Luminara

That's what the players led the developers to believe they wanted. Trams, arenas, markets, universities, Ouroboros destinations, PvP zone connections, you name it, players have complained about not having one in every zone.

The developers aren't blameless, though. They're the ones who decided to take this whole "chicken in every pot, car in every garage" concept and go completely overboard with it, like the new Halloween event occurring in multiple zones simultaneously, often while the Zombie Apocalypse event was underway, and increase the spawn rates of GMs to the point of having Scrapyarder spawning as frequently as every half hour and having three Luscas or Paladins in the world at the same time. And, of course, putting an AE building in every zone.

No-one learned their lesson. Not the players, not the developers. When Going Rogue is released, I give it a week before someone demands to know why they can't get to Praetoria from <insert zone>, and the developers will capitulate by adding ten more zone connections to Praetoria in the next update.

Amusing aside: a couple of weeks ago, I was bouncing past an AE building and happened to catch sight of a couple of PPD cops looking at it. The dialog... "Those punks." Obviously an oversight from when a building with graffiti was in that location and the PPD spawn wasn't removed with the building, but it was still funny.

Personally, I'd like to see the Rikti win one, by destroying most of the AE buildings, markets and universities, and some of the trams/ferries/black helicopters. One AE building on each side and one in Pocket D, one market on each side, one university on each side and one in Pocket D, one Arena on each side and one in Pocket D, and sever any zone interconnections that aren't absolutely necessary (we don't need eleven different ways to get to a zone. seriously, we don't). That would concentrate the players in the locations they are interested in, rather than spread all over the entire game world, and put them with other players who share similar interests. And the zone events need to be limited to one zone at any given time. Yes, there would be issues, but those issues can and should be addressed in some way other than "screw it, just put one in every zone!".

Almost? Any of the "old school" tier 9 powers with 1000s recharge times. If you can cap your +Recharge, you can get them down to 200s. With a 180s duration, that's as close as you'll ever get.

The new and revamped tier 9 powers are specifically designed to prevent players from getting even that close.

Getting 400% +Recharge is going to be the hardest part. You can get 95-118% from enhancements, depending on how you slot. Then there's Hasten's 70%, which could potentially bring the total up to 188%. You're still short 212%... which just happens to be almost exactly the total possible +Recharge from IO sets, but you'd have to slot five purple sets, five LotG +Recharge IOs, five other sets with 7.5% bonuses, five 6.25% bonuses, five 5% bonuses, five 3.75% bonuses and five 2.5% bonuses (212.5%), but that's more slots and powers than is possible, so you won't get there with IO sets.

You could toss in the Geas of the Kind Ones or Force of Nature accolade's 100%, making it much easier to do solo, but there's a 25m base recharge time on that accolade, and it only lasts for 1m, so you'd still only be in "god mode" for one minute, then out for several minutes.

You could partially alleviate that with another accolade, Eye of the Magus (hero)/Demonic Aura (villain), which would give you another 1m of "god mode", at least for Defense (50% to all but Psi), and cycle that in between uses of your tier 9 to cover part of the tier 9's down time, but even at maximum global recharge (+400%), it would still only be available once every 5m.

So you're left with either finding a buddy to Speed Boost you (could use a Kinetics defender on a second account, Speed Boost on auto and your primary character targeted and on Follow), or ignoring the tier 9 completely and building up more Resistance/Defense with IOs and pool powers. Practically anyone can cap Defense to at least one position and two types with IO sets, some can cap against two positions and multiple types, and a few can cap against everything, but it can be expensive. Resistance-based characters can cap versus two types, Smashing and Lethal, without much effort by picking up Tough to supplement their primary or secondary powers, but beyond that, it's difficult to pull much +Res for anything out of IO sets, it's just too spread out and in small amounts.

One other alternative, one which I've found to work extremely well, is to couple ToHit debuffs with Defense buffs. They work in conjunction quite nicely, at least until you start fighting foes with strong resistances to ToHit debuffs (most AVs, for example).

CJ has no special allowed or disallowed speed. The Jump Speed cap is 78 mph at level 50, regardless of power, or even whether or not you're even using a power.

No, Sam, you do not. The Jump Speed cap does not work like that. Combat Jumping does not work like that. The only way you can "snap" yourself to a specific speed is by turning on Hover, which applies a high enough friction variable to immediately halt your movement.

Combat Jumping permits you to leap farther and faster with Super Speed. If you jump without CJ while running SS, you're not only subject to normal friction (1.0), but you also have a lower jump height and distance. The end result is a shorter leap with more of your running speed bleeding off due to friction. With CJ, you have one fifth of your normal friction when airborne, so you lose significantly less running speed when you leap AND you cover more distance with that leap.

