ExidorTheQuick

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Odd that doesn't fit with the TaskForces Badges. You already reward badges for TFs, so shouldnt there be something in the system that tracks and marks a character that completed XXX TaskForce if it was already done?
If there is nothing the tags a character that completed a TF when the badge is not working, I think there should be.

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I think this goes to the question of why the TF's were added w/o adding the badge reward at the same time. I appreciate the information Positron has provided, and understand from that why they won't be datamining - and have resolved myself to redoing the TF to actually get the badge (once I'm certain that the I5 badge reward is functioning properly, of course). What I haven't heard is a Dev explanation of why it was necessary to release the issue 2 & 3 task forces in a non-badge-awarding state, and then not make that fact publicly known so that players could factor that into their decision to participate in those task forces.

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Then we come to the first Shadowshard taskforce, the twelve hour hell that is Quarterfield. It's the same missions over and over again, guys. Rescue hostages in caves, how many times? Four? Clean out bases. The last four missions are practically identical! Rularuu see through stealth. Nemesis snipers see through stealth. And it's not so easy as starting and then dropping four people either, because that hardly ever works out.

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LadyMoiread is right, there's about 5 different types of missions in the TF, but 2 or 3 of them are repeated in identical form over and over for hours of play. The only variation is the location of the mission, and when one of the repeated mission types stops and another type of mission starts repeating. It's absolutely mind-numbing. This is not an example of content that I would choose to experience, if I wanted to experience a good storyline. The badge is the only reason I would recommend it to anyone.

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I don't understand these gripes... what if the Shard TFs were never intended to award badges of any kind? Ever? What would you complain about then?

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Nope, I wouldn't complain.

I also wouldn't have spent 11 hours playing one with no xp awards or drops. There would have been plenty of better (meaning more enjoyable) uses of my play time.


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That you "wasted" all that time playing through a storyline you never read... in hopes that, someday, it might provide you with another lame looking badge that does nothing for you at all?

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Actually, I read the entire TF storyline as I did it, and gave the team a sysopsis of the storyline as it progressed - at the request of one of the other members. Your generalization about TF players ignoring the storyline is invalid, at least in our cases. I can't help but wonder how you have concluded that you are in a position of knowledge to draw that conclusion in the first place.


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These TFs are game content. They're stories put together to add flavor and history to the game. Their sole purpose is NOT to provide you with a badge.

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Except that the sole reason I chose to experience this particular content was to earn the badge. That makes its sole purpose, for me, to provide me with a badge.

If it isn't okay for Statesman to tell us how to play the game, why is it okay for you?

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Not everyone in game reads the forums so they should not be a method of announcing things like that, but even if they are used in that way an official thread should be used. A GM should never e-mail me a link to a player created thread.

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Yes, yes and yes.

Not everyone in game reads the forums so they should not be a method of announcing things like that, but even if they are used in that way an official thread should be used. A GM should never e-mail me a link to a player created thread.

I'd underline it too if there was a code for that.

Now if only there were a way for NCSoft to partake of your wisdom...

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So, dissapointing, yes. An insult from the developers? Please. If it were feasable, they'd have done it.

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The insult (imo) isn't that they aren't datamining for the badges.

The insult is that they released content only partially implemented. What was preventing a badge being awarded? If the problem was minor, it should have been fixed; if it was major, they shouldn't have made the content available until the major problem with it was corrected.

Also they chose not to make the problem public, even though they were fully aware of it. That was also insulting.


As for your possible reasons why datamining might not be done, I agree completely. All very good reasons. I suspect "a" is the winner, but who knows.


PS: CuppaJo did go to bat for us, trying to get the datamining. Thanks for trying, CuppaJo.

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Can controllers hold the hydra head through the force field now ?

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No. That is no longer possible.


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Secondly, what are the uses of the thermite canons I see mentioned ? I see that you're supposed to use the particle canons to "arrest" the hydra head, so....

