Baeleos

I think as far as Incarnate Shards go,
The chances of getting a shard is equal among all minions, lieutenants, bosses, eb's and AV's and Giant Monsters such as Hami and the Mito's. (eg - for each of those groups)

That being said,
The rate at which you can acquire them, depends on a few things.

1. Luck - A roll is made - so you need to put your trust in the fates.
2. Mob Size - Some mobs types spawn with larger mob's that others. Some Mob Types can also self rez which gives a further roll chance for Loot.
3. Kill Rate - As far as Farming goes, being able to take out large groups fast, is the 'ka-ching!'.
4. Not entirely sure, but the size of the team, may affect how often you 'Personally' get a shard. Eg- I dont know if a shard roll is made, and then it is randomly given to someone on the team or not, or if the shard roll is made for each person on the team etc.
It may be the case that your own chances of getting a shard, are higher if you solo, but at the same time, it is more difficult to farm.


As far as Point 1 goes, not much you can do about that.
Point 2 - My choice would be to go for Freakshows and/or Clockworks, failing that, go for Rikti.
Point 3 - This will very much depend on your Build/PowerSet and Team Powersets etc.
My Fortunata is a leathal Psi-Blaster, who does massive damage to foes who lack resistance to Psi, but at the same time ,his Foresight power grants incredible resistance to Psi too.

For point 3, from a personal point of view, I would choose for the Survivability, to face off against Rikti, since all of their Psi Attacks more a less bounce off me like ping pong balls. On the LGTF, especially on the last mission, it is entirely possible to get about 6-7 Incarnate Shards from the last room with Honoree, and the Mob sizes are beautiful, gather them up, use a few AOE attacks such as Ghost Widow's Patron Power that does Ranged AOE damage, which takes about 1/5 of their health off, then Let Loose a Psychic Wail, which either kills them , or leaves them on deaths door.

Psionic Wail usually kills a good few of them, and gives a good chance of an
'Incarnate Shard Bonded' message showing.

Woot - First post!!

What did you like?

Liked the new animation style of the Incarnate powers. The Flame Power for Judgement looks nice, very eldritch and more realistic.



What did you dislike?

While I do like that the new Trials need thinking and strategy to complete, I feel a little annoyed that if we dont succeed within the time limit, then we fail. It makes us feel rushed, and can end up resulting in time wasted. Is a time limit required considering it is such a hard task - (Lambda Sector)

What would you change?
Time limit on Lambda Sector, and perhaps reduce the strength of some of the ambushes.

What other suggestions do you have?
I like the new powers, but some of my friends have said they would like other elemental choices for Judgement etc, other than fire, ice, electric and dark.
Will there be any gravity related powers?
Gravity is always fun to play with as a controller/dominator, love the way it interacts with physx stuff, can we have more playful and stylish powers too?

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This is also far from a NEW or ORIGINAL suggestion, it's been suggested repeatedly in the past. The devs are very well aware that we want such a feature, and they've been aware of it for quite a while now.


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Alas - it was not in the frequently suggestion thread - so its not the thread posters fault.
Besides, im just saying I wouldnt mind it being implimented at some point. So its got my thumbs up.

Its not a bad suggestion, might not be very original, but definitly not a bad suggestion.

This is a suggestion forum.
Someone posted this topic because they wanted to know if it would be a welcome addition to the city of heroes product.

So far, everyone has agreed that it would be welcomed.

The only thing everyone is complaining about, is the amount of effort required to impliment. Which is nothing the players should be worrying about anyhow.

You either want the feature, or you dont.

Lets not confuse the issue with what might be technical, or development barriers, those are for development to get past.

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So us saying yes to your question in no way indicates we think the devs should prioritise it.


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I know, but its for developers to prioritize.
The suggestion forum is just to suggest things.

If we all agree that it would be a nice addition, then who knows, they might put it on the agenda at some point in time.
I really dont mind when.

If the developers use any of the quality assurance tools that many companies use these days, they likely have fields for
impact, priority and such.
and once they are all filled in, it generates a RP number that sets the final priority.

Cosmetic issues would by default go below functionality issues.

But the idea is that if we at least agree that it would be a nice addition, it would be at least on their radar, and might end up getting done eventually, rather than never. Can we all see the logic in that?