What you're saying is essentially that you can run faster through water (which applies greater friction, or drag) than you can on land (lower drag with air). That's a big no.

No, Sam. Geysers do not apply constant force, there is no invisible column which is carrying you, there is nothing to strafe off of. Geysers give you one push, like KB or Repel, to send you flying, and that's it. You can strafe all you like, you don't fall simply because you were moving around. You can miss your landing by overshooting or strafing too far in the wrong direction due to having more control with CJ, but you don't slide off of an invisible disc or whatever you're implying.

Absolutely.

You never noticed that your low level characters leap more slowly than your level 50 characters, but fall at exactly the same speed? Travel speed caps vary by level. That alone should tell you that your eyeball measurements are inaccurate.

Swift doesn't buff jump speed or height.

Jump Speed. Your forward speed is determined by the jump itself, up to the apex of that jump. Your descent is a controlled fall, and is governed by the rules, and speed cap, for falling.

Jumping is not flying in arcs, it's jumping. Just like you do in real life. You don't control your speed when you're coming down, only when you're going up.

Jump Height determines how high you can jump, and therefore how long you can continue to maintain your jump speed. When you reach your maximum height, you stop jumping and start falling.

Maximum speed is determined by either the maximum speed you can achieve with a jump power, due to slotting or lack thereof, or by the speed cap, 78 mph at level 50. If you slot your jump power well enough to exceed the speed cap, or have enough jump powers/buffs applied to exceed the cap, you will still be limited to that cap.

Jump Speed is ascent. It's the speed the game allows you to achieve as long as you're both holding down on the jump key and have not hit or passed your apex yet.

Jump Height is height of the jump before you start falling. When you hit the maximum height for your character (the only hard cap on this is the zone ceiling), you stop jumping and start falling.

Movement Control is how quickly your character responds to directional commands (pressing a key). The lower your Movement Control, the more you drift when you change directions and the slower the response to those directional changes. The higher the Movement Control, the more immediate the response when you try to change direction. With Combat Jumping, you can jiggle yourself wildly in the air by rapidly changing directions, because it has a very high Movement Control. With Super Jump, you can't, because it has a very low Movement Control. Same thing with Fly, when you try to strafe left or right, or pull up to a stop from full speed forward flight, your changes in direction are very slow because Fly has a low Movement Control value.

Movement Friction is, as I said before, how "sticky" the air is supposed to be. The lower the Movement Friction, the less the air affects you. Hover has a really high Movement Friction, so you stop instantly, no drift, when you let go of a directional key. Combat Jumping has almost no Movement Friction, so you tend to keep moving in the same direction when you let go of a directional key.

Movement Control and Friction together determine how quickly you hit your maximum speed, but they do not control the actual speed of movement.

Yes.

...

Or enter a store or similar building like the Vanguard building, hospital, Portal Corps., university, etc. Or just go to another zone.

Not sure if AE buildings work, have to test those.

I've been experiencing that with Vista lately. Alt+Tab to another window, switch back to the game, frozen screen (like viewing a screenshot in full screen), switch back to the other window and back to the game again, screen's fine.

I found that if I switch between windows rapidly while moving the mouse, Co* becomes responsive again permanently. Switching back to another window and back to Co* no longer results in the display being locked.

I also should note that this didn't start occurring until I replaced a dead 7800 GTX with a brand new 250 GTS, at which point I found that the DWM didn't always scale the desktop back to basic style (which delights me, because i prefer my transparency effects to remain on). In fact, the problem itself doesn't manifest if the DWM doesn't scale the desktop back, it only occurs when the the DWM kicks in.

Incorrect. The base friction value for all airborne characters (whether flying or leaping) is 1.0. Every power which permits flight or leaping, except Combat Jumping, either doesn't change that value or it increases the value.

Hover increases friction to 100. Inertial Reduction increases friction to 40. Fly increases friction to 8. Et cetera.

Combat Jumping, however, reduces friction to 0.2. That's below the default value. It's the only power in the game which does that.

Without CJ, you move slower while airborne. With CJ, you move faster while airborne.

No it doesn't. You leap farther and retain more of your ground speed with CJ toggled on.

Yes, I do play a character with SS and CJ. Yes, I have tested this.

Jump Speed is what affects the speed of ascent. Descent speed can't be controlled, it's determined by the speed at which you were moving when you hit the apex of your leap (or fell). Descent speed is controlled by the code which governs falling, because that's all it is, falling. With leaping powers, you have directional control over that fall, but it's still a fall and you will move at whatever speed the engine is set to.

