Balanced

It's a good idea, no question. What format should it be in? Comma-delimited text is probably simplest, and easy to import into spreadsheets. An XML option might be nice, too.

(In fact, I'd like to see an export option for character builds as well. We have one for costumes now, thanks to the Save Costume feature.)

Hm...
Temp Power: Can of WD-40.
Effect: PBAoE Damage vs. Door Critters, Target Visibility=None. (I wonder if that even works with PBAoE powers?)

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What if they made a series of "special ships" (like the special buildings in Steel Canyon) in the locations where she spawns. During spawning you could show her wreck this ship and show passengers swimming for the nearest beach. Thereafter you could have those boatmen standing on the beach cheering the heroes on.

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They already have cars with a taunt aura for the Hellions and Skulls to blow up. They could probably reskin those as boats and spawn them near Lusca. It would be nice if the boats could move, and followed set paths that would take them near her. Maybe they could tweak the taunt aura to be Lusca-only (so random mobs wouldn't attack the boats), but it's probably not necessary, since there usually wouldn't be other mobs near them. Ideally, they'd add an on-death power to the boat to spawn a few civilians (the targetable, but indestructible, civvies from Mayhem missions by preference). With the civvies, she'd have moving targets to beat on as they flee, and make things look more dynamic.

I like the idea of giving her a Propel-like power, too. In addition to sunken boats, anchors, and what-not, one of the hurled objects should be a skeleton with its feet in a bucket of cement.

It would be a pretty complicated overhaul, but I think it would greatly improve the event.

The changes to door sounds sparked an idea. One of the more surreal effects of the aggro system is that mobs generally don't notice even large changes and sound cues in their environment--like a big door suddenly sliding open, or a loud creaking noise. Obviously, the mobs aren't actually "aware" of doors and such, so the question is how to simulate that awareness.

My suggestion is the addition of a pseudo-pet entity (invisible, intangible, etc) based on the Teleport Foe entity. This critter would be stationed at doors the mission designer designates as particularly obvious or noisy. When a non-stealthed PC opens the door, the critter should aggro, and fire off a PBAoE taunt of sufficient radius to tag the nearest regular spawn. Once the spawn is taunted, the entity should wait a couple of seconds for the mobs to get within detection range of the PC, then despawn. At that point, the mobs should aggro on the PC instead. (If the PC goes stealthy after opening the door, the mobs should just lose interest and wander back to their spawn point--a "false alarm".)

Alternatively, the door critter could be used as an ambush trigger. This version would only need a silent self-kill power, with an ambush triggered upon its death. The ambush should be location-targeted, rather than targeted on the PC, since the mobs would be checking the site.

I think this is a relatively simple way to make mobs seem less oblivious to their surroundings, without unduly interfering with stealthy characters. It's not something that should be overused (not all doors should get a door-critter, by any means), but used sparingly, it would make missions more interesting and immersive.

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Claws and Effect.
Return to Cinder
Prophet Margin


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The puns! THE PUUUUUUNS!

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If you want to talk puns, in addition to Thinking Violet, I have:

Djinn Rumi--It's not his fault someone filled his bottle with booze.

and

Heir Power--His entire family, all heroes wielding various high-tech or magical devices, was wiped out in the Rikti War. When he was old enough, he came to Paragon City to claim his legacy.

I made a new alt last night, a reanimated feline hero, that I named Tenth Life. The backstory and costume are pretty lame/hideous, but the name itself is growing on me.

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And old comic character I came up with (before CoH), can get made almost to full concept (multiple personalities with limited shapeshifting. Different appearance for the 4 alternate personalities.). All I lack is the ability to give every personality a few specific powers to just them, and the ability to play all 5 of them at one time.

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Can't help with playing all 5 of them at once, of course, but there are a couple of things you could do to at least get some of the flavor of specific powers for each personality. The big one is using a dual build with a couple of different power choices and different IO slotting (different procs, for example); use each build as a baseline for a subset of the characters (3 on one build, 2 on the other). Then set up a tray with a different selection of "special" powers (temp, vet reward, day job, etc) for each character. (You may have to run a lot of safeguards to accumulate the temp powers.) Then set a bind to swap that tray in while changing into the appropriate costume.

Balanced: Different As Night And Day, Biological Mash Up

Redemption Jack: So You Want To Live Forever, Heel Face Turn, Love Redeems

I don't know about "coolest"; I don't really do "cool" names that much, so that title would probably go to Blightfall or Redemption Jack (which aren't particularly cool, I fear).

My favorite name, however is Thinking Violet, my plant/psi dom.

Indeed. I routinely solo EBs with my Emp/Dark defender, both at his natural level 50 and exemped down to various levels. It's very rare that I need backup, and so far Shivans have been sufficient for those cases. One tray full of purples and another full of attitude can work wonders.

