Cende

Because the story is long, I am creating separate comment and story threads. I request that people keep the comments in this thread, and let me post story in the story threads. It'll make it easier for everyone to read the story, no matter when they come in. Also, it'll make it easier for people to go back and find parts to re-read. The story thread is here.

Edit -- If you want to skip all of the back-story and start when Cende arrives in Paragon, you can. That's at Chapter 18, and while there will be parts where you're going "who is this and why is it important," it's not as big a deal right now. If you decide you like the story, the background will, after all, still be there when I slow down posting (which is inevitable).

Do note that this is less a "story" and more a "novel" - it's been written to be read as a novel, and as a result, it's sort of dense. I'm realizing it doesn't translate well to forums. At a certain point, I will let folks know where the PDF to that point is available for download. -- end edit.

Ever since Dark Respite (Samuriko) put together the A Heart Divided video for my birthday (and thank you again, Michelle), there's been a number of people asking her (and me, when they found me) for the story behind the video. Even we explained that the video was only the very smallest, and very latest, part of the story, they still wanted it.

As it turns out, I've been writing the thing for some time. It's gone through a few revisions, but in Nov. 2010, for NaNoWriMo, I started the research into the background I needed to make some things work. That turned into the first six chapters, the prophecy, and a lot of miscellaneous details that don't necessarily go into the work but do influence it. I've a few people reading the story as it's being written, and they've all been encouraging me to post it to these forums; they know who they are and if you're bored, it's all their fault.

I'll be posting a chapter or two a night for a while. If it's going too fast to keep up with, please let me know and I'll slow down; alternately, if folks find that it's not going fast enough, please also let me know and I can post a little more. I have a rather substantial amount of it written already.

It's my first anything of novel-length. As such, if you've got comments you'd like to make but don't want to make them here in this thread, please send them to me in PMs.

And thanks for taking a look.

So, leaving aside the thought of what, precisely, causes the issues that some of us have with eyestrain, headache, migraine, seizure, nausea, or other problems for a moment, the other thing to turn the attention to is how to fix it.

Yes, it would be nice if all the devs and all the players would simply realize that simple SFX on powers are a good idea, but the chances of this consistently happening are about as likely as snow on the equator, so let's move on from that thought.

I've seen a suggestion to replace the offending graphics. That's a good suggestion for Barrier, because that's an egregious offender. Alternately, the suggestion has been made for Static Field, Barrier (and possibly Clarion and one or two others) to slow down the pulse rate at which they flicker, thus removing at least part of the complaint about them.

What that does not do, however, is take care of the people who are sensitive to more than just the most egregious of the offenders - of which I am one, but hardly the only one on the game. Most of us who have difficulties limit ourselves to a small group of people we team with, and those people know our difficulties. For myself and the ones I know, we don't like asking people to make special costume slots and power colors to cater to us and are grateful to those who do; by the same token, however, we frequently can't risk teaming with people who don't make those accommodations for us. A number of us will solo rather than risk even a small PUG.

So from the perspective of someone who has a broad range of visual triggers, I'd much rather have a broad range solution. Specifically, I'd like to have a global SFX suppression slider (or set of them, really):

- Suppress FX Distance (range)
- Suppress FX Amount (personal fx, percent)
- Suppress FX Amount (ally buffs, percent)
- Suppress FX Amount (enemy, percent)
- Suppress FX Amount (world, percent)

Not that I can think of anything the last one would qualify for that isn't already covered elsewhere, but I tossed it in anyway just in case I'm missing something obvious.

The percent could either be "100 - 0" where 0 is unsuppressed and 100 is fully suppressed, or could be "low, medium, high" like a lot of the ultra-mode is. A little bit of suppression would kill the major flashies (bombs, grenades, etc). Say a quarter gone would get rid of the bubbles type effects while a quarter left would only leave armor type effects (granite, ice, etc).

I'm not saying it's "simple" or "easy" to code. I am saying that it's both a long-term and comprehensive solution.

As long as it's in the options, it's something that can be pointed to easily for anyone who needs it. Yes, they'll need to know they need it - but that's going to be the case for every single FX they run into that's a problem, too, and this covers more of the edge cases.

Okay, this is a really long post, and I apologize for that. I'm not specifically asking for any changes here, just giving feedback based on my own, personal experiences and circumstances. I will give my suggestion for changes in a separate post - this is already huge.

My background: I've mentioned it in a few other places, but I figure it's useful to be explicit here. Like many others on the game, I have migraines. However, I also have seizures. Unfortunately, one of the triggers for a (relatively minor, thank heaven) seizure in me is the sheer amount of visual crap that goes by on the screen in a single play session. We think, but can't be certain, that it's the particle effects given off by the FX, but we could be wrong. I'd like to figure it out at some point, in case there's a (working) setting I can adjust. I already have my particle count down at 100; it doesn't seem to make much difference. I also have various suppress fx options turned on as much as possible. I do not have my graphics turned way down - all that does is make things flat and ugly, which causes me to strain to make things out, and then I get eyestrain in addition.

At any rate as a result of migraines and seizures, I have been limited in how much I can play. Previously, if I were solo, I could run for about 3.5 - 4 hours at a given shot, with taking brief stops away from the computer. As the number of people on my team increased, that length of time went down. At the short end, I could barely finish a 35-minute ITF with 8 people before I had to log out.