Jump Height determines the maximum vertical distance you can jump and partially controls the horizontal distance by limiting your height and therefore the maximum speed at which you can jump. Once you hit the apex of your leap, falling speed takes over and you're limited to that particular maximum.

Friction is a variable which determines how "sticky" the air is for you. The higher the value, the "stickier" the air, so you have things like Hover, which makes you move through air like it's a thick liquid. The lower the value, the less "sticky" the air is, so you move through it with less resistance, like with CJ, which allows you to change directions instantly, stop instantly, drift farther if you don't reverse movement, etc.

Take any powerset with one PBAoE or cone and one other AoE effect. Use PBAoE or cone to corner foes, which takes all of 1-2 seconds (if that long), then use the other AoE. Repeat until spawn is defeated.

KB in all AoE damage powers would only slow down the players who are limited to targeted AoE, which could scatter their foes if they weren't used intelligently. Anyone with cones and/or PBAoEs wouldn't even notice the difference if they're playing with any sense, especially in the case of cones.

It would only matter for targeted AoEs and outdoor maps.

Torrent, Tenebrous Tentacles, Night Fall.

It's not difficult to work around your timing and recharge issues. Hit them frequently enough, with your mechanics, and they will spend more time getting up or getting back into a position of attack than they will attacking.

That was just one example. There are numerous powersets with enough AoE effects to abuse this mechanic.

The knockdown chance for powers like Ice Slick or OSA is only 5-8% chance per 0.2s, but that's consistent enough to be considered very good mitigation. Granted, a cone, PBAoE or targeted AoE won't be hitting foes five times per second, but if you're hitting those same foes three times in a span of five seconds, you are going to get some good mitigation from the KB/KD, unless the chance for KB/KD is so low as to be negligible.

But you don't have true radial dispersion because the targeting system doesn't force it. Cones would be easy to use to KB foes into a specified location, they wouldn't even require extra time because any half intelligent cone user is going to line up a spawn for maximum coverage anyway. PBAoEs are just as simple to abuse, you just herd everything into a corner, take one step away from the corner and cut loose. Targeted AoEs? Target the fellow in the front.

Goodbye radial dispersion, hello controlled, directional KB.

You're focusing on targeted AoEs. Look at cones and PBAoEs. Play around with Torrent or Electron Haze for a while, then think about having three powers like that at your disposal and how you could leverage that.

Or play a human form Peacebringer and experiment with Solar Flare. It's only radial if you're in the middle. If you're standing with a clump of foes on one side...

Okay, you've got KB and KD separated, and KB no longer provides mitigation. This changes KB from a tool to an annoyance, unless you also add something to compensate for the lack of mitigation. What do you add, or are you adding anything? Damage when impacting surfaces? Briefer period of inactivity than is currently in the game (meaning, instead of KD, a second of "dazed" or some such)? Or do foes simply remain standing, like they do now if you hit them with KB too soon after knocking them down (which looks absolutely ridiculous)?

Also, you'd need to change the hit check mechanic in addition to everything else, because as it stands now, it doesn't matter if foes are knocked fifteen miles away, as long as they were within the radius of an AoE when it was activated. So even with 100% scatter mechanics, you're still going to see players executing two AoEs in a row with no decline in damage output, even if they're new and don't understand the mechanic, or just sloppy.

And what would you do about all of the powers which are purposely designed to prevent KB? Controller Holds and mass Immobilizations, for example. Remove all of the -KB from powers, or just the AoE powers and leave the single-target -KB powers intact?

And for that matter, what about powers like Torrent or Repulsion Bomb, which guarantee KB if you hit (because that's what they were designed to do)? Change those, too, or leave them alone?

No it doesn't. It has no Afraid component. It does have 10,000% resistance and 100 protection against Afraid.

It's debuffs. Read the thread I linked.

It's not advantageous when you're relying on location-targeted damage, debuffs or soft control and foes run out of it.

Nothing. There's a problem with the AI.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=124124

I don't know. With NR, one-slotted Swift (level 50 Run IO), unslotted Sprint and 18% +Movement, I was running at ~51.5 mph. That's significantly slower than I was moving when I ran the courses last year, and I managed to get gold time with a few seconds to spare.

I think movement control will be more important for the slopes, and since NR appears to have the same value as SJ or IR, if it was possible with those powers, then it should be possible with NR. It's not as good as CJ, but on the other hand, CJ's high movement control and low friction may actually be detrimental to slope times because it makes it so much easier to overcompensate.

Movement control is a flag which determines how responsive to directional changes your character is while in the air.

Movement friction is a different flag. This flag determines how much drift you experience when you stop pressing a movement key, or when you try to change directions.

Keep reading below, I'll put it in context there. I wanted to get the mechanics laid out first.