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The thermite cannons are supposed to be used against the Hydra's tentacles. I've been told that they prevent them from healing. I've also been told that they prevent a destroyed tentacle from spawning the lesser tentacles. I haven't done any testing to verify either of those claims. It seems to me that the tentacle-destroying phase always goes easier the times that people use the thermite cannons on the tentacles.


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My current group would be a fire/ice tank, a DM/regen scrap, a fire rad troller, and an ill/storm troller.
Does that sound workable ?

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Assuming you are all level 40 or lower, you will probably need 4 more people. There's a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in. The number of foes you face does not appear to scale to the team size. I went into the mission solo and looked around (which I highly recommend everyone who has phase shift do before attempting the mission in earnest), and there were still tons of rikti.


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How often does the the hydra head throw it's big killer attack ?

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Often. Maybe once a minute, something like that. It's often enough that you will be hurting if you don't have some way to cope with it. A tanker with dull pain and his/her own dedicated empath, for example. The Hydra's psionic tornado will drop tankers who don't have sufficient healing, and of course the healer has to stay far enough away not to get hit by the tornado.


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Assuming that the head cannot be perma-held now and that the force field generators need to be taken out repeatedly, will the head be firing at ppl while we're doing this ?

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The generators are far enough away from the head that it doesn't attack you while you're dealing with them. It may not be necessary to repeatedly destroy them, however. The change to the Hydra was to prevent it from being held while the shield is still up. Once the shield is down, it should be possible to perma-hold the Hydra and prevent the shield from returning. That's just my theory, however. I have not been able to put together a team able to test this since the reward for defeating sewer kraken was lowered. The risk-to-reward ratio of this trial is simply too low to interest most players.

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Anyone know what the maximum number of characters is that a single bind can contain?

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No more than 255 characters in a single keybind. Only the characters between the quotes count. For example:

<ul type="square">[*]/bind b "++first"[/list]
This bind would be considered 7 characters long by the game. If you try to create a bind that's longer than 255 characters, the bind will be successfully made, but the excess characters will be truncated. Naturally, this can cause problems.

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Now my question...I want to program a key (say Insert) to do a camera reset when I depress the key and camdist when I release the key. If I do

/bind insert "camreset$$camdist 100"

The camera distance gets set, but the camera never resets to the correct starting position.

Can you help me?

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Make two text files:

<ul type="square">[*]zoom_in.txt
INSERT "+ $$camreset$$bind_load_file [path]zoom_out.txt"
[*]zoom_out.txt
INSERT "+ $$camdist 100$$bind_load_file [path]zoom_in.txt"[/list]
Replace [path] with the path to your keybind files. Also, either put the contents of zoom_in.txt into your main keybinds file (and reload it) or type in the bind manually in-game.


I like your idea, so I'm going to use it myself. Thanks.

20/21, including 7 correct of which I'd never even heard.

So, I'm not a comic geek, just good at multiple-guessing.

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Who said what about African Ramen?

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Apparently, some people think that all Ramen in America comes from Europe. I could swear that we had all kinds of Ramen here in America, but I admit that I haven't personally overseen the import of any Ramen into this country. Maybe the "Ramen from around the world" concept is just propaganda, to make us feel like we have a choice of Ramen, when in truth all our Ramen purchases are just making Swiss bankers richer. Seems unlikely to me, but as I said I can't prove that is isn't true.

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...why can't I get some pie?

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In the end, there can be only pi!

All this talk of conspiracy, and I didn't see anyone mention the most obvious sign that this "video" is a doctored fake.

None of the heroes are covered in hero-obscuring power auras.

Those heroes would have all their toggle and click protection powers running (they are storming an enemy base, after all). Those types of powers are known for their flashy, hero-obscuring graphical effects. It's possible that one or two of them might have more subtle-looking protection powers, but the rest of them - were this real footage - would be impossible to identify behind their power effects!

The whole thing is obviously a propaganda maneuver by Arachnos to promote poor team tactics among fledgeling heroes who might try to emulate the actions of Statesman and his team as portrayed...

Try "powexec_toggleoff dark nova$$powexec_toggleoff black dwarf". It works for me.

