Oneirohero

No.

I've been playing well over a year and every once in a while in Paragon City I come across a strange device situated around the city. A big, boxy terminal with spinning signs on the top, you click into it and it supposedly shows you the top healers and so forth in the city, as well as non-existant news updates.

I'm pretty sure it was something to do with PvP, but you'd think that even if it was left all this time it would show something on it. Even if it has characters who have long since left.

I thought maybe these could be repurposed for something, but I remember the distinct lack of terminals in the Rogue Isles. If it were to be changed into something useful, the villains would be out of the loop.

I don't know, does anybody even notice these terminals, and if they do, do they care if it ever has a purpose, if they disappeared, would anybody shed a tear? What on earth could these terminals be repurposed for?

I love that the temporary power recipes have increased drop-rates, I always wanted to have a go at using these gadgets but the problem with me is that they NEVER dropped for me until recently, costume recipes even rarer.

If what was said about temp power recipes and enhancement recipes are dropping independently, I don't see any problem with that? Right-click>Delete and you've got yourself a recipe slot back. I wouldn't say no for them being moved to vendors though. The St. Louis Slammer is just fun to use, whacking mobs with a bat when you have superpowers!

Being optimistic, I'm hoping that with the new glow-map tech, they could try to copy or port all the current patterns and allow them to become glows, there's a number of patterns that would just multiply with coolness in being able to glow, especially the tattoo/magic-symbol styled ones.

The mere fact that those glows were part of a secondary selection much like patterns makes it even more likely it might be the case.

I would agree on the points of untargetable intangible characters and restricted regen and recovery, but the 50% chance to become intangible, I don't know, that's just asking fate to make only 1 or 2 enemies out of 5 to become intangible and might be more of a waste of endurance than having to wait for them to come back to the material plane.

I'd much rather push for the debuffed regen and recovery than the 50% chance to phase, no matter what percentage used.

The suggestion to turn off external power effects would be pretty useful in crowded environments where people leave their auras and powers on auto, especially in Auction house areas and Pocket D.

Turning off the little buff/debuff special effects might also be good too.

But as far as turning off the floating pieces of paper and leaves in the wind is concerned, this is already something you can disable under Physics quality, turn it off and it should stop rendering all those physic effects, either that or you could turn down the maximum particle effects on the graphics slider.

I was wondering why there wasn't any roll-over information whenever I used vendors and cursored over regular enhancements. It was strange because when you roll over recipes, even in the vendors and stores, still showed tooltips with all the requirements effects and set bonuses.

Sounds like it would be a big QoL update if it were fixed to show tooltips for enhancements, and maybe salvage if it would help you figure out which ones worked for your recipes.

The moment you start to draw the line of what is offensive, then everybody will draw the line, to the point where you can't do anything any more because everybody has deemed everything offensive.

Screw those guys.

Unless my memory is failing on me, I think I heard one of the developers mention that in Going Rogue that their hospitals have a nurse vendor who sells inspirations within the building itself.

I remember this distinctly because another player asked a question on if they would put those kinds of nurses in the Paragon and Rogue Isle hospitals too and the devs said they'd think about going back and doing just that.

Unfortunately I don't have a link to cite my source, if someone has more superior search-fu than me could provide proof.

It does sound like one or two full issues full of work but the idea of using base-creation tools and converting them into a mission map maker for AE missions is an interesting idea.

Granted there are limits to the current base tech that make it far less flexible for detail than you'd expect on developer made maps (like offices). But you never know, you could have multiple floors, possible placements for glowies and spawns. But if we remember how AE was first used (and abused) giving full control over the map might yield some exploitative results.

And if they were thinking about being able to make our own maps with SG tech, how do you think we'd be able to do outdoor missions? That's a toughy.

Looks like a single tail was the difference between failure and OMGWANT for some players around here. The funny thing is, while I was going to buy the Mutant pack anyway, this new tail isn't something I'd actually use for any of my character concepts at the moment, maybe I'd find a use for it in the future.

But I have noticed from the screen-shot that the fur on the tail is perceptibly higher in resolution than the old monstrous fur texture too.

All the same, it's fantastic that David and Jay have taken the time to try to smooth things over and add some highly vocally requested content to the players. Whatever additions and improvements they make with this pack will be very welcome.

While I was a little disappointed this booster didn't contain any animal parts, after I started trying and reading about it, I'm actually quite happy about what's contained within the pack and I'm sure to purchase it when it goes live too.

I think people were just hoping SO much that this would finally enable some convincing anthropomorphic animal characters and beasts that when this came out it caused great backlash, especially after misinterpreting Positron's 'hint' that such parts would be included in a mutant booster.

I already found a use for the costume pieces on my main hero's alternate form, I figure that biolum would be the most flexible for other costumes and characters, though I'm sure I'll find a use for Organic armour somewhere.

