Judgement_Dave

I believe that the arcs (well, mine, anyway) are no longer marked as invalid when anyone on Zukunft/Vigilance accesses them. However the players on these servers cannot play the affected arcs yet.

If you modified your arc to let German/French players play them then you have probbaly taken the better, medium-term route.

Now that the arcs aren't marked as invalid for everyone I'd imagine that the problem could easily fall very low down the devs priority list. Let's face it, EU players in general don't usually seem to make it far up the priority list, so an issue only affecting the odd-weirdo-euro-speak servers ain't gonna register high.

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A very simple mish (click a glowie, rescue 3 hostages, defeat a boss) in my arc somehow fails to spawn one of the hostages from time to time, and/or makes one of the hostages invisible.


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It's pssible that this is related to the defendable object bug we found last week. Hostages use the same kind of spawn point as defendable objects. It may be "invisible" because it is superimposed on an identical hostage.

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No - I tested this for the OP last night.

I could find 2 hostages and the mobs surrounding each one were using their boomboxes. There was another group of mobs using a boombox emote, but no apparent hostage there, just enemy mobs.

Upon defeating these boombox-using enemies I saw a speechbubble go racing off - no visible mob, just the speechbubble. This looks like a true invisible mob. And, IIRC, there were no ambushes in that mission.

Now I did mention to the OP that I believe the cases when the hostage has been reported as not spawning at all may actually be invisible spawns: even when the guards are defeated you need to go near the hostage to 'trigger' their rescue. If the mob spawns as invisible and the guards are pulled and defeated away from the invisible spawn then it's possible that you won't rescue the hostage as you are too far away.

For me, the invisible hostage spawned near (not quite in, but near) a dead end in an office building. If I hadn't jumped near enough to accidentally trigger the rescue as I delivered the killing blow to the last guard mob, then I probably wouldn't have rescued the hostage as I could see it was a dead end with no glowies/mobs so I wouldn't have gone near enough to the hostage.

It helps make things more fun if whenever an NC rep says 'soon' a little voice in your head starts singing 'In the year 2525'...

Candy floss - highly unlikely. We'd get the inferior 'cotton candy' if anything...

But isn't 'cotton candy floss' usually found at fairgrounds? (It's mainly been at fairgrounds where I've seen it in the UK)

So Carnies are planning a big anniversary fair for the inevitable random invading waves of rikti/5th experiments, but it's all just a cunning plot to divert attention whilst the dancing steam horses make off with the cotton candy floss and ruin it for everyone... Bet that the fairground janitor is Nem in a mask.

He would have gotten away with it as well if it wasn't for us pesky kids.

Does this help: Map Samples posted by Damz

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Order by arc within author id

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Nearly - I suggested ordering by arc as the final ordering for all searches to ensure a set ordering when paginating - it just happens that I gave examples using sort by author.

Ok - it may not be a big problem for some orderings, e.g. order by arc title would appear to be a unique order, but is it?

You can get duplicated arc titles.

Order by last comment would appear mainly sorted if a decent precision timestamp is used, but if only date is used it could fall down, or for arcs with no comments yet (unless something like arc creation time is used as a default order for nulls in last comment).

Level Range and Mission Count could be as problematic as author name.


Just add the [CoG_arc_table].[id] to the end of every 'order by' - it won't really harm anything if it's redundant because the previous orders already specify a unique order.

e.g.
ORDER BY [datetime of entry] DESC, [CoG_arc_table].[id] ASC
may be exactly the same order as just
ORDER BY [datetime of entry] DESC
as the datetime of entry for an arc may be unique, but I'd guess that adding the internal arc id shouldn't add any noticeable overhead and will be needed in more places than not.


BTW - on that point, can we add timestamp_of_entry as a sort order? I think that with no ordering applied the system seems to default to system entry order (probably using internal unique autoincrement ID rather than datetime, but the effective order is the same) but:
1. You can't explicitly state order of entry
2. I don't think you can specify order of entry oldest 1st (internal ID ASC, I'd guess) and that can be useful!

I don't like part of the search.

The options such as AV/EB/soloable are all tick box options. I guess that putting a tick in the box searches for a 'yes' in th erelevant category, but leaving the box unchecked does not mean 'no'.

