BackAlleyBrawler

I really should slot for +Resistance

I'd highly recommend contacting customer support before doing a chargeback. I believe that we end up getting dinged with those charges and best case, it would cause your card to be flagged as invalid...leaving you to scramble around for another method of paying your subscription fee. Worst case, your entire PlayNC account would be flagged and banned. I'm not sure what OPs policy is about chargebacks, but it's in your best interest to contact them and find out if that's really the route you have to take.

As for the quality or unfinished weapon animations for Ninja Run, which would you be referring to? I'm sorry you don't feel this is content is worth the cost of a couple of fast food meals, but even though it may not be apparent to you the new travel power alone was a tremendous amount of time and work for us.

Booster packs are always problematic, because they don't get to go through the same testing period on the training room before they're enabled on the live servers. So we end up having to do fixes for bugs we didn't catch, and a lot of fixes for bugs we did catch don't have time to get into the builds before they end up on live. We have tried to address the bugs with it as quickly as we possibly could, and if you guys can continue to give us specific feedback about remaining issues, it's a lot easier for us to address those things than it is to 'fix a bunch of stuff that's messed up'

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to retract yesterday's statement. I've run into a roadblock with Shields that's going to prevent this method from working.

At this point I'm going to have to explore a code solution to the problem, but I can't say when or if that will happen.

fparn!

More specificity here would help. Which power exactly are you using that allows you to slide around?

Datamining showed that the Kneel emote was overpowered for Regen in PvP, so we removed it from everyone in PvE. Eventually, we'll remove it from PvP as well, but only on the villain side. Right now, it's nerfing accuracy for villains, so we kind of need it.

I briefly looked at it before to see if we could just get away with nixing weapon draw animations (outside of only playing them when out of range or without a target). But, even putting aside the aesthetics of a physical weapon just instantly appearing in your hand, it simply did not work at all. It insisted on playing the weapon draw animation no matter what I tried to get it to do. The things that let the system know you're in a certain weapon mode, which in turn triggers the appropriate run, jump, etc. animations to play and the weapon to appear to be held in your hand rather than glued to your open palm and periodically jammed into your noggin, are also the things that cause the weapon draw animation to play in order to get you into that mode if you're not already in it.

That's just how the system works, because that's how they decided it needed to work...and all of the sequencer moves are set up to work that way. Even if I could figure out a way to get around the mode/stance issues I'd have to re-configure all of the sequencer moves related to weapon modes. It's theoretically possible, but it's enough work that it's not something I can just do without time being scheduled to do it.

Yup.

No idea why, but yes. Animations that alternate like that are set up as two moves in the sequencers. Those moves point to different animations and are given the same statebits, interrupts, and priorities that trigger them to play. When the system goes looking for which animation to play, it looks for the any and every move that match the statebits currently in the stack, throws away any that aren't set up to interrupt the move currently playing, and then plays the move that has the highest priority. If everything is equal, it alternates...and you get left punch/right punch/left punch/etc.

For those interested, a good analogy for how our sequencers and statebits work would be the tags you see at the bottom of threads. Imagine if you couldn't direct people to a thread by just giving them the name of a thread or even a URL, but instead could only give them a list of all of the tags defined for that thread. It would then be up to them to search through all of the threads, look for the ones that matched the list of tags you gave them, and hope that it's the right place to be looking.

Then further imagine that there are restrictions on which thread you can go to. IE, you can't navigate to any thread in Developers' Corner if you're currently reading a thread in City Life - CoH & CoV General Discussions

Then further imagine that there were a few hundred sections of the forums, each one with multiple restrictions on where you could go defined in abstract ways like "If you're in Suggestions and Ideas then you can go to any section that is about Archetypes or Builds" or specific ways such as "If you're trying to go to a thread in Archetypes & Powers then you can only get there from Player vs. Player, For Fun!, or any server except Triumph", or very specific ways such as "australian players? can only be opened if you are currently looking at Message Board Rules and Guidelines!"

Then further imagine that for the first couple of years, there were only 100 pre-defined tags that everyone could use for every threads at that time.

Then further imagine that threads created with the icon would take priority over those created with the icon.

Then imagine it's up to the computer to figure all that junk out rather than a critical thinking person who can reason out that when looking for a thread about Kheldian builds, it's probably not the thread over in the for fun section talking about the Twilight movies...so it's entirely up to you to define all the crazy rules, tags, and pick the right icons for every single thread.

That's a pretty good analogy.

Well that and the 'stabbing-head-with-shield' factor.

FYI, we have seven combat modes:

• Combat - unarmed combat mode, used by most powers
• Weapon - weapon in right hand. Broadsword, Mace, Axe, Arachnos Mace, etc.
• Dual Wield - Dual Blades, Dual Pistols
• *Lefthand - used by lefthand weapons. Archery and Katana
• *Claws - used by...hang on a sec...oh right, Claws.
• Shield - Shield and Shield Weapon combat mode
• Gun - two handed rifles. Assault Rifle and Robotics Mastermind

*Lefthand and Claws are a subset of Dual Wield. They generally share animations with Dual combat mode.

So really looking at 12-16 animations per power, counting the varients for Male, Female, and Huge for Gun combat mode and doubling everything for Flight. To put that in perspective, that's basically a powerset. That's also not counting the massive bloat that would happen to our sequencers from having 5-7 versions of every power animation.

I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes.

Probably a bit of both.