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Nope. there is a really good reason, there is only one version of each set. everyone with the same power pull the information about the models from the same source. This is why they can't do power customisation either. A change to those powers affects everyone with the power at the moment.

Changing that fact would require a massive rewrite of the game engine.


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Theres me thinking that I saw a post from a dev saying that the reason they cant easilly provide power customization is because its too hard to recolor the geometry particles of powers.

The customization of minions would be equally as difficult as the customization of mobs in mission architect.

There is potentially more file storage required for mission architect than minion costumes.

Im not disputing that there might be a little bit of work involved in getting the models to be drawn from players individual costume databases instead of the shared resource, but once its done, its done, and everyone will have individual minions, and there wouldnt be much, if any impact to performance.

As stated above, the costume is basically 25 lines of plain text. Only performance issue, might be local to peoples machines if they are on low end machines, but thats what a performance / quality slider is for.

We shouldnt concern ourselves with development issues like
"How hard will it be to do" - Developers are there to worry about that.
"What impact will it have" - Developers are there to worry about that.
"is there anything else we can do instead" - Developers are there to worry about that.



Just ask yourself if you would like this feature at some point in time.


I would, and im prepared to let development decide on its priority.

You want a telefrag effect?

Lol, I remember using that tactic to kill loads of people in Unreal Tournament.

I can't see it being implimented so it kills players, however, developers might try and impliment something simple that pushes players away from the portal.
Or even a random teleport effect,

if the portal has too many people near it, teleport the next arrival a bit away from the portal, so they are not swamped.

While not a major problem, I do agree that it does become visually nasty seeing everyone huddled around a portal.

I don't think telefragging would be the answer, but perhaps something could be done to resolve the issue.

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Just wondering:


What has fixing the civilians anything to do with wheelchairs cossie pieces?


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The idea was orriginally for players to have wheelchairs for costume pieces.
For practical reasons, we established that powers such as martial arts would look a little too funky in a wheelchair. (although it might be entertaining to watch).

The idea then evolved into providing wheelchairs to contacts for architect contacts and possibly npcs such as civilians.

While on the topic, it also came up, how dire the civilians and ambient life in city of heroes and villains are.

One question to everyone.

Assume for a second that there is no other issues that need fixed, no pvp issues, no money issues, no time constraints, no development issues.

Would you or would you not want civilians and ambient life in the city of x universe to be made

1. Smarter - (Including pathfinding, no getting stuck in walls, and roads, also including some different speech patters other than the current system determined by the first letter of their name)

2. Model changes - Make them look more varied, maybe add in an old man model who limps, a wheelchair bound npc walking about, also making the civilians less powerful. At the moment, they can plow through you, albeit slower than, but at the same force as a truck, they seem to have super strength as a primary powerset. They are able to move you. Maybe some animations showing them stumbling, tripping, or visually showing that they bumped into something.
3. Reaction to Environment - This might be considered as part of smarter, but at the minute, the npcs walk down the road, and if Babbage, or Paladin was in the middle of the road, they would walk by not caring. Cars even plow into babbage and paladin as if he was a normal player. Wouldnt it be nice to have civilians running with arms in the air, screaming, tripping over eachother escaping the giant monster.


Ok, so - taking into consideration, the imaginary pretense that there are absolutly nothing else that needs done in city of heroes, would you want these things done or not.

Eg - You cant turn round and say "I dont want it done, because I want pvp fixed first"

its either
Yes - I would like to see that improvement at some point in time.
or
No - I like the daft civilian pathfinding, unreactive AI, and the talking clock, as well as their nasty models.

Its not for us to establish in this topic the priority that the suggestion should be given. We only need to establish, if it is something you would want, at some point in time.

If players think it would be an improvement, developers can prioritize it, whether it comes before or after PvP thats their call.

Im going to take advantage of the fact that I think no one is replying due to leaving work and heading home.

Developers - GO FORTH AND FIX THE CIVILIANS. Lol

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havent read the full thread (sorry! i will but I wanted to say this).


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I dont blame you for not reading the full thread. Lol
Its been quite heated.

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And adding more detail, more AI routines and more environmental fluff will help those poor servers how?


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Never said it would help the servers, but ya never know, might make the zone look nicer being populated with smart civilians opposed to drones.

