Paris_NA

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Dominators are getting a buff that should make them more desireable on LRSF in I8 as well.

[/ QUOTE ]dominators are getting radiation emmision?

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Woot!!! Now I can be useful in the LRSF!

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Where's the bug fix for the patron respec? You guys don't even talk about it anymore and everytime its mentioned by someone you don't comment on it.

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this was fixed already...twice actually..if you havent received your respec then petition

i got mine so maybe you dont get one...remember you actually have to do the arc..not just play a villian

and someone better tell the villians that the major fixes are for them so they stop complaining about favortism

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Ummm, No it hasn't been fixed and Yes I have completed the arcs. All of them from the Patrons my characters have and still 3 out of 4 haven't gotten a Patron respec and support closes the tickets becasue, "A fix is forthcomming."

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How about...

PvP balance

PvP zone debt fixed.

Patron respec fixed

Actual dev interest in PvP?

Fury fix

and um this..


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Sadly, in the last 2 years the devs have expended a huge amount of time and resources into PvP. What has this has given to the actual players (as opposed to the players they hope to get, imagined 'ideal player' or the devs themselves)? Nerfs, delayed fixes of bugs, and more bugs. The continued use of dev time and resources on PvP has done nothing to increase the player base and in fact has been detrimental to the customer satisfaction of many of the current player base. Most players of CoX were not drawn to the game for its PvP and few , if any, will be in the future. It is time to focus developer time and resources toward aspects of the game that the current players actually enjoy and want. We certainly don't need a 2nd build for PvP or PvP only characters that have their own leveling system.

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Ok, coming back from a lag in internet access, and I have to say I'm confussed, even after looking through all the posts. Do we have a definate answer yet? Is it:

A.) Total Paid Time = Time
B.) Account Created Date through Current Date = Time
C.) Hours Logged In = Time
D.) Some other variant?

Because in my situation, I was in Beta, Bought the Preorder, Bought the game, Bought the DVD Edition of the game, Beta'd CoV, Bought CoV Preorder, Bought CoV, Got another copy of the game as a gift, Left, Came back after 2 months with a 15day come back and join us thingy, Got ANOTHER copy of the game as a gift, and here we stand now.

So all together, I've got like almost 6 months where I had an active account but didn't have to pay.

My Total Time Paid shows 12 months (which baffles me since I've only taken 6 months off in these 3 years) with the 6 months or so free play.

If it's a case where it's A. That blows.
If it's B. That's lame as well, since I played about an hour or two every day for a long time, but didn't sit there taking a bath whilst a character sat idle.
If it's C. Neat, but hardly fair.

Sorry if I'm behind, but I've been incommunicado man for a while.

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Is it too late to point out again that the time on your account information is wrong and not how these are being calculated? So, here again is a link to a post by CuppaJo where she says "This played time includes any time that would come with a retail box purchase or hero gear purchase. In fact - the system already tracks this 'included' time. It is just not set up to make that data visible to you in your account management screen yet. "
And another where she says, "Subscribed time would be a better term."
So your answer is not B or C.

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Try to act like this forum is just a bunch of people gathered in a room, talking over some things. I hope the next time you're in a board room and someone asks for clarification you don't tell them they're an idiot for not immediately grasping the concept.

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Well since you can't fire me, or sue me, or get a gossip war going against me I feel confident that anyone here can point out stupid things people say like, "I've played... 5000 hours, he's played 1000 (arbitrary numbers), but we've paid for the same amount of time... I would receive more Vet rewards than him? "

Kinda like explaining to my Boss' Boss that having the Crisis Intervention Team (people who talk people down from bridges) give a presentation and stay all day at a job fair may not be the best utilization of resources as it would cost the company anywhere from $1000 to $5000. "But you guys can go hours between calls." After quickly looking out the window, rolling my eyes, and taking a deep breath my response was professional (something like, "If we take more than 15 minutes to get to a call the company is billed $1000) and didn't even point out that he had the IQ of a gnat. Basically because he could may my life hard or get me fired. On the other hand there is blantantly stupid things people that don't have that kind of power over my life say that I don't have to give a professional response to.
Anyway why should a person who has paid for 2 years and played 10000 hours get more of these rewards than a person who has paid for 2 years and played 100 hours? I think person number 2 is the best kind of customer in the world. Reminds me of when I rented out a room to a flight attendant. Saw her maybe 5 times in six months and never had to deal with any of the normal stuff involving room mates. I was really sorry to see her go and would have bent over backwards to get her to stay.

I am having an issue with my costumes and SG mode and have had several people tell me they have the same problem. I stay in SG mode all the time and like to switch between costumes a lot. Problem is that the game isn't saving my costume settings. With many trips to the tailor I have changed my costumes so that they are the same in SG mode or Out, I have no deleted costume pieces and put my SG symbol as the chest detail but this issue persists.
The game seems to randomly choose some costume parts to change color and no matter how many times I change it back to the correct setting, the next time I switch to the costume some parts will be wrong.
Petitioning this issue has been useless as first they have me send them a DxDiag report (how can DirectX effect the setting the game uses to store costume color settings) and then they said it was because I was using obsolete costume pieces(which is not the case).