Here's some of the things that I wrote up that didn't didn't make the cut (good or bad, you decide):

• Splitting the reward up using the soon to be added invention system, so that you had to be there for the whole raid to get all of the components to make an HO of your choice. Idea here was to discourage people from just showing up at the end for the reward. That got axed long before the details could be hashed out
• Originally, the raid was designed to instance at 75 and cap at 100 players. That got lowered by programming to 40/50 for server performance reasons (particularly for Masterminds).
• Originally designed as a co-op raid, with both sides having access to The Hive. That got veto'd in lieu of impending Rikti War Zone/Invasions and stealing some of the co-op thunder from them. That in turn prompted The Abyss being built.
• Number of GMs needed to spawn Hami was much lower. The basic idea for this was that players could trigger a raid rather than waiting around for Hamidon's spawn timer. It also gave people something to do rather than waiting around for "minimum" number of raiders to show up.
• I don't believe Essence of the Earth (hambrosia) was my idea. I can't remember if that was added before or during beta. But that in turn prompted Monster Island being built and futzed with the GM/spawn formula even more.
• More blooms than asked for. Technically, it's the maximum (I wrote down "2-3", they scripted 3 plus the starting bloom...so 4 total). Total time-wise, 4 blooms ended up being about where we wanted it to be but in a much more repetitive way.

Also, one big thing that never gets enough credit for the change in perception, all of this happened at the same time that Invention Origin enhancements were added to the game. So it's difficult to say how the new raids would be perceived if they were still giving out the end-all, be-all, best enhancements in the game.

Me personally writing up a re-design aside, Hamidon was going to change and change radically for Issue 9. And if there's one thing I've learned in the time I've been here it's that any change will be perceived by some people as a good change, others as a bad change, and most as the wrong thing to mess with entirely.

Taunt aura?

Doesn't seem very heroic...

Our reasons:

1. Time - We set out to do primary/secondary powersets. Rather than delay power customization even longer, we opted to release what we felt we could get done. (95% of powers = half done)
2. Me too! - We knew we couldn't do Kheldian customization without also doing Arachnos customization. The epic ATs equate to about 4 powersets each, so it's not an insignificant amount of work. ( In for a penny, in for a pound.)
3. Tech - The tech was set up to do customization of Primary and Secondary powersets. Some issues come up with Epic powersets because of the forms, builds, paths, etc.
4. UI redesign - UI would need to be reconfigured to deal with the additional powers, and powers within forms. Tech would probably be needed to show the avatar in the correct forms in the preview window. (Requires tech and art, so not up to me)
5. Form Shifting - We don't yet have the ability to do customization of costume swaps, used by Kheldian Dwarf and Nova forms. We'd rather wait to do customization for Kheldians when and if that becomes something we can do. (Requires tech, so not up to me)
6. Popularity - At the time, Kheldian and Arachnos characters represented a very small section of the playerbase, which means it get's prioritized lower than things like Pool Powers, or Anciallary/Patron powers. (logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few)
7. Fictional - Epic archetypes are heavily tied to specific fiction in game lore. This point is debatable and no concrete decisions were ever made one way or the other about it...it's just something that came up when talking about the scope of power customization. In conjunction with all of the other reasons listed above, it's just one more tick in the column of reasons we didn't.

That's my point. We don't have any travel powers with multiple animations, be it in a single power or multiple powers. All of the prestige sprints have different visual effects, but use the same animations.

I think some of you guys are making the assumption that because we can have different visual effects for travel powers, and other powers can have both different VFX and different animations, that travel powers could also have different animations...but that's not the case.

Movement modes are not the same as powers.

Prestige sprints don't have multiple animations...so I guess it's already done?

Ludicrous. Castle is way too smart to get caught on camera.

To get Walk animations for out of combat, we needed 24 animations; 8 moves, for 3 different body types. Since it's out of combat we don't really need to worry about 'facing' ahead and most of these were modified versions of the walk forward animation, we could just rotate the character to have them walk towards the camera. For walk animations in combat, we need 8 animations per combat mode...roughly 64 animations. And they are significantly more work than modifying a single walk cycle to point it in different directions.

Restricting powers from being used while Walking is purely about not having the various combat animations needed to support it. It wasn't about forcing the power to only work for RP...that's just all the power can do right now.

When we have time to do those extra animations, then we'll no longer need the restrictions on Walk and combat.

You'd be wrong.

I don't think Blizzard literally throws money at the game. It does paint an awesome mental image of everyone at Blizzard standing around throwing wads of cash and coins at a boxed copy of World of Warcraft. Which at best, would just confuse the game (assuming it's sentient enough to be aware of what's happening)

The problem is that emotes now work while in combat modes, but the costume change animations were not flagged to interrupt some of the combat modes. It's already been fixed on my end, just waiting for it to percolate into a build.

Just FYI, some more changes coming to the Ninja Run animations in the near future:

• Going to look at the deformation in the spine during some of the jump moves. Looks especially odd on some of the female models because of how the geometry is built/weighted
• Dual Pistols/Claws will be getting a more appropriate set of animations (namely the ready stance and runs)
• "Shotgun" mode will be getting a more appropriate set of animations.
• Shield combat mode (without a weapon) will be getting a more appropriate set of animations.

Jay and Cheryl are also looking into various issues with costume pieces.

So...are you suggesting people shouldn't have ideas if they're already in other games, or that we shouldn't add things to this game that have been in other games?

Either way, less work for everyone.

Kinda looks like a quiver.

• CCPrestoChango
• CCLightning
• CCSpin
• CCCast
• CCDrinkFormula
• CCSuperSerum
• CCSmokeBomb
• CCNinjaJump
• CCBackFlip
• CCHowl
• CCEvilLaugh
• CCSalute
• CCPeacebringer
• CCWarshade
• CCVanguardSigil

I wish those were visible in game somewhere, but because of localization the actual emote name gets replaced.

I only accept responsibility when it goes bad...when it's good I give the credit to someone else.