My SG has run a few small Costume/Story contests (yes, you need both--we're backstory wonks, mostly), and I've contributed and participated in judging. Not only were the contests completely honest and aboveboard, we have generally made an effort to explain our choices. That isn't always practical in large contests, of course, which is part of the reason we stick to small ones.

1) Sound energy is kinetic energy, in the form of compression waves moving the particles of a medium. I would suggest that the Sonic powers are the result of instinctively using his power to manipulate kinetic energy to amplify and warp his voice.

2) All of Dark_Respite's suggestions for recruiters would work, of course. I would specifically suggest Phipps, however--this seems to fit him perfectly, and he would be in the best position to discover your character.

3) There are a number of real-world experimental devices along these lines, most of which seem to use pressure or electrical stimulation to create "images" for the blind. One notable device is an electrode pad that's held on the tongue and uses tiny pinpoint shocks to "draw" an image on the tongue. That wouldn't work so well for your character, for obvious reasons, but he could have something similar on an electrode plate across his forehead, using an image constructed from radar or sonar data.

For sound, I would suggest vibrating plates along the cheek near the ears. That would convey the direction and intensity of sounds, at least.

There are some interesting roleplaying considerations for this sort of imaging. Your character would not be able to see color, for example, or read text; he might have a fingertip gadget that scans text and converts it to Braille if he has to read something. Computer screens would be blank pieces of glass or plastic to him. If he doesn't have someone helping him pick clothing, he may wind up dressing in mismatched or otherwise odd colors. If you use sonar for the imaging, then every time he uses one of his Sonic powers, he would likely be "blinded" for an instant.

(I've had occasion to think some of this through, because one of my defenders is a blind archer. He has a direct perception sense linked to his teleportation powers that enables him to "see" things as relative densities, so he doesn't teleport into a solid object, but a lot of the other limitations apply. I roleplay his vet-reward Power Drone as an autonomous text-to-speech device; he has to summon it to use a computer, for example. Oh, and his girlfriend picks out his clothes.)

My current guess is that the ongoing effects of powers on others will use the default colors, rather than the customized tints. It seems to me that tracking the source of all the buffs stacked on a character for tinting purposes would be a nightmare, and would introduce precedence problems as well.

Say SilverAgeFan is a blaster, and has three empaths, Balanced, Hobo Healer, and LadyMage, trying to keep him alive. All three emps apply Fortitude to Silver, in alphabetical order. Balanced's Fort is yellow, Hobo's is green, and Lady's is blue. What color is Silver's head going to glow? Is the color picked by the first Fort applied? The last? Does it change when one of the Forts wears off? Does it just stack all the different glows (yuck)? How does it track the associated color for all the buffs applied?

Like I said, I'm just guessing. Maybe the game will track it and sort it out in some sensible fashion. In some ways, that would be better, as it would make the effects consistent with the player's color choices. On the other hand, it would be simpler to avoid the whole mess, and it would eliminate the issue Silver is concerned about as well.

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Okay, what story arc are y'all talking about that refers to Strongmen as possibly undead? I don't remember that, but I probably missed it or it flew over my head.

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The most direct mention of it is in the "Famous Track Star" mission from Madeleine Casey. After you try to rescue Samson Grey, Casey tells you this:

"After you brought Samson into custody, the doctors examined him. Red Tomax, it's the craziest thing! He can move, he can walk, he can even fight! But he isn't breathing. He's got no pulse, and his skin is ice cold. Red Tomax, I don't think thos strong men are the Carnival's servants at all! I think they're reanimated corpses!"

I think there's also a clue that mentions that one of the Strongmen you defeated seemed to have been dead for days, but it may be in that same mission. There may also be a reference to the Carnies sucking out someone's soul, but keeping his body animated to access his accounts (but I'm not sure about this one--I can't find it anywhere).

Carnival of Shadows question:

What, exactly, are the Strongmen?

The track star mission (and possibly several other things) point to them being undead. Casey actually says that she thinks they're animated corpses, and Samson's examination shows that he, at least, definitely is.

On the other hand, the in-game info on them suggests that they're alive--the Bronzes' info refers to their training regimen, the Irons' says that they earn their rank after serving for a year and a day, and the Steels' info says they have served for five years and a day. It's plausible that the Bronzes are trained, then soul-drained and reanimated, but the "loyal service" for the other two types doesn't make sense in that context. For that matter, I would expect a corpse--animated or not--to be pretty obviously dead after 5 years (and a day).

As a final point, the Undead Slaying Axe does not deal extra damage to them, so they're not classed as "true undead". I asked Castle about this way back, and he said, "I'm not sure on the fiction behind it, but I am assured by the writers that Strongmen are not undead."