Here is an example.
1st time selecting that costume.

After changing SG color settings to what they should be.

After switching to another costume and back.

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This is truly the first thing that has happened in this game that has really pissed me off but it has really...pissed...me...off.

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Wow, you have your tinfoil hat on? Yes, this was done as an personal insult to you and your SG. The devs actually have nothing better to do with their lives and game that to frustrate and piss you off. It has nothing to do with the fact that a vast majority of players will not be at some silly convention.

Found the secret room after much searching, it is an actual secret entrance. Inside is the design team's names on a board and each has a cubicle and there are what I assume are their pictures as well.

Entrance

Team

Cubicles

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I got one for this, 2 Lvl 50 Fire/Ice tanks, that can tank a lvl 52 AV alone

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But 2 tanks are not supposed to be able to take an AV. Or 2 of anything for that matter.

Here are some screenshots of the base for The Dead Man's Hand VG on Virtue.

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But they were fully empowered to cause a raid to fail before this change happened. They are no more or less powerful with regards to causing a raid to fail.

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I believe you are missing the point. Often griefers would pull GMs to raids and the raid would not fail becase it could be taken care of. Now it takes a lot more to get rid of a GM so increased chance of raid failing.
Your argument is kinda like, "The mugger had a knife before and he could steal your stuff, so a mugger with a .45 isn't a bigger problem because he can still steal your stuff." Giving griefers bigger, better weapons is a very bad idea.

I too would like a Big Red Ball and I would like to try and chop down the tallest tree in the forrest with a herring or at least be able to buy a shrubbery.

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How do these changes increase the risk getting a HO requires, for all those people who pop into the hive when their friends tell them he is held? The number of people who do this is not insubstanial.

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Back when I did raids on Freedom the hive would go from 75 to 140 once the hold phase had started. Currently on Virtue it is not that bad but still noticable.

In this section I am going to take a look at a demo I have modified and made into a video. Originally it was against Family but when I was done, I thought, "Heck turn them into heroes." A copy of the demo is here.

The first task is to find everything that is not going to be on screen and delete it. I usually do this by hand, or at least delete the New commands and then use the Fix Ghosts Wizard in Balshor's CoH Demo Editor v0.8.9 to remove the un-used lines. After cleaning it up a bit I put the camera in a stationary position.

Then I turned the Family into the Freedom Phalanx by changing the NPC commands to the new skins. There are many Heroes that I can't find a skin without the little contact circle under them so they had to be ruled out. Ended up using Model_Statesman, Model_Sister_Psyche, Model_Valkyrie, Model_Infernal, and Model_Positron_NoRing (which I got at the 2nd anniversery event). I added some Maintained effects to Statesman and Positron.

Then I spent some time positioning the Heroes so they looked better on the screen. I ended up using a little program called Graph to help me figure out the right coordinates.

Since I had changed some IDs and added additional targets it took some effort to get Full Auto to go off like it does in the game.

After watching the demo I decided it would make a good video but it needed more camera angles. I moved the camera and used the Generate PYR relative to POS Wizard in CoH Demo Editor to focus the camera on what I wanted. The only significant difference between the 3 demo files is the CAM POS and PYR lines. You can take a look at them if you like Close-up on Private Heck and Close-up on Heroes.
The rest was just using Windows Media Encoder to capture each demo and then Windows Movie Maker to cut and put it together. You can watch the finished product here or on YouTube . The direct file is much better.

Many commands come in clusters, that is many commands are found near the same commands each time you find them. For example, you can't create a new object without at least giving it a name, costume, and position. I'll cover the 3 most important; Setting, Object Creation, and Special Effects.

Demo Setting
Every demo file begins with the same three command lines; Version, map and time.

1 0 Version 2
0 0 Map maps/Missions/V_Longbow/Longbow_30/Longbow_30_Layout_01.txt
0 0 Time 6.953883

As you can see the only time in this cluster is for the first command and is 1 millisecond. The Object ID of these commands is 0, which is the entire demo. The Version has never changed. The Map variable is the map the demo is on. You can find most/all maps here.
Time is the time of day and only matters in outside and zone maps. If you are having difficulty with the lighting for a scene try changing the time.

Object Creation
To create an object you start with the NEW command with the name as the variable(the name can be blank). Then a costume, with non-character objects you use the NPC command followed by the skin name. You can find a list of skins here. Then you need to place the object with POS and PYR commands. If you want the object to be doing something specific you add a MOV command followed with one of the MOV variables, which are located here.
So to create Infernal in your demo you would use the following.
0 5 NEW Infernal
0 5 NPC Model_Infernal
0 5 POS ***********
0 5 PYR 0 5 0
0 5 MOV CHEER_A

Creating a player character is more complicated because you need to specify the costume.
The player command is required before the new command for the character that recorded the demo. If there is no Player or the Player is far from where the camera is, the demo will not play correctly. My suggestion is to not change anything inside of a costume, cut and paste a costume from one demo to another. I'll explain a bit about them though.

