrades reasonably on the minimum supported system, that doesn't break the minimum system support.

Which is why I even pointed out my little semantic pet peeve in the first place. I know the reason why "lowest common denominator" has semantically drifted to colloquially mean nearly the opposite of what it is actually defined to be. The concept of "low" is getting stuck on "lowest." The system the devs have to target is lower than the average system out there, so its probably the "lowest" something or other.

But their target should not be the lowest anything. It should be the highest target they can get away with.

They should be targeting "greatest common" - the best that we all share. Not the worst or the lowest possible target. So even colloquially, the term "lowest common denominator" has a poor connotation. It suggests the devs should aim low. They should aim high. Just not so high that we orphan too many customers. But as high as possible. The Greatest target that we all can Commonly play.

Originally Posted by ShoeTattoo

Today I ran a 10 hour, 20 minute Posi task force. I would say it was “successful”, but it was soooooooo slow that I'm not certain it was. The “success” (ie: finishing it) was really a matter of being extremely stubborn, mixed together with an initial misunderstanding about how spawns are set and poor luck in PUG teammates.

We began with a full team for Posi in the morning. Four teammates quit fairly soon into the task force, for different reasons. Two who left were fairly skilled, but they eventually gave up because of problems caused by our two unskilled soloists. The two soloists also eventually logged out. But, ... some or perhaps all of those who logged out didn't quit the task force first.

For a while we were down to four of us. Still, having the two soloists leave was so helpful that the larger spawn size couldn't prevent us from progressing more quickly than before. Missions went quite smoothly with the four of us, even if a bit slowly overall because of the oversized spawns. We continued that way for a while, until two of the four remaining players needed to leave.

For the last several hours, there were two of us; my ice/fire blaster and a new person playing a claws / super reflexes scrapper. He seemed like an experienced gamer, but brand new to COH. His build was that of a newer player (no stamina), although he had a good eye for picking a balance of offense and defense in his powers. He had either no enhancements at all, or very few. He did, thankfully, have practiced brawler. Even more helpful, he was willing to listen.

And so, we worked our way through the last several missions one oversized spawn at a time; 2 bosses, 3 lieutenants, and many minions were the norm. There were also, of course, special spawns with other combinations. The good news is that my partner went from level 11 to 21 during the task force, and I made it from 15 to 22. The bad news is, well, you read the threat title already.

QOL suggestion ...

If the devs would put a 'Task Force Members” splashscreen into the GUI, usable for task forces, so that team leaders could access the list whether somebody was online or offline, and kick whoever had left, it would *really* be a nice QOL feature for task forces.

Originally Posted by docbuzzard

Ok, I'll start with some simple definitions:

Single action revolver: a revolver where the trigger pull is generally light (3-7 lbs) and will only drop the hammer and fire the weapon. It will not revolve the cylinder or push back the hammer. You have to retract the hammer using your thumb (or whatever) which also revolves the cylinder. An example of this would be a Colt 1873 Peacemaker.

Double action revolver: in this case the trigger pull does all of revolve the cylinder, pull back the hammer, and then drop it. The trigger pulls are generally fairly heavy (12+ lbs). Pretty much every modern revolver is like this (Colt Python for example).

Single action pistol (pistols are different than revolvers). This is generally on a semi-automatic weapon where the weapon is loaded by pulling back the slide which sets the hammer and loads the weapon. Then the trigger pull just drops the hammer. Then recoil from the weapon firing which run back the slide, eject the spent cartridge, load a new cartridge, and set the hammer for firing again (actually in some rare pistols the mechanism is gas operated rather than recoil operated, but the difference is in the inner workings and academic here). Pistols of this sort will continue to fire per trigger pull long as there is ammunition in the magazine. Examples: Colt 1911 , or Ruger 10/22. On a defensive firearm you will carry this sort of pistol c0cked(been trying to dodge that word) and locked which means hammer back and safety on.

Double action pistol: This is a semi-automatic pistol in which the hammer is drawn back by use of the trigger before firing. After the first round is fired, the weapon will generally go into single action mode where the hammer is back from the previous shot and only a short, light trigger pull is required to fire the weapon. Again firing will continue with trigger pulls as long as ammunition remains. There is a variant of this type of weapon which some people favor called the double action only (DAO), in which the hammer does not remain back when the weapon is fired and you need a double action pull for each shot. This is desired by some because it makes the trigger pull consistent for all shots unlike in a normal DA pistol where the first shot has a much heavier trigger pull. Most double action pistols will have a dec0cking level which allows the hammer to be lowered safely after loading so it can be carried with a round in the chamber. Examples of DA pistols are Sig Sauer P220, or Beretta 92F.

Ok, then you have some other variants. The main example of this would be the Glock (and some other imitators). It is a semi-automatic pistol using no exposed hammer. The striking mechanism is all internal. These will generally have a heavier trigger pull than a single action, but less than a double action (sometimes called 1.5 action).

Of course the above doesn't explain why sometimes there are exposed hammers and sometimes not. Well in every case there has to be a mechanism of some mass which strikes the firing pin and ignites the primmer. On most guns this is the hammer, while on the Glocks it is an internal mechanism. Why did Glock decide to design without a hammer? Well there are advantages in keeping a mechanism enclosed to avoid modes of failure from external sources. Also a hammerless gun will not snag on clothing if carried in a pocket or during a draw.

As for firing mechanisms, which I think you are curious about (hence the Desert Eagle question), there are only three mechanisms in semi-automatic pistols I can think of. There's the simple blowback mechanism where recoil simply slams the slide back against the recoil spring thereby ejecting, loading and resetting the hammer. The barrel is generally fixed to the frame. This was the first system in use, and is generally too hard on a pistol for any heavier calibers. It is rare to see it on anything higher than a .380 (9mm kurz) because the slamming back to the slide stops would be hard on the mechanism. An example of this would be a Walther PPK.

