Eva Destruction

Both of my arcs are still broken, and no, I'm not sifting through them to find the problem words. For one thing, the editor has become insanely laggy, even at 9 am in a nearly empty zone. For another, I'm sick of stuff getting broken and AE getting no attention unless there's another PLing exploit to fix. Oh yes, if there was an exploit to fix I'm sure it would have been fixed by now. I've tried to help in the past. I've spent two years trying to help. I've made suggestion after suggestion for improving AE, made post after post of stuff that needed to be fixed, and it's mostly been ignored, so fix it yourselves. I'm done.

It's pretty obvious AE will never be a priority of any kind, because what it represents is no longer a priority. The devs no longer care about the subset of the community that loved this game for the concepts and customizability and storylines, unless it's to sell them another booster pack. It's all about the min-maxers who don't care that their world has all the depth of a puddle, as long as they get to blow **** up in cool new ways. I guess it's a good thing I'm also a min-maxer, huh?

You guys have been doing a great job making (most) of the newer powers in the game look awesome, kudos for that (Barrier looks like crap though). Now can I turn some of them off?

Some of the issue goes back to what Zombie Man said. When I'm fighting Nightstar on a BAF, I can't actually see Nightstar. I have to target her through her health bar. I can't see who she's shooting at, which is kind of important if she's shooting at me, due to the possibility of horrible screaming death if I'm a squishy and sequestration if I'm not. I can't see how many reinforcements have shown up. If she kills someone, I can't see where their dead body is to rez them or use Vengeance. If there are enough Barriers and other buffs with strong visuals flying around, I can't see where I am in the crowd, if I'm melee. And if someone has colored their FF or Sonics bubble too bright, I can't see a thing past it. I'm fighting targeting reticles and clicking on health bars, not fighting enemies. That isn't super.

Some of them go back to the thread Dark Respite linked to. I'm not prone to migraines but I do notice eye strain from some of the flashier effects. If everyone could just turn off the effects that caused them problems, we wouldn't have any more repeats of the sonic resonance fiasco. You'd still need to be wary of adding anything liable to trigger the more severe reactions, but it would be a much better solution for people who have identified the cause of their problem than to strictly limit who they play with and wait and hope for a fix.

And the third is just simple aesthetics. You want new powersets to look unique, players want new powersets to look unique, but no matter how much care you put into the design of your new powersets some players are going to think they're ugly. When you further give players the ability to change the colors of their powers, some people will use colors someone else thinks are ugly. Some people do it on purpose. This is especially problematic in the case of ally buffs, where someone else can directly impose this on you, and their ugly buff covers up your awesome costume. Nobody should have to ask not to be buffed, and in the case of PBAoE buffs like Barrier, it's not an option anyway. Everyone in range gets that stupid striped bubble. And if you ask not to get the ugly ice shield, you might die, to the detriment of your team. And if someone colors their Force Field bubble puke green and shows up at the Mothership Raid, you have to look at it for an hour.

In an ideal universe, the power effect suppression menu would have a complete list of all powers, set to enabled or disabled. I hate Cold Shields, that power is always set to suppress. You colored your Steamy Mist electric blue, I set Steamy Mist to suppress for the duration of this Apex TF. More generalized settings would work too though, such as "disable outside buff effects," which may not help with the whiteout but at least would allow you to see your friends and not just a bunch of swirls of FX; "disable persistent effects," such as enemies being on fire from Fire Blast DoT, or the Interface debuff effects (why does Interface need a visual effect anyway???); "Disable pulse effects" which would remove the flashing from things like Static Field, and it's late and I can't think of any more, but you get the idea.

The well is like Curly from the three stooges, it's kind of rolling around on the ground going "wub wub wub wub wub." It's insane, dontcha know. That means it's a more convenient deus ex than most, since it can do whatever the heck the writers feel like making it do, and they don't even have to bother justifying its actions, because, insane.

Keep in mind that if you wipe your harddrive or get a new computer you have to copy the enemy group and custom critter folders over as well as the arc files. Otherwise, when you edit or unpublish you will lose critters.

Things I would do for CoH 2:

Make mez less binary. Then have mez protection/resistance/whatever you're gonna call it available to all ATs to some degree. Melees would have more than squishies, but squishies would be able to build some up through IOs, pool powers, or APPs.

Make defense less binary. Then stop filling the game with stuff that'll strip it down to the negatives in seconds unless you're /SR or a rich /SD. Completely eliminate anything that makes defense completely useless *cough* quartzes *cough*

Make range mean something besides "now I have to chase this ****** down to punch him in the face."

Ditch the "everybody beat on a giant sack of HP" model of Archvillain encounters. I would even go so far as to ditch the Archvillain class entirely, or at least limit it to monster-type entities. Important human enemies would get more dynamic encounters attached to them, rather than more HP and more resistance and the ability to one-shot a Granite tank.

S/L damage users are people too, and we want to actually kill something, preferably before we die of old age. If the enemy is wearing a bulletproof vest, I will just have to procure better bullets. Perhaps a use can be found for all this extra accuracy I'm packing, if it allows me to bypass some enemy resistances. Furthermore, no critter in the game should ever have 100% resistance to any damage type ever, unless said resistance can be dropped in some way and still give me the MoLambda badge, and I wouldn't wait for CoH2 to implement this either, I'd put it right after fixing the Lambda warehouse lag and the overzealous AE swear filter on my priority list.

I would not introduce the Mastermind AT. Too many headaches. I would most certainly not turn every player into a potential Mastermind, like with Lore pets. I would not introduce the Stalker AT either, rather I would introduce secondaries for Blasters or Scrappers or both that would allow for an "assassin" playstyle. Furthermore, I would not limit the ATs by alignment....

....because there would be no "City of Heroes" and "City of Villains." One world, four alignments, with content paths for all of them. If I had the available tech to make player heroes not see player villains if they didn't want to, I would use it, otherwise they'd just have separate instances of the same world. Rogues and Vigilantes would be able to visit both instances. I would use the disappearing contact tech to hide contacts you're not eligible for. Villain content would be actually villainous.

I would plan for player-created content from the get-go. It would be out in the world, not tucked away in some building. Developer-approved player-created content would become a permanent addition to the game world.

The game world would be more streamlined. No unused zones. On the other hand, it wouldn't be like CoV either, where a ritzy casino district is right next to a burning pile of garbage. It would be more like Founders Falls, where the transitions are more natural.

And there would be no more evil goatee universes. Alternate dimensions would be less Praetoria and more Shadow Shard. If you leave this world it should feel like you're walking into something alien, not walking into a redesigned Atlas Park. Also no more Nemesis plots. Or Marcus Coles. All developer-created content would be focused on building an engaging and consistent world, and if players want monster-of-the-week episodes, well, I've integrated player-created content into the world, remember? They can write it themselves.

I just did one today where all the doors went down almost immediately, and all the grenades were passed. We had some Lambda newbies too. So there's no excuse, people.

Another translation: "Trial forming, PST" = "Trial forming, spam global channels or broadcast for invite." The leader didn't invite the people who did that. Interestingly, that was the trial where all the temps were miraculously found. It was an interesting tactic to weed out people who lack reading comprehension, I think I will use it in the future.

I suggest posting this in the general CoH discussion forum, you'll probably get more responses.

Try Arc ID #9713.

I've been a member of a badge/TF channel that I ended up barely following because it was mostly filled with inane off-topic chatter, so I agree that a certain amount of moderation is necessary. There is such a thing as over-moderation though. If it's not constant and excessive, and isn't actively interfering with people using the channel for its intended purpose, I see nothing wrong with a little off-topic conversation.