Energy Morph is also going to be one my most chosen CCE emotes for my main hero too, though Dimension Shift is also equally as impressive, not too fond of Rapid Boil though, and it doesn't fit any of my current concepts either. I felt the regular emotes Showoff and Growl were a bit lack lustre, Showoff might make a great taunt power-customised animation if it were slowed to a more natural speed, Growl doesn't seem to click with my characters either, so I suppose it'll be just good for when there really is a animal/beast booster.

Secondary Mutation sounds like a really good self-buffing power, even when I rolled Devolution I had a grand old time playing with it, but I understand there are quite a number of bugs with the power at the moment, from looping animations to reports that some buffs aren't working or not giving the correct amount of benefit. And boy people are worked up that there might be a RISK of a debuff somewhere, some people eh?

Unless you've run out of Blues, inspirations drop frequently admittedly, but there's always going to be that one time you run out mid-battle and sappers are zapping on your tails.

Brawl's perfect for cherry-tapping enemies with a sliver of health, you'd want to keep the endurance and recharge on a stronger power for a critter with more health.

Since I tend to use Brawl on all of my characters as often as possible, slotting for recharge tends to be one of my thoughts, especially on Brutes.

If this suggestion suggests to make brawl immune to being slowed OR sped-up, I might feel a little half and half on the issue. I'd much rather keep the ability to slot a faster brawl than gain an immunity for it to be slower.

A lot of people put off Brawl because it doesn't do much damage, but I use it because it's damage per endurance borders on infinity. And reducing it's recharge just makes that more apparent.

The Energy Morph costume change emote

Operating System: Windows 7 Pro
User Client: PC
Emote: Energy morph
Server: Training Room
Zone: Steel Canyon
Character name: Mark Jerry1
Location: Inside Icon, the tailors
Archetype: Defender

Bug Description:
There is a very strange effect where if I switch costumes with this emote, my character becomes completely coated in black for a short while, which slowly but surely fades off until I'm normal again. The effect can be reproduced all the time on costumes 0 and 2, costume 1 is darkened when switched TO this slot, but not nearly as pitch black as 0 and 2 are.

I had no toggles running, but [Mutation: Tough Hide] was active during this realisation.

Self-buff similar to Mystic Fortune huh?

Could it be possible to have the two of them stack together, double buffs that last 20 minutes?

I have a feeling this self-buff might have some trick to make it slightly riskier to use, kind of in the way Mystic Fortune has the Fool for -ToHit and the Tower for self-damage. Even more so because it's a self-buff rather than a targeted ally buff.

Zone travel can be quite irritating and long sometimes, especially when the zone you're heading to needs more than one stop, and even more if you going from Yellow to Green lines in Steel Canyon, which are both situated on opposite ends of the map.

But the point of missions requiring these kinds of zone-travels is because evil isn't conveniently situated atop the inactive volcano in the middle of the city block. Doing the right thing isn't always easy, thus you can't expect to get rid of all zone-travel, or even tone it down because if you were a supervillain, you'd want to make sure it's as tedious as possible for any heroes to come stop you. When you look it that way, the villains are smart to make it so many steps for the average hero to reach them.

Is it good design, I'm not entirely sure. But does it make sense given the context of villainy trying not to be foiled by just /anybody/, that I'm sure of. The hero that doesn't bother to do the legwork of reaching your hideout is one less hero to bother you.

I think the original poster may have confused 'New Topic' with 'New Reply', but how on earth that happened defies physics!

I used to Level pact with a friend of mine, he left the game mind, but I can certainly see that the Level pact feature could do with an upgrade.

It would be nice if you could pact up to Lv16-20, or pact within four levels of one another. And being able to have pact groups of four or more would do nicely, Eight might be better in case they all want to do a full team from time to time.

As for abuse, the 'level difference no greater than' style of pacting would be the best, as someone only a few levels lower than you wouldn't gain a stupid amount of XP as someone 20 levels lower than you.

I know cutscenes are pretty dev-only, unfortunately the negative reaction of earlier uses of cutscene probably made a lot of people aversive of even wanting to use it, never mind experiencing other people's attempts at doing so. Plus in comparison cutscenes would be much harder to simplify over the interface.

It's true you can already create model-copies of your own characters and put them in as a Contact, ally, enemy...etc. But that would just be THAT character only, not a true doppleganger that copies the person playing the mission. Dopplegangers change to match the leader and any team-mates of theirs, but the regular critters you make for a contact or boss remain static to the costume you designed it in the first place. Sure you can make an arc specific to you only so you appear to be the contact, but if it gets published and your friend plays it, they'll see your character talking about if you are them.