So, what are they? Alive? Undead? Living shells inhabited by fragments of Vanessa's soul? Telekinetically animated corpses? Some mix of those options?

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Carnies are one of the more seriously creepy groups in the game. Forget the women, has anyone taken a good look at the men? Each has his entire back covered with whip marks. Vanessa must get her jollies in some decidedly non-teen rated ways.

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If you have not followed the arcs, the truth behind the male carnies may be far more creepy than you know.

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The particular clue you're referencing has puzzled me, on and off. I don't know that all--or even many--of them are like that. I did go so far as to pose a question to Castle about it, and received the response, "I'm not sure on the fiction behind it, but I am assured by the writers that Strongmen are not undead."

Also, some guys just aren't cut out to be Strongmen.

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Let's just say the Ghost Slaying Axe does extra damage against Strongmen, and there's an arc that has you figure out why.

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Except that it doesn't do extra damage to them. That was actually what my question to Castle was about--whether or not it should. Whatever they are, they don't have the undead attribute, and are apparently not supposed to have it. The carnies can certainly animate corpses--there are several examples of that--but they don't qualify for extra smitation from the Axe for some reason.

Maybe I ought to bug Manticore about it in the canon fodder thread.

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Carnies are one of the more seriously creepy groups in the game. Forget the women, has anyone taken a good look at the men? Each has his entire back covered with whip marks. Vanessa must get her jollies in some decidedly non-teen rated ways.

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If you have not followed the arcs, the truth behind the male carnies may be far more creepy than you know.

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The particular clue you're referencing has puzzled me, on and off. I don't know that all--or even many--of them are like that. I did go so far as to pose a question to Castle about it, and received the response, "I'm not sure on the fiction behind it, but I am assured by the writers that Strongmen are not undead."

Also, some guys just aren't cut out to be Strongmen.

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This is almost all true. The correct part is that everythign is similar whether you have a blade, stick, or none. But traditional training actually goes backwards. You are suppose to learn the concept of the blade first so you can easily translate the edge side when you start training with sticks, dagger, short sticks, soft weapons, and empty hand.

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When I studied Arnis (or, more properly, blended Arnis-Aikido), we started with canes, knives, and empty hand in parallel. We practiced variations on each move for all three, since the techniques are very similar regardless of weapon type. We did put off long blade (mostly machete) practice until a bit later, though, once everyone had learned a bit more control.

I would very much like to see a powerset based on FMA, and made suggestions along those lines for Dual Blades back when the set was being designed. Some elements I'd like to see in it:

1) Damage debuffs. ("Defang the snake" was my teacher's mantra--disarm the enemy, or otherwise cripple his ability to hurt you.)
2) An extremely short-range teleport, coupled with a turning animation, to place you behind a target. This should be accompanied by moderate damage to the target and a large short-term defense buff.
3) Strikes with both ends of the weapons, possibly as the second of two damage ticks on certain moves. (Stike, then reverse and strike again with the other end.)
4) A move that applies a short, high-magnitude immobilize to both the target and the attacker and applies damage over time to the target--a grapple/lock effect. (Sadly, this might not be workable because of animation issues; I don't see how you could animate a grappling move that wouldn't look terrible against a lot of the critters in City.)
5) A mix of knockdown and stun effects on various powers.

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The programmer requesting information has contacted our team and let us know he got what he was looking for within this thread.

He also said to give Balanced some extra pie.

Regards,

Ex

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Always happy to help. (Especially for pie! )

Edited to add: *shares pie with Alt_oholic*

I write my share of bug reports at work, and troubleshoot software as well. Quite often, it's less what you say in a report and more how you say it that sparks troubleshooting ideas. You can hear the same complaint a dozen different ways, only to have something about the thirteenth make it click into focus. Some little detail, or just the way the information is organized, will make you think about the problem in a new way.

That, or our programmer friend wants me to knock off my backseat driving and eat some pie.

Folks, while rubberbanding and other sync-related problems are often network related, the specific OOS bug under discussion here is not a connection problem. Those of us monitoring our network information while examining the issue have seen it happen with no anomalies in the netgraph and no lost packets. Beyond that, a network problem would not reasonably be expected to result in behavior specific to particular characters.

I understand that rubberbanding is frustrating for everyone, but I ask that we please try to stay focused on a specific problem. Introducing symptoms from other sync problems is only going to confuse the issue.

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She also gave me trouble for hitting Sally. I yipped back about her putting the hurt on level 2 Hellions in Atlas Park and she told me that it was not the same.

Flame: "Hellions burn stuff. Skulls break stuff. Sally just swims."

Wyll: "But Sally is a big monster."

Flame: "Yeah, but she was smiling."

Wyll: "Smiling? What?.... She was not!"