Whilst these should be checkboxes for mission entry, for search they should really be 3-option option boxes or list boxes - giving 'Yes', 'No' and 'Unspecified/not bothered'.

When I wrote the earlier post I had 6 souvenirs (from 6 different authors) - I know this as I still have that copy of my PlayerCreatedSouvenirClues.txt file open.

I've just done my first arc since my earlier post and, hey presto, the earlier souvenirs have all dissapeared and all I have left are 2 copies of the souvenir for the arc I've just done.

Now I doubt that all 6 authors have republished their arcs this afternoon...

Notes:

* The client shows 2 copies of the souvenir for the arc I've just done... but the new copy of PlayerCreatedSouvenirClues.txt shows only a single entry (being for one copy of the new souvenir). Makes me think it may be the client getting it's knickers in a twist re: existing souvenirs when it adds a new souvenir.

* I've checked on the Mission Architect channel and it doesn't seem to be a case that all souvenirs got wiped, or anything daft like that.

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One question: Why don't you just change it from "Auto-SK" to "This level range ONLY" ?

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Presume that that's because of the standard mobs level ranges and allowing level jumping for access to those groups for storytelling purposes. If that is the case then, used as intended, it's a good feature.

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And how did this get on to brute/tank tier 9's?

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Comments about PL'd players coupled with server downtime - it's never a good combination.

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But it's like any AT/powersets - there are no really bad ones, just people who can't play them well...

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Cheers without needing to say what powersets require purples you mentioned on of them

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Stone doesn't need purples. They help it, but it doesn't need them.

Thread is well derailed now, so I may as well:
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Changing Granite from toggle to a clicky is not going to break the game but encourage players to play Smarter staying in Granite isnt needed you nerf your own damage and recharge when in Granite(would also stop the need for Speed Boost would'nt it and the need for teleport power??). So without thinking of the positives you knock them back automatically thinking its completely negative, yet there a tons of players wanting granites or have them and dont want Teleport.

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Rooted tends to like teleport as well.

Without purples my granite (who never PL'd and has been kicking about for 3 years) has +40% recharge speed... before it's boosted with hasten. Swift and (if playing at 49/50) assault take the sting out of GAs run and damage debuffs.

Of course, they also mean that I've a decent dmg buff and recharge when out of GA as well...

It may be argued that stone tanks aren't as good as other tanks in many situations, but it's ridiculous to call them useless (as another poster did).

I picked a stoney after playing (In my 1st months in CoX) with a couple of excellent stone tanks, and I'm still convinced that they make great tanks. But it's like any AT/powersets - there are no really bad ones, just people who can't play them well...

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The theory I've heard is that republishing an arc deletes all instances of its souvenirs from people who have played it; haven't verified this though.

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Hmm. Sounds like a reasonable theory. I can see how the database has been designed to cause that behaviour.

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Funny - it sounds highly unlikely to me.

Have a look at the souvenir text file (PlayerCreatedSouvenirClues.txt in your installation directory). It doesn't have any links to the arc id or arc name of the arc providing the souvenir.

An example is:
Souvenir 0
Title "Large book"
Description "This is an exceptionally large book you recovered from the caves beneath Atlas Park, it is in a language you cannot understand and appears to be bound in a material you cannot identify."
End

Now I think it's unlikely that when an arc is republished or unpublished (or anything'd) that the servers send a message to every player who played the arc telling them to remove the souvenir... and obviously this list of changed arcs is checked when you log in just in case you were offline when it was changed...

More likely, especially as multiple copies of the same souvenir can exist and also given that multiple souvenirs seem to dissapear at once (in my case anyaway), is that the client just throws a fit every now and then and saves an incomplete list of souvenirs when updating the local file!

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when I see a granite tank

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You implying all granite tanks are from PL/farming?

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BTW - More importantly after biting my tongue when I've posted before now, I've finally had two change the title too the correct to.

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/pedant

Actually, I thought this thread was about making a toast "to much farming!"

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Any real pedant would have noticed that I used the wrong homonym (to/too/two) on each usage within that sentence, not just on the 'two' that you highlighted!

Rather than "I've finally had two change the title too the correct to." it should, of course, read: "I've finally had to change the title to the correct too."

Anyone who's read many of my past posts will probably have realised that this was intentional.