Okay, you know how you can run around on the ground, stop instantly, change direction while running and even completely reverse your trajectory without delay, or even slowing down? The control and friction flags in jump and flight powers do the same thing that they do on the ground, but they're set to different values in those powers in order to simulate inertia and momentum while you're in the air.

With Combat Jumping and Fly, the difference is most noticeable if you fly in a straight line, then press your key to move backward. Without Combat Jumping, you'll still drift forward momentarily, then gain control over the character and start to fly backward. With Combat Jumping, you'll instantly stop moving forward and start moving backward.

Hover and Inertial Reduction have very high friction values. When you release the movement key, you instantly stop moving.

Fly, Super Jump and Ninja Run have moderate friction values. When you release the movement key, you continue to move forward for a short distance.

Combat Jumping has a very low friction value. If you let it, a character with CJ toggled on will continue to move in the chosen direction for longer than any other power (while you're in the air). However, that low friction value also means you can immediately change direction and begin moving in that direction with almost no loss of speed. No other movement power gives you that much control.

All of the powers have moderate to high control values, so your control of your character's direction while airborne (due to flight or jumping) is generally good.

In the specific case of Fly and Combat Jumping, CJ's low friction value and high control value counter Fly's moderate control and moderate friction, so you have more responsive control over your character while in flight. With Fly and CJ both toggled on, you can stop on a dime, by pressing the key to move in the opposite direction of your current trajectory. If you're flying forward, and want to instantly stop, you press the backward movement key. Without CJ, you drift a short distance before you stop and then start moving in the opposite direction, and it's a very slow response to your commands.

Basically, CJ makes it feel like you're running on air. You have total and complete control over your character, just like you do on the ground. You hit your top speed more quickly, you decelerate more quickly, you change direction more quickly, you're the mythical greased pig that no-one can catch.

To see movement control and friction in action, take any character and start jumping without CJ, NR, SJ or IR, and try to move around while in the air. Start jumping in a straight line and try to strafe to the right or left. Jump up and down and try to move to the left or right in mid-jump. You won't deviate much from whichever way you were moving until/unless you hold down on that strafe key for several seconds and build up momentum in that direction, and even then you'll only be "bending" your course slightly, you won't be changing it completely.

Then do the same things with any of the jump powers (except Sprint, which adds neither jump speed nor movement control/friction) and note how much more responsive your character is to directional input.

Hurdle and Sprint have no movement control or friction reduction. CJ, SJ, IR the Zero-G pack and NR all do.

Based on the few minutes I spent bouncing around with it, I'd guess that the movement control and movement friction attributes are both set to the same values used by SJ, +10 control and +2 friction (moderate control, moderate friction), or IR, +40 both (high control, high friction).

CJ's values are +40 control and +0.2 friction, for comparison (high control, very low friction).

As I said, NR needs more friction reduction. Ninjas are agile. Ninja Run's jumping is not.

Hurdle with three level 50 Jump IOs and 15% +Movement allows you to jump at 52.6 mph. Fly with one level 50 Flight Speed IO is 53.5 mph.

You can get 15% +Movement from logging out at trains or black helicopters.

Natural alternative, enjoy.

So blowing spawns into corners or confined areas like those rail cars on the destroyed KR map, places where they couldn't be knocked back any further or in any direction which would place them outside of further AoE, wouldn't matter for whatever type of balance you're attempting to achieve?

I'm sure I'm missing something, or misunderstood your goal, but I'm not seeing this change AoE DPA or efficiency. I am seeing it significantly boost survivability, across the board, since one could simply corner foes and keep them on their backs indefinitely, so with your AoE KB addition, not only do AoEs become mass spawn disposal tools, they also obviate nearly every control, ToHit debuff, Damage debuff, Defense buff and Resistance buff in the game.

Unless you also change the vertical surfaces to allow them to be destroyed, at which point cornering spawns no longer works and they could be properly scattered to prevent them from being soft-controlled by KB. Yes?

CJ is only a 1% Jump Speed buff. Breaking wind is faster, in terms of speed.

I'd love to see an explanation for RoA causing KB, especially with its existing animation.

Not unless you also change KB to work radially from the center of the impact point, or change every vertical surface in the game to be deformable so foes could be blown through them. You'd also have to change how KB reacts with floors, since making floors deformable would just lead to players making big craters and using them to corral foes and AoE them to death the same way they use walls and corners now (you couldn't make floors infinitely deformable, they'd have to have a finite limit at some point).

Otherwise, your changes really wouldn't accomplish what you hope for. Might force some players to spend an extra second or two lining up spawns so they can catapult them into walls/corners or floors, but other than that, it'd be business as usual.