As for what devs consider things to be 'dev-only', wasn't it only a year ago that story-arc and custom critters were dev-only tech?

In light of Issue 17's hero and villain arcs, I think the next wave of Mission architect improvements and additions should include a Doppleganger NPC designation.

For instance, you could choose 'your doppleganger/yourself/self' to be the Contact of a MA story arc, which means that whoever is the leader of the arc will appear in place of the contact whoever they are. This'll finally allow people to create arcs that simulate that YOU are the mastermind or taskmaster of your own schemes and investigations and the contact is just a way to think to yourself.

It can also be used to make missions involving Praetorian counterparts (or more generically, you from another universe or time) so you can set the doppleganger as an ally to help you or an enemy much like the i17 arcs to fight against.

It might be also an option to set an enemy group that is made entirely of dopplegangers, with increasing and decreasing strength based on a particular doppleganger's enemy rank instead of being an Elite Boss like developer arcs. While most bosses will use the leader's model, if there's more than one person on the team, other members will also get dopplegangers, especially in the case of using dopplegangers as a enemy group.

As LISAR pointed out about rerolling clones on other servers: Yes you can already do that now, but those clones don't have any of the badges, salvage, influence, temporary powers...etc...etc. While character transfers at least keep all of those except SG/VG membership and such. So it's more about retaining a character's success on another server than just making clones, especially for those with Anniversary badges they retain.

And for Sharker Quint: I already mentioned that SG membership, names and pacts would be broken if you use character transfers, it's no different a limitation than the current transfers that go on now.

Another thing LISAR brought up was the trick on getting free renames. I myself are having a bit of trouble thinking of an idea to fix it. But the way I see it, if you want to change the name of a character you still have to pay the cost of a transfer in order for it to happen, and pay again for each character you want to rename. It's only really unlimited 'per character'. I couldn't see this getting fixed without bumping up the cost to count for the exploit. It's up to the developer's discretion.

A linked character slot function might work but it all depends on whether synching one character to many servers is possible and not infeasibly performance-damaging.

The free character transfers went down magnificently the last time the developers offered it in the recent year, so much so that they even extended it once or twice so that people could play with their friends no matter what servers they cam from. Now that things had returned to normal, it seems rather unfortunate (though probably necessary) that the transfer fee returned when it finished. Some of us have a 'home server' where we hang out and make the most characters, our friends may be on other servers and while it would be nice to play with them the cost of the transfer as well as the things we lose 'SG membership, maybe even their name' can be a bit too high for most.

I had a suggestion that plays on combining the aspects of free transfers that players love with the compromise of financial feasibility that the transfers already require. I call this idea the Portal Passport.

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The price for a character transfer would be the same, however it would use a passport system for each character with the names of each server their client is able to connect to (US servers for US clients, EU for EU). When you say, make a character on Victory. Their passport shows that they can access the Victory shard (obviously).

When you want to transfer character-A on Victory to Freedom, after the transfer is completed the Passport is updated to show you now have access to Freedom. What this means is that, so long as you don't exceed your transfer limit and restrictions, character-A can now freely transfer between Victory and Freedom without further payments.

If character-A then has a transfer to Virtue on any server, then their passport is updated to say that they now have access to Virtue, thus transfers between Victory, Freedom, and Virtue are now possible without further cost, money-wise anyway.

But what makes this balanced?

Well, the passports are individual to each character, it's not an account-wide thing. Character-A can access the three servers mentioned previously, however Character-B is only going to be able to access their originating server only, unless they're transferred to other servers in the manner of character-A.

For each character transfer you can allow one character free access to one extra server. So depending on how many characters or how many servers you want to try, this can be relatively cheap for the player who wants to play their main on one high-pop server or expensive for those who want to transfer a lot of characters to one server or one character to a lot of servers.

But the main focus of the passport is to allow a one-time fee for you to access a new server while not having to pay for a way back, think of it as a permanent return-ticket to servers you've already been to.

The one of the things good about the free transfers was the no-cost return. People could play on servers with the knowledge they had the chance to return characters to their original server before the free transfers ended, especially if they're part of important SGs they could return to.

The other concern would be for whether you'd want your character to transfer in the first place. Character transfers break memberships to Supergroups, they break pacts which can't be repacted above Lv5 and your character's name might not be available when you transfer over (or nightmarishly, even when you transfer back!). So if you do want to transfer, you'd want to make sure you don't do so if you value one of those details of your character.

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Roleplaying footnote:

A feature like this doesn't necessarily require any RP reasoning for why it should come into existence. But I named the feature the Portal Passport in the way of being able to transfer to different continuities of a similar universe, with an 'invisible' passport to show where you came from and where you've been. The portal corporations of each continuity would know you're allowed to enter their timeline by your passport and that's how you're able to pass through to each server.