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We talked for months about the control gap and the need for a second AoE mezzer that wasn't dimension shift. In the test notes, where they initially talked about wormhole, they specifically said it was changed to give us an additional AoE.

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I regret that I wasn't paying more attention to the forums during those months. Now Wormhole is being changed for the worse, and it may be too late to stop that change. I'd have argued against the existance of the purported control gap, and against turning Gravity into a vanilla controller primary. I should have been here defending the status quo rather than playing the game, I guess.


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If your suggestions do not at least address the control gap, then your suggestions are an attempt to keep us gimped.

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Honestly, Gravity isn't gimped. Gravity doesn't play like other controller powersets. If all the powersets are the same then the game is lessened. It's important that people choose their powersets based on what they want their hero to be able to do. If you discover that your hero can't do X, because X isn't in your powersets, but it's in another one, then the correct response is to make a hero with that other powerset - not to lobby the devs to change your current powerset so that it can do X. That will eventually lead to a flat, uninteresting game.

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With that in mind, Propel is ok in its new form. Properly sloted it does decent damage, same as my epic power pool blast. My only complaint about it is the slow animation time. If the devs could fix that I would be very happy with it. I never notice the end cost but I am a grav/emp with stamina, RA and conserve power.

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I consider Propel a waste of endurance because there are better things to spend that endurance on, not because the endurance cost is inappropriate. If they lowered the endurance cost then it would be a waste of less endurance, but still a waste. If they were to lower the animation time, then it might become worth using - but they'd have to lower the damage it does (!) to ensure it doesn't outperform Defender single-target attacks available at around the same level. The fundamental problem with Propel is that it's a direct-damage attack for a controller, and controllers aren't supposed to be good at direct damage, therefore it can't be good.

Personally, I think they should combine Propel &amp; (single-target) Wormhole into a single power. Still call it Propel, make it available at level 6 (just like the current Propel), its effect would be to attempt to port the villain target to the designated location. If the attack hits and is not resisted then the villain is thrown from a vortex at the targeted location and disoriented (like I3 Wormhole) and also takes some damage (like Propel, although the amount of damage might need to be adjusted for balance). The endurance cost would probably need to be increased to reflect the greater effectiveness of the power, and of course it would need to have a higher Bring-a-Friend factor than Teleport Foe, since it's doing damage.

That would allow us to keep our single-target port/disorient (and make it available at a more logical point, ie when the pool Teleport Foe is available), and free up Wormhole for whatever change/new power they want to try.


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As a future improvement I would love if the objects changed to reflect time of year (maybe a old tree in winter), environment (how about a computer terminal in the lab settings, a I-Beam in a warehouse, etc) and overall fun (what about a boat instead of a car).

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That would be a nice improvement. Also good would be if the objects summoned were appropriate to the area you're in, such as crates in a warehouse or boulders in a park.

Mosly, I'd also like to see them apply a fix that causes everyone to see the same object tossed. Currently, I may see a car and someone else standing right there may seel a pool table. Very unrealistic and slightly annoying in some situations.

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Hell dammn near the entire player base acknowledges that Grav needs serious help.

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Gravity isn't broken. It doesn't play like other control powersets. If you make a gravity controller and try to do the exact same things other controllers do, it won't work. If you want to be able to walk around with a group of damage dealers and just toss down an AoE control on each group (to have the others defeat the group before your control wears off), then gravity isn't the powerset for you.

The issue here isn't a control gap, it's control envy. I think a lot of gravity controllers see (or have themselves played) other types of controllers coasting along, and they get jealous. Playing a gravity controller takes work. You've got to be using your tools to get the job done. No, every villain your group faces won't be locked down for the entire battle. That's probably okay - control implies precision. You can be just as useful to a group by knowing which villains you need to control, and focusing your efforts on them. Many groups don't need all the minions locked down to fare well, for example.

Having said that, I agree that Propel is worthless. I had it for a while, and got rid of it. It's a waste of endurance and animation time. This seems like an excellent candidate for improvement or replacement.