The 1st variable after the COSTUME command is the Base Model. 0 is male, 1 female, and 4 is huge. It appears that 2 and 3 were set up to be large male and female but it was never supported. This variable affects the costume options available for the character. These are not always obvious so be careful if you manually change a costume.

The 2nd variable is Skin Color. Color is done in RGB Hexadecimal. In Hex, the first two digits is the amount of red, 2nd two is green, and 3rd is blue. FF0000 is pure red, 00FF00 is pure green, 0000FF is pure blue, FFFFFF is white and 000000 is black. Check here for a RGB Hexadecimal Color Chart.
The 3rd is height. 0 is average height and values can range from –99 to 1000.
The 4th is muscle scale and ranges from -1 to 1.
Each partsname command is followed by 5 variables. The first three are costume part skins and the last 2 are the colors. Over the course of CoH the number of PARTSNAME commands that follow a COSTUME command have increased. Currently there are 24 lines. Here is the order that I have been able to figure out. 1- Lower Body,2- Upper Body, 3- Head, 4- Gloves, 5- Boots, 6- Belts, 7- Hair/hats/helmets/masks, 8- Eyes, 9- Upper Face/Forehead, 10- Chest Symbol, 11- Shoulders, 12- Unknown,13- Unknown, 14- Lower Face, 15- Special Arms, 16- Cape Top, 17- Auras, 18- Main Cape, 19- Unknown, 20- Short Skirts, 21- Top: Lab Coats/Robes, 22- Bottom: Lab Coats/Robes, 23- Unknown, 24- Unknown. I have never seen anything but color values in 19, 23, and 24.

Special Effects
Much like the creation of an object, an FX command ‘creates’ an effect. There are two general types of effects Maintained and OneShot and one of these designations always follows an FX command. Maintained FX are effects such as hasten, mud pots, super jumping, etc. OneShot FX are animations with limited duration such as attacks.

Usually the lines following an FX command contain FXSCALE, ORIGIN and TARGET commands.

0 1 FX Maintained 64718 POWERS/LEADERSHIP/LEADERSHIPASSAULT.FX 0
0 1 FXSCALE 10.000000 10
0 1 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
0 1 TARGET ENT 1 0

The first command of an FX cluster is followed by 4 values. The first value is Maintained or OneShot. The second is the ID of the FX. The third is the effect itself. The fourth value if a FX ID. This is used in situations where one FX leads to another such as a shooting FX that leads to a impact FX.

FXSCALE is the scale of the FX, however I have not been able to do anything useful with these values. The 1st value after ORIGIN ENT is the origin of the FX (if it is 0 then it is the Object of the line) and the 2nd I haven't been able to do anything useful with.

TARGET ENT is the target of the fx. Unsure what the 2nd value is and for somereason there will allways be a value here even if the target is the object of the line.

When a maintained FX is over, a FXDESTROY command is used. 0 1 FXDESTROY 64718 would turn off the LeadershipAssault FX from above.

Here is a list of the current commands and a brief explanation of what they do.

VERSION- Probably the version of the demo file language.
MAP- This defines the map for the demo, either a zone or a tile set.
TIME- This is the time of day and is always a 0 to 23.99 value.
NEW- Creates a new object. The variable for a NEW command is the Name of the object.
NPC- Defines the Object's costume. Object is usually actually an NPC though Kheldians in their forms will be defined as NPCs.
COSTUME- Begins the definition of a costume.
PARTSNAME- Defines different parts in a costume. After each costume command there will be a series of partsname commands, usually 24.
POS- Position on the map in X Z Y (east/west, up/down, north/south) format. Based on coordinates of the map.
PYR- This describes the orientation of the object (PitchYawRoll). Pitch is leaning forward or back, Yaw is rotational facing from North and roll is leaning to left or right. The most common aspect that changes within the same is the ‘Yaw’ component. With Yaw positive numbers are clockwise and negative anti-clockwise from north. Very hard to work with, I recommend CoH Demo Editor v0.8.9 by Balshor over doing this by hand.
MOV- Movement; emotes, power animations, anything where an object performs some action.
FX- Effects. Much like the creation of an object, an FX command ‘creates’ an effect. There are two general types of effects Maintained and OneShot and one of these designations always follows an FX command. Maintained FX are effects such as hasten, mud pots, super jumping, etc. OneShot FX are animations with limited duration such as attacks. Usually the lines following an FX command contain FXSCALE, ORIGIN and TARGET commands.
FXSCALE ENT- Apparently the scale of the FX, however I have been unable to successfully manipulate this value. Both values are always 10.
ORIGIN ENT- Where the FX is coming from.
TARGET- The Object ID of what the FX is targeted on.
FXDESTROY- Ends an FX.
FLOAT(floatdmg)- This command is usually used to float healing/damage amounts or messages above a character. The first variable after the command is the Object to float the message above, the second is the amount (positive numbers float red damage numbers, negative numbers float green healing numbers), and the third is the message to float if the 2nd variable is 0. Usually float and floatdmg