The next is the short recoil operation. This involves the barrel and slide both being mobile during the initial recoil with the barrel being locked into position after a short bit of travel. Then the slide continues back to finish the operation of reloading. This spreads the recoil impulse out over more time and parts making it easier on the mechanism. Most pistols these days use this method of operation.

The last, and least common method is the gas operation system. I can only think of two pistols where use this system. The Desert Eagle, and the H&K P7. In this case a port exists on the barrel by which some of the ignition gasses are shunted into a chamber where they push back on a piston which drives back the slide. Gas operation systems are very good for mitigating recoil (hence it being used on the Desert Eagle which fires a very powerful .50 caliber round). However they are harder to manufacture and clean so are not popular.

There are other mechanisms used in rifles, but we don't need to go into all that.

Originally Posted by dispari

Originally Posted by Premonitions

Considering that thing shoots flames, napalm, bullets, beanbags, grenades, and more bullets, yeah, that's a tech rifle.

Originally Posted by Dispari

The confusing thing about gadgets is that there's really no clear line where something stops being natural and starts being tech. It's more opinion-based than anything, and there's no real right answer.

Using a stick as a weapon is pretty much considered natural. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who considers a stick technology. A sword is technology, although really low-tech. Most people still consider that natural. Bows are low-tech gadgets. Guns are a lot higher in tech, but some people will still call those natural (myself included). Then somewhere between pistols and mech suits, it becomes tech.

There are a lot of factors that could make it suddenly be tech, but all those are questionable. Does the gadget allow you to do something you normally can't do? Well, so does a sword. Does the object do most of the work or are you? I think guns do most of the work. Is it something you had to train to use or did just picking it up allow you to use it? Well, guns aren't that hard to use, and jetpacks surely require practice. Is it only things that aren't the norm in our world? It's not like jetpacks are uncommon in CoH.

Personally, I would call a jetpack technology. But for the life of me I can't figure out why. And I don't think I'd have any good reason to tell someone who thinks it's natural that they're wrong.

Originally Posted by Anti_Proton

I like how Gravity powers draw in object around them (especially with PhysX running), but I though it would be cool if those powers would bend light as well like so;




I think particularly wormhole would look amazing if it was similar to the above.

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn

JE Saist, AE was advertised as an alternate leveling path from level 1-50. It just was. On the AE Edition boxes, it was specifically listed as such.

So, if people want to use it to level from 1-50, it should remain so.

Originally Posted by Tokyo

Dear BaB's,

My only qualm with the booster pack was that it came with a travel power that was more than just aesthetic; it's an extremely useful power that allows the player to respec out of most of their travel powers without much harm to their build.

I don't like the idea of micro-transactions especially when it comes to in-game powers. never did, I feel my monthly fee should be enough.

Is there anyway of having a $19.99 version of the booster pack that comes with a month subscription, similar to the mac edition with the Valk set?

That felt like a HUGE deal and I didn't feel like I was just paying for powers.

Just throwing out a suggestion.

Originally Posted by Oneirohero

Even though this was a result of unauthorised hacking, the fact a tech-savvy used was able to make a really big character at least shows that having oversized characters is possible.

As for the engine not being able to create a powerset over it, I'll just have to sit and wait for a change there. It's like what I said before, today's explitic is tomorrow's possibility.

Originally Posted by Neutra

I would totally sport one, especially if I could get the quote I have in my sig on it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Its probably related to the bug I reported to the devs several times with regard to certain powers unrooting when they are executed under certain conditions. The common denominator was executing the attack while the player was moving in some unusual way, which caused the power to skip its animation. Because rooting is tied to the animation, if you skip the animation, you aren't rooted even if the power otherwise executes.

It doesn't have to be superjump, I posted a video of shadow maul and sands of mu (both use the same animation) running completely unrooted without specifically superjumping, and without even needing to get off the ground at all in some cases. Unfortunately, the video upload converted badly, and the video is a bit unclear (although I still have the original and it was quite sharp: don't know what youtube did that time around).

I never found out what caused that bug, nor am I sure if it was ever even corrected. I have suspicions, but none I can prove (and its been a long time since I've looked at this problem specifically). I should try to re-upload the original and see if it comes out better this time.

Originally Posted by Dispari

I'm happy overall with the NR animations. The new changes for Claws and Pistols cemented the sets as usable with NR, and already looking forward to making a gunslinger come GR who uses NR. There is one small thing I think might fall under quality though, which I outlined in the patch notes here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...24#post2431124

In summary: Claws/Pistols looked better when the jump animation was a cross-armed pose rather than the basic arms-up pose that normal jump uses.

In general, other posters agreed. I can't speak for all players, but from that thread:

In favor of changing Claws/Pistols back to cross-armed:
Dispari
gigas
Darkfaith
Street Wolf
Ninja Trail

In favor of changing Pistols but keeping Claws the same:
Bright Shadow

In favor of keeping both the same:
British Battler

Please consider it?

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

Sexy J can't win. If he holds onto costume pieces until they meet his exceptionally high standards, everyone B*****s, moans, and whines that he isn't putting new costume pieces out fast enough. I can't count the times I've seen people say that clipping issues won't bother them, they just want "Moar stuff nao!"

Now as soon as he relents and gives us what we are constantly demanding for, people turn on him like a pack of rabid ankle-biting lap-dogs and complain about the trivial clipping issues.

Originally Posted by The Pope

So the things that subscribers pay for go through less quality control than the things subscribers get for free? Doesn't that seem backwards to you?