Issue 4 Wormhole is sad. If it goes live, I expect to respec out of it in favor of Teleport Foe. The precision of I3 Wormhole was its great advantage. I could see improving the disorient mag/dur of Wormhole, but turning it into a bad AoE ruins it.

Dimension Shift is a nice concept, but as a click power it's just too annoying in a group setting. It's not enough to make a low(er) level controller into a decent soloer either. It makes an okay panic button, but that's it. Making it into a toggle power would be great, but apparently that's not possible due to technical considerations. Turning it into a single target power would make it less useful as a panic button, but much more useful as a control power. Slightly reduce the animation time and make the endurance cost appropriate to a single target power and I'd be happy with that change.


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Hell, Tie it in with the whole Phase shift debate, make it castable on individual teammates as well as individual mobs and then let phased parties attack each other. Great to counter PvP phase shifters.

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I agree completely. I've said before that phased heroes/villains should be able to affect each other. I very much like the utility of being able to target a friendly or an enemy with the power, even if phased targets remain unable to affect one another. This would go a long way to expanding the tools of the gravity powerset.

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My experience with PvP on the arena is that this implimentation of PvP is possibly one of the worst ideas I have ever seen. they should have just waited till CoV.

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They didn't wait for CoV because the arena is essentially alpha-testing for CoV PvP combat.

Better to get this stuff ironed out now, than to put out CoV and discover it works like the arena does currently.

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If you're talking about Chinese Lao Tze, Kong Fu Tze, etc... then Tze/Zi/Tzu is pronounced as "dze" and technically means person/seed/son/kid meaning. So if the Tsoo are Chinese, maybe they are "The People", "The Sons", "The Seeds" or "The Kids", none of them used quite correctly.

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It's very common for the names cultural groups use for themselves to translate to "The People", so we might have a winner there.

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The T in Tsoo IS pronounced. It's just a VERY light sound. It's almost more of what you might describe as a hard s sound.
Wow this IS tough. Basically just run the T sound into the S sound TSoo.

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Form your mouth as if your were going to pronounce the T sound, but then make the S sound instead - without moving your mouth to the S sound position.

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<ul type="square">[*]Replace Dimension Shift with an AoE Lift + Disorient.[*]Replace Dimension Shift with some other AoE Disorient (seeing a theme? ).[/list]
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Dimension Shift is going to be massive in PvP, imo. It would be a genuine tragedy to get rid of it so that we can have some disorient effect. There are plenty of heroes out there who simply can't be disoriented. They phase out just fine...

I'm not just thinking of the Arena here. Don't forget that the Arena is just an elaborate beta test for the PvP combat that CoV will bring. Let's not beg one of the most powerful PvP tools in the game out of our powerset!

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Gravity STILL gets a Pet that is a crutch to make up for the control gap while other controlers get pets that add damage to their already superior control.

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What kind of Singularities are you using? Mine were virtually indestructable, and are in the process of getting a boost to their damage reduction. Sure, other pets do more damage. Other pets die when archvillains hit them, too. Mine don't.


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Gravity STILL has a control gap.
Gravity STILL has subpar secondary effects.

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I don't feel that I need secondary effects on my powers. I don't feel like I have a control gap either. Probably just a difference in play style.


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Gravity STILL suffers from extremely long animation times.

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Well, yeah, that's true.


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That's the problem. We are no more viable than we were before.

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People, don't let the eye candy fool you. Falling for these weak "changes" could undo all the petitioning and work we have done to get our powerset some attention.

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I didn't feel that Gravity needed to be improved. I see some improvements in the new changes, and some things that have been weakened. It will take me some time to decide whether they add up to be a net loss or gain of power.

As for Gravity's viability as a powerset, you seem to have done okay with it up to level 50.

As long as you add / commands to change the second and third row of powers to a specific tray (a la /goto_tray), I'll be happy with however you set the default binds. I'm going to change them anyway.

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Kalortpor!

Invasflam!

Injuxhurylem!

I can make up words too. I could do Statesman's job blindfolded!

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...except that you didn't make up these words, you 'borrowed' them from Ultima. I guess Statesman's job is harder than you thought.