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Ok, I've got my share of "Can u fill a little" (sometimes I even could), but MA farms... Well, they're BIG, they're everyewhere, and MA farmers broadcast and spam chat channels, unlike more discreet PortalCorp farmers.


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I must be lucky then. Yes it's bad but they're not everywhere at all. I know that they're not in Croatoa, Grandville, Pocket D and the Shards...

More seriously - I don't see them much on the channels I'm in (though admittedly I've not been reading everything on the badging channels, concentrating more on Mission Architect channel - which seems more for authors than farmers). And I don't see them much in broadcast as I'm avoiding Atlas.

If they're spamming your channels get a channel mod to silence them. If they are mods then find a more pleasant channel!

Sure I get tells - but not really any more than I used to get from PI. Maybe I'm just lucky - or maybe people see my global and decide they don't want me! Either way - I'm reasonably happy.. it's there, it can be bad, but it's not unavoidable.



BTW - More importantly after biting my tongue when I've posted before now, I've finally had two change the title too the correct to.

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I THINK the aurhor just meant that they kept firing (and hitting him), instead of being totally held, as normal mobs do.

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AFAIK ranged mobs appear to have the blaster ability (part of Defiance v2 IIRC) to use the first 2 attacks even when mezzed.

A few days ago I noticed that one of my trollers was holding mobs fine but they were getting off a limited number of ranged attacks.

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Ack, my bad, shouldn't post before coffee...

It is a known phenomenon that people tend to overuse mez protection when making custom mobs, though. Ran one the other day where just about every Minion (never mind the Lieuts) had Obsidian Shield.

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Think that could change if we had control over individual power selections rather than just standard/hard/extreme settings for powersets.

Sure it'd make it easier for creating farming mobs, but it'd also make it easier to make challenging-but-not-overpowered mobs to fit story concepts

Worked fine for me on Saturday.

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I'm not suggesting that low level characters and arcs be removed from MA - just that the buildings are removed from those zones.

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You'd just have to Death Race to Steel/Talos to do so

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Which is why I said 'somewhat against' the devs 1-50 using MA boast.

It would detract due to needing the deathrace to another zone (and KR would be preferable to Steel - steel is in the higher part of the zone near the greenline train, KR is pretty near the yellowline train - so straight there from Atlas/Galaxy).

And what happens then?

You already get new characters often getting tells about SGs (or, worse, blind SG invites) within minutes of creation. I bet you'd just get tells/blinds asking you onto PL/farm teams...

And the broadcast in KR/Steel/Talos plummets to the level of Atlas...

I don't think that removing the MA from starting zones is the answer. But it is a knee-jerk reaction that wouldn't really solve anything but which the devs could implement pretty easily.

I think that would appear somewhat contrary to the devs proud boast that you can go from 1-50 using nothing but MA if you want.

And grrrrr.... damn login snarfled again!

Gratz on your cakeday!

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Although I still haven't forgiven your AV/EB Plumber for being a big girl, fleeing around the map with Radiation Infection on and thus coming back with a few friends (and squishing me).

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I had a lot of building work done early last year - what can I say: that's handymen for you.

I just hope that after he and his friends squished you they gave you an extortionate bill for it.


BTW - I did drop the Handyman down from EB to Boss before it was published in live.

BTW - as previously posted elsewhere, if you really don't like farming then there is a short humorous storyarc that I created as an antidote to farming:

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Of course, if you don't like farms you could always try shutting one down...

YES - IT'S A SHAMELESSS PLUG FOR 'Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh!' arc 3662

Consistently voted 'funniest arc between 3661 and 3663'!

Hear what the critics said:
"mildly amusing"
"Nearly funny"
"stop pestering me to play your <censored> arc - welcome to /ignore n00b"

With reviews like that you know you can't go wrong!


Brought to you by the House of Mohawk - the mark of quality humour... though not neccessarily high quality.

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It's a short-3-mission arc with JD's sense of humour, but it also has some good points.

The real comments have included:
"Highly amusing and well thought out."
"Genuinely funny and really well observed. Especially as I was playing this in Atlas, surrounded by people asking for farms and PLs whenever I exited while I was playing this....."
"that actually made me laugh out loud. Well done, very funny."
"Now THAT was a laugh! XD"

There's other comments/reviews for this mission on City of Guides.