BackAlleyBrawler

Originally Posted by Vanden

...finally work 100%! Hit FX finally play for every power you use on them, and they even wobble when you hit them! When did this happen?!

Originally Posted by Deft_Bow

This turned out long and in some respects drawn out, the bottom of the post contains a summary of what I'm trying to say for those who are too lazy to read through my "rantings"

Issue 16, the dawn of the resurrection of a multitude of characters for me. I spent hours customizing powers and recreating costumes in order to fit with their new amazing themes, paying specific attention to powers and how their visuals would make this character look. I happen upon my old Spines/Regen scrapper and lo and behold! There is an option other than: ridiculous looking tree things! I immediately get to redesigning him, spending time and effort doing what I love: making him prettyful. Now, I don't go out and play him immediately, as I take this opportunity to get a few thoughts from my head into action, creating Spines scrapper after Spines scrapper, relishing in the new wealth of concepts I can make. All is not well and good, however, as I spend time leveling these notoriously hard early-level powersets, and finally get to the crown jewel: Quills.

Now, from what I remember from previous spines scrappers, Quills has always been an amazing power, letting me dish out damage without even clicking, and having that debuffing effect? Great. What I was really looking forward to, however, was not having my attack times take forever and a day whenever I decide to use Healing Flames, or for that matter most of my secondary powers on my Regen scrapper, because of the redraw. And yet, I look after using healing flames, and the spines are gone? I quickly log out and log back in as my Spines/Regen, click on Spines and then click on one of my numerous click powers, and yes, they were gone again. Quills was still running, but my porcupine-esque visage was not to be had. The spines were not there. Wrest away from my form in their prime. O why has thou forsaken me, Quills?

All joking aside, I have no idea why such a terrible thing would happen to what I remember being a set-defining power. Does this change its role as such? Slightly. Does this seriously affect the viability of Spines when looking at a set like Regen? Yes. Now, I have seen this topic on the forums before, but never in this section unless it was a small footnote on a thread about Spines, and never to my knowledge have we received word from this on the Devs as to whether or not this is "working as intended". Guessing by the fact that I can use Quills, then turn on a toggle and not be forced to redraw, and the redraw only happening on click powers not in the primary, I would guess yes. My only question is why? Was Quills' non-redraw contingency allowing the performance of spines as a whole to be too much in terms of the balance of the game? Was the movement of Fire Armor and the planned movement of electric armor as secondaries to Scrappers too much in terms of the scrapper that could not only have a secondary damage aura but keep its endurance above almost zero (unlike Dark Armor)? I plead someone of authority to answer these questions, as it just doesn't seem to add up to me.

Looking at Spines' animation times, and then looking at literally any other power set in the game, it's pretty clear that Spines has the short end of the stick on animation times, coming in slowest among all the sets I've played (or at least seemingly so). Does the set make up for it with incredible area of affect attacks? Yes. And an exotic damage type? Gads yes. And a great secondary effect? Yes indeed. But do all these pros mean that every time I redraw and am killed by an enemy because of that milisecond of timing that I didn't have to click a green or heal or something else that I don't curse the very concept of redraw? Of course not. My point being that does an already undeniably abysmally slow set really need something that made it just a little more user-friendly taken away from it?

This is where the people who skipped ahead can join in =P

Will the fact that Quills no longer negates redraw make me stop playing Spines Scrappers? Goodness no. I enjoy spines as a set because of the wealth of new concepts that have been introduced as of Issue 16 and revamping my previous Spines scrappers to be fitted with all the brand spanking new shineyness that comes with power customization. What I would really really like, though, is an explanation as to whether or not this new aspect, or lack of an old aspect, was intentional. If so: What is the reasoning behind it? If not: Is it fairly high on your lengthy list of "things to do"? Another thing I would enjoy is to basically hear some opinions on what other people think of this change, whether or not you are a spines scrapper, or if you have some spines scrappers on the shelf that you haven't dusted off for a while. I am very aware that there is a chance that this will not be changed, but it would be really awesome to get a state of address on this issue on one of my new/old favorite sets.

Originally Posted by Obsidius

Welcome! Hope you stick around longer then Dr. Brainstrom

J/K! Welcome aboard!

What can we expect to see as far as the recent XP changes to custom critters are concerned? Will there be a less "draconian" way of granting certain powers to custom critters and basing the XP gain off of the selected powers themselves? This has been a big concern for more than a few mission architects.

Originally Posted by Another Space

Can I get a reference of how far the distances are on that? I like all of my dark armor toggles (only one i've changed for i16 was cloak of darkness to the no fade/pulse), but I've notice I lose a lot of FPS whenever terrain causes my camera to get too close to my char. So I'm looking for a range that basically says "suppress DA FX when 1/3rd of the screen is my character".

Originally Posted by Commander

So, as I tend to surf the global channels often, I happen upon a discussion about questioning people's loyalty to CoH if they play other NCsoft games. Lately the talk has been about Aion.

Don't think this is turning into a flame-fest, well, at least from me, against Aion. In fact, I've subscribed to it and I'm loving every minute of it.

However, there are the folks that say, "OMG! So and so is playing Aion now! Well, looks like they weren't so loyal to CoH after all!" Or the "Well, looks like so and so is playing Aion... good, glad they're gone."