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ignoring the poor neglected civillians


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Exactly, but does this mean it will never be fixed?
Does this mean the civilians and ambient life of the city will continue to suck.

I'll admit, the plastic issue I have, is mostly concerned with models hair.

I dont think its necessary to get that much glare from hair.

But thats small change compared to the issue of civilians as a whole spouting c Rap about the time, getting stuck in walls, pushing players out of the way like they have super strength as a primary powerset, and generally not reacting to their environment or players.

You cannot deny that a screenshot of Paladin attacking kings row would look better with NPC civilians Running away with their arms in the air, stumbing over eachother, and screaming.

Opposed to

Paladin in the middle of the road, cars continue to drive at him, push him out of the way, and npc civilians walking up along the footpath ignoring the fact that there is a giant monster with immense power nearby.

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What do you mean by plastic what would stop them looking like plastic in your opinion?


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What do I mean by plastic?
Look at your character in the character creation screen, you get more glare of their hair than a bald man under a spot light.

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Apparently not, looking at DC Online and Champions. Developers in those studios seem to think it's the way to go.


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They think whats the way to go?
Talking clocks?
(Im asking a genuine question, you quoted a large post, and not actually sure which part you are refering to.)

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seems to agree that there are other issues that have higher priority, like addding actual content to the game instead of fluffing it up.

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Actually, I have acknowledged that there are higher priority things, however, what everyone has missed, is that the state of the civilians, AI, PATHFINDING, and general model quality, has remained like this since the games inception, and there are no plans that have been announced to date, about fixing, or improving them. (If there had been, I would not need to post a suggestion about improving them.)

The reason its being pointed out, rebuffed, and pointed out again, is because everyone acknowledges it, but then continues to ignore it, because they want their precious PvP, and as usual, the issue of the civilians and ambient life in the city of heroes universe, continues to NOT GET BETTER, because its pushed to the background, by PvP which is unplayable to begin with, because its hosted on what seems to be an intel pentium 2 processor driven server, with 64 mb of ram. 20 players or more, and everyone else suffers. But the same could be said for every zone in the game.

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but they do say other things of there own back have you never noticed all the "hey there go's hero X did you here how he took down tyrant" they only give you the scripted information if you click on them i like to see how many hours I've played a character for and things like that what is that information being available doing to harm your enjoyment of the game.


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I fully recognize that they do often say things about <PLAYERX> beating <BOSSZ> and so on. These too are scripted in.

I'll be totally honest, I don't know what would be a better alternative to 'click on npc, and get time played back at me' but thats for business and development leads on ncsoft/city of heroes development team to come up with.

Im not trying to say
You will die of boredom if you walk down the street and the npcs sing the time to you.

Im pointing this out as an improvement, civilian characters are classed as ambient life, and as part of the ambient life of the city, they give a sense of ambience to the player about their surroundings.

Having good Civilian Models, Ai, and pathfinding, can overall, help to increase/add to a good ambience or sense of environment to the player.

One of the issues I've pointed out, is that the models look like they are made of plastic, why is this necessary.
Surely comic style can be less plastic?

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And to be frank you have no idea that its not because of faults with the world that models get stuck yet you seem intent on believing upgrading the models would solve this problem


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Hey I have an idea...
Why dont the developers invest some time, and investigate, and fix the issue, seems to me that they might have less petitions if they resolve it.

Ah, But I remember... they arent going to fix it, cause everyone wants pvp fixed. Damn... Oh well.

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Civvies are background scenery. If you take them away the game will still be the game, true, it'll be a lot quieter and the city would seem empty, but for the game itself, they add nothing.


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Yeah good idea, take the civilians out, we can have a REAL city of Heroes - Populated entirely by Real people on their computers.

Thats like suggesting to take the doors of a building, its still a building after all, now you can just enter it alot easier.

Im suggesting an improvement, which if the developers did invest time in, might improve the overall look of the exterior areas of city of heroes.

Civilians might look nicer, more varied, they might walk around you instead of plowing through you like a tanker on a mission, heck they might be able to code in some sort of bump into person animation, or some sort of insult on collision with a player.
Eg - Hey Get out of my way!!

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Also.. what's this ficsation with the NPCs that tell the time, there are 26 letters in the alphabet, and only 2 of those give the time, the one of your computer and the one ingame. It's like "Hey buddy, what's the time" when you click him.. what does clicking one do actually?