Once Ultra Mode came out, those numbers changed. I can now solo for a good 6 hours if I want to. I can manage supergroup play with a full team for several hours. Task forces are still questionable, however and mostly depend on the powersets of the team members I'm running with (more coming on that). A reasonably run ITF (not speed-run, but a clear-most with occasional pauses between missions) doesn't kill me now.

That's a lot of background for the rest of this. Sorry. :/

For the BAF and Lambda trials, when we started I was able to run them at least twice in a row, multiple times, without a problem. There are a few sound effects that could cause issues, but that's true about the entire game. I don't know what was different about these trials, but they didn't bother me nearly as much as an ITF has in the past. Now, to be fair, it's entirely possible that this is because when everyone grouped together, the sheer number of FX pretty well turned my screen into so much whiteout and the rest of the time we were spread out, but I really don't know.

The key thing is that despite having more players, a reasonable scale of enemies, and the appropriate number of FX from both, I was able to go for over an hour - up to nearly two hours - and at the end of it, I still felt fine. Heck, one night I even went and played for a couple hours on Live, since it was SG night. That, to me, is impressive.

I was hoping all of the Incarnate stuff was going to be like that - then I ran the Apex TF. One run of that, and I had a headache approaching that of what I usually got partway through the ITF (the one that warns: stop soon or you're going to pay the consequences). The first mission isn't too bad. The second mission with the Blue Cloud of Death and the flying swords ramped it up for me from "minor headache due to the War Walker's whine" to "OMG, can I just shut my eyes and walk away now?" I would NOT want to do that one multiple times in a row, even if we had time. It's actually hard to give coherent feedback when that's pretty much your entire impression of the task force.

Then we got the new Incarnate powers, and very quickly thereafter I had to stop running trials on Test. Even now on Live, it’s still difficult for me. Destiny: Barrier is the principal culprit - the initial flash followed by the constant flickering is enough to start triggering nausea within two to three minutes if I'm not careful about not looking at it directly (I've got some techniques for refocusing the camera angle, but I die faster because I don't see some of the stuff around me). I've actually asked people I team with to please let me know if they use Barrier, so I can please avoid teaming with their toons. I won't ask them to recolor it to the half-dozen or so colors that will turn Barrier more or less invisible just to suit me (although many of them do). We've also discovered Clarion has a specific pulse rate that can be somewhat problematic, but mostly it's the initial flash of being set off - if I don't see it, mostly I'm ok (and again, many friends and teammates are recoloring it for those of us with problems). Those are just the default colors for the powers - when you start adding the colors that people choose to make their powers, you're opening a whole new can of worms.

And no, it's not just Incarnate powers. Force Fields, for example - if the colors are set to anything bright, my ability to play drops to about 10 minutes. The Empathy set cannot be colored darkly (pastels is the best you can do), although the worst that can be said about Empathy is that it's concentric rings going out at a specific frequency on a regular basis. As mentioned above, Electric Control's static field is terrible; additionally, all of the flashy-bomb powers (seeker drones, grenades, mines, etc) have a bright-white flash that cannot be toned down by anyone. The Sonic Grenades sent off by the Nullifiers are visually stunning - they stun the player sufficiently to make the character vulnerable to attack. Please note that all of these are visual complaints - I rarely have very much sound playing (there are sounds, such as the War Walker's whine, which encourage me to turn off the noise). Note also that with my own fx suppressed (/suppressclosefxdist 100), I don't see these things on me - I see them either on or cast by the people around me (or thrown at me, as the case may be).

As far as I'm concerned, this has been an ongoing and steadily growing problem and it's one that needs to have a solution presented before it gets out of hand. I have played a few other games at this point, and while this is the only one I've ever bothered maintaining a subscription for long-term, it's also the only one I've had this sort of issue with. I'd like to see a real fix put in for the underlying difficulties, not just a band-aid placed on the boo-boo du jour.

All I have to say about it is ick.

OK, so while Posi was incorporeal, he and Numi had a mixed-spirit thing going on. They went out and mingled essences occasionally. Nice dates, when you can have them.

Then Posi goes off and gets a body back. Hard to have those sorts of dates anymore, so they remain good, close friends who still care a heck of a lot about each other, but are no longer involved. Tell me you don't have a former lover who you're now close friends with and you still care about but aren't involved with anymore...? (I happen to know you can't).

So yeah, maybe they were involved. They're not now. That doesn't mean there isn't still love there, but they're just friends. So the coast is clear for Tava.

Plus everything said above this.

And if logic doesn't work, let's try pure blackmail: If you don't keep working on TCoSR, I won't ever post Cende's story to the forums.

PSA: Anyone who is buying this pack with a credit card different than their usual account payment method will want to go back and check their account payment details after they have completed their purchase.

I used a pre-paid visa to purchase a pack for my husband in November. At no time did I touch his account payment information, but the NCSoft store apparently decided it needed to replace the account-stored card information with this now useless card info. We found this out on Feb 19th, when he tried to log in and was told his account was not active (and hadn't been for four days).

Normally a lapse wouldn't matter, but given the current "loyalty" promotion going on (that my husband is now considered not eligible for), due to a bug in NCSoft's system, - which they will not take responsibility for - it's a big deal if you happen to have a renewal period in the next couple of months. Accidentally charging a six-month or year term to the wrong card, however, could substantially matter if you're careful with your budget and what goes where.

So check.

If I can get in on this:

@cende
VD: The Crucible on Triumph

And I'll not only mention it to my SG, I'll update my sig for a while.