The funny thing is that people tend to see things no more than 3 feet in front of them. They see playing Aion as a breakaway from CoH. They think that subscribing to Aion hurts CoH. Well, sadly, they are mistaken.

Any business made from subscriptions and sales of Aion actually helps CoH. CoH isn't only getting funding from their own subscriptions. They get funding from NCsoft, who in fact is taking in the money from both products. If Aion does well, it means there is a larger pool of money that can be distributed between the products that NCsoft produces/distributes. Just like the money taken in from CoH is used to fund other NCsoft titles.

Every major company makes a product that competes with itself, well, because no matter what product is bought, the corporation takes in money. Maytag makes more than one washing machine. Blizzard makes more than one MMO. NCsoft is just another company that is making its own competition just so it can continue to produce the products that we love so much.

So, the next time that you see someone bash someone for playing another NCsoft game, you march right up to them and give them a stiff right hook to the jaw! Any money that can go towards the preservation of CoH is clean money in my book!

And that's the way it was. Goodnight, Paragon City.

___________________
The views expressed are those of the [author/presenter/interviewee] and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the NCsoft or its members, sponsors or partners. NCsoft makes no representation concerning and does not guarantee the source, originality, accuracy, completeness or reliability of any statement, information, data, finding, interpretation, advice, opinion, or view presented. So there!

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

SuppressFX is *not* supposed to suppress weapons (or capes or selectable auras). If it does, it's a bug. Send a PM to BAB about it (and a /bug report for QA) so that it's flagged not to suppress.

Originally Posted by Santorican

You should reengineer the vfx system to allow multiple skeleton types when power customization V2 comes out next year.

Originally Posted by Tigra_Swipe

I've got a DA/Ele brute that I have started having problems playing because of the dizzying/disorienting effects on the dark armor once I have all the toggles on. It wasn't a problem when I only had a couple of toggles, but now that I'm up to 6, it makes me motion sick. And that's with putting everything that can be set "no fx" to "no fade or pulse".

So I'm trying to find a color combination that will allow me to play her and not have to reroll...

Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by Monkey_King

I remember a long while back, before NCSoft took over, BaB mentioned that power customization would require rewriting the graphics code almost completely. They weren't going to do that unless there was a good reason to do so.

Originally Posted by Obscure Blade

I was just playing my Fire/Earth Dominator, and noticed that the hold animation for Char only played about 1 time in 10. The power worked, but they'd just stand in place. And when the animation did play, it looked more like a stun animation than the choking animation Char normally has.

Originally Posted by macskull

And everything in PvP >.>

Originally Posted by Umbral

due to the damage formula penalizing heavy hitting long animation attacks even though they've got generally sub par to average DPAs

Originally Posted by Luminara

Just a heads-up on this, a friend and I managed to isolate part of this bug in a reproducible manner. Low mag KB, essentially KD, causes this bug to manifest. However, it only occurs every other time you're hit with a KD power. In other words, you'll get flipped once, then knocked down, then flipped, then knocked down, etc. It's next to impossible to isolate in regular play because so few foes have guaranteed KD powers. The only reason we found it is because we were testing it in the Arena.

I sent Castle the information and steps to reproduce the bug, and with it being such a definitive pattern, I don't think it will be difficult for the developers to pinpoint the cause.

Props go to @Dorkus for finding the first clue to the pattern. I had him spamming Force Bolt on my hovering Archery/Energy blaster, which wasn't triggering the bug, then he shot me in the face with Repulsion Bomb, knocked me down in mid-air and got us on the right track.

Originally Posted by je_saist

I've got a couple of old logitech headsets you're welcome to have.

Originally Posted by Texas Justice

But the question is, do you HEAR what is going on here?

Originally Posted by Synapse

Not this either. I think it would be best if Pohsyb explained it. Sounds like an old bug that appeared to somehow manifest in I16. Personally, I blame it on code gnomes. They're up to no good, it's just their nature.

Originally Posted by Obsidius

Of course, if new skeletons were to be made for player characters, that Python code they used for Power Customization could be handy for exporting animations, making slight adjustments for new skeletons, and applying them, in order to expedite such a large endeavor over every powerset

Originally Posted by Monkey_King

I'm noticing a distinct lack of theme options for Energy Aura - Energy Cloak. I had a feeling EA was going to get overlooked again.

Originally Posted by Tease

Babs, thanks for the confirmation. There's a lot of us here that LIKE doing troubleshooting work (infact I tend to prefer breaking stuff and betas to actually playing the game) but its easy to lose faith that what we're doing is useful when we see stuff like this without knowing whats really going on. You guys do an awesome job, and I cant imagine the stress you've been under with this issue messing with all your precioussssess animations. We appreciate you taking the time to give us some feedback, means a lot.

Tease

Originally Posted by Tease

To me, its a bigger problem than that, because we bugged this during open beta. Something went amiss after we did apparently. That's the reason I'm still confused how it made it to live. I kinda liked my little belief that they actually read our /bug tickets.

Originally Posted by Weatherby Goode

Energy Melee. The others are working properly.

Originally Posted by Tease

I'll send additional information this way shortly, several in our VG have been bugging it since beta. Basically it took the "strike" out of the Assassin Strike. They crouch/prep, pause, damage is dealt, stand up. Very odd animation hiccup. Not sure how it got to live.

Tease