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I'd also like them to come up with an alternative to the talking clock effect. Its like the civilians were programmed at Crey industries.
The fixation on this, is that its a poor system. What if poor little Jenny wants to say something other than the time. Its like a developer came up with it, and somehow thought it was a good idea.

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but then claiming it'd fix things like mobs getting stuck in scenery, in order to sweeten the deal, is just wrong. If anything it's to do with map holes and dodgy wall geometery than it is to do with enemy models.

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To be frank, from your narrow player mindset and view, you have absolutly no idea to the cause of players, mobs, and civilians getting stuck inside, outside levels and other geometry objects.

(oh and by the way, anything appearing vague in my description, was due to you not reading it, in several posts back, I elaborated that Improving civilians could be
AI, PATHFINDING, MODELS(geometry) AND TEXTURES.)

My arguement was that by investing time in the improvement of model geometry, and other aspects, they might actually be able to fix the character models, while in the process of improving them, so they clash less with the environment. It occurs to me that getting stuck out of the level, is caused in part by a conflict between the model geometry and the world, physics forces more a less force the model into a place they are not meant to be in, and collision events dont fire properly. - This is my assumption, I recognise that it is an assumption.

Its just an assumption on your part that civilians getting stuck in roads, is caused by the world geometry, if thats the case then the world needs fixed,indeed, however I feel they could fix character objects (models, npcs, mobs) as a whole, to prevent them getting thrown out of bounds.

Characters, Npcs, and mobs are not just models, there is alot of scripting that goes into a model object, before it becomes an npc,mob, or even the character object.

<removed by mod>

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So far, im getting the impression, that its acceptable to leave bad things in the game, if they are small.



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It's a nessassary evil. Fixing everything requites infinite resourses, so if games had to be bug free, it would mean no more computer games ever.



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The point is that the issue has been highlighted to developers, they should fix it.
Its not like its something that they are not aware off.

I honestly dont mind when something like civilians gets fixed, as long as it does.

Just ignoring the issue of Civilians that spout the time of day is just sh1tty to be honest, its the poorest example of coding, development, and decision making ever.

They SHOULD fix civilians pathfinding, AI, and if possible improving model quality could help both performance issues if the models are optimized further, and they might be able to prevent the dreadded mob stuck in wall issue.

Whether they do or not is another issue.
But no one can dispute that these things are issues, albeit small issues.
But they are not going to go away, unless a developer fixes them.

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No they don't. Learn to read properly.

I'm opposed because of the poor "Development time Spent" vs "Potential gain" ratio. But you seem to be too dim to follow the argument and instead prefer to throw out random Software Development models


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Yeah, but what your failing to understand is that I am just beyond caring about what you think anymore.

And those "random" development models are industry approved and recognised, and highlight benefit of fixing even small things, early on in a project, if you dont mind the small things in city of heroes remaining dull, and dreary, and talking clock npc's, then by all means, wait in line for the next update that shaves 0.3 seconds of a power activation time.

I was actually being sarcastic when I said
"we" want pvp fixed.

I dont particularly care about pvp, cause at the end of the day, sirens call is a [censored] area that boots you off at inconvenient times if there is over 20 people in the zone.

Why? Cause the server technology the zone is hosted on is really bad.

I tried getting in once on a pvp night that was advertised on the site, and was booted every 5 minutes.

PVP is meaningless if they cant be bothered to get the technology to support it.

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ummm... is this not a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about a fairly simple suggestion? unless it can be shown to be BAD suggestion, what does anyone have against the idea of wheelchairs in the game? sure, it needs to be prioritised against all the other work going on, as any suggestion would be. and also it would need to be implemented in such a manner as not to break existing game features etc... but isn't all that a given?
i just think, given the scale of the suggestion (and it is a Suggestion forum), the amount of opposition is a little "off the scale", considering this is a cosmetic suggestion.


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Sorry Cap,
We are sorta off topic.
We did agree that Wheelchairs are bad idea for players, however we did agree that it might be an acceptable improvement for architect (eg - npc contacts and such)
Now the issue seems to be whether or not civilians and mobs should be allowed to be enhanced to look better, get stuck less in walls, and have better AI and pathfinding.

Which everyone seems to think the answer is NO, because we want PVP fixed.