Flame: "Did you check?"

Wyll: "Well... no..."

Flame: "Then she was smiling. You don't hit smiling monsters."

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Sally does looks sort of like she's smiling, and she's non-hostile. Lots of us shared Flame's objections to attacking her back when she was introduced--I think the activists still have "Save Sally!" in their list. As I recall, we were told that the Red Caps were doing something to Sally, trying to make her into a dangerous monster, whenever she came within their reach. The reason for hitting her, then, was to drive her back under (notice she "dives" rather than dies when hit) where she's safe from the Red Caps.

It's not like one hit from anyone is going to seriously hurt a giant monster--it's more like bopping her with a rolled-up newspaper to make her leave something dangerous alone.

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On topic--I run into very frequent de-syncs with my main (Balanced on Virtue), but I'm not sure how long they last now. I've gotten into the habit of hitting my sync bind every time he zones, since that's when he loses it. He doesn't lose sync every time, but often enough to be worth the bind. None of my other characters seem to have this problem.

I'll make a point of holding off on the bind and timing him next time it happens.

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As promised, I took notes on it when I logged back in on the character. Here are the details:

Server: Virtue

Character: Balanced, L50

Time: 12:15 AM Central

Network Connection: Wired LAN connection

Internet Connection: DSL

Circumstance: Zoning from Ouro to Atlas Park.

Results:
I started heading from the zone-in point toward the train station. About 10 seconds into the run, I snapped back to my starting point. I repeated this 10 times, and each time, I snapped back at exactly 10 seconds after the last rubberband. I monitored my netgraph the entire time, and saw no anomalies--just low green fuzz, as usual.

I waited 5 minutes, then tried again, with exactly the same results.

Then I used /sync. After using the command, I was able to run to the train station unhindered and zone to Steel Canyon. Once in Steel, I repeated the process--snapping back to the train exit every 10 seconds. Once again, using /sync cleared the problem.

Observations:
1) The server sync is indeed triggering every 10 seconds.
2) The server sync is not doing the same thing as the /sync command, and does not clear the problem for the affected characters.
3) The problem seems to be tied to specific characters, as none of my other characters encounter it on a regular basis.

Speculation:
Could there be something about the character-specific data that is somehow interfering with the normal sync process? Balanced is L50, and has more stuff (badges, accolades, souvenirs, temp powers, etc) than any of my other characters. Could something in all that extra data be causing an overflow? Are other people seeing this issue principally on characters with lots of influence, or badges, or what-have-you?

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*shrugs* seems this game get more screwy/buggy every time a dev tries to re-balance the balancing they did for the orginal balance was balanced

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You called?

On topic--I run into very frequent de-syncs with my main (Balanced on Virtue), but I'm not sure how long they last now. I've gotten into the habit of hitting my sync bind every time he zones, since that's when he loses it. He doesn't lose sync every time, but often enough to be worth the bind. None of my other characters seem to have this problem.

I'll make a point of holding off on the bind and timing him next time it happens.

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All I'm saying is that there must be a better way to incorporate this into making us better heroes. Crafting, although a diversion from actual hero work, is necessary to improve our powers. This goes in the opposite direction as we can flitter away our time fighting made up villains instead of the real thing.

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On the other hand, we've been asking for a "Danger Room" type setup for bases ever since bases were introduced.

Then again, maybe Dr. Aeon doesn't understand his own tech all that well (what else is new?), and the Architect device is actually accessing pocket quantum-sheaf realities based on the parameters we program into it. He never said it was holographic, or anything of the sort. We can still play it as real as we want it.

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[baseless speculation ON]
I think it may be more along the lines of 'rewards for game-related activities outside the actual game,' perhaps related to the vault, perhaps related to the new ingame ads (player created), perhaps a whole new thing.
[baseless speculation OFF. Resuming random spewings.]

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I've seen some fluff recently for an upcoming MMO-ish thing called "Twin Skies". One of the tidbits they've been talking about is triggering in-game effects with accomplishments on the game's website. The specific example they've given is based on a Flash snake game called "Junkworm". If you manage a high score, a junkworm will spawn in the game and attack other players. If it kills one, it will take a screenshot of the event for you. Other in-game effects they've mentioned include changing the weather in a zone and unlocking a chest.

I doubt we'll be playing Flash games for badges or costume parts, but something along those lines isn't inconceivable--especially since they've been working on linking the game to the Vault, anyway.

I ran into an odd problem with the saved chat options last night.

I use an extra tab in the chat pane that defaults to my SG's global channel. I saved the chat settings on an existing character, then loaded them on a new character. The extra tab showed up, with all the right channels listed, but with no default set. It looks like the save isn't capturing the channel default, at least for custom tabs.

Has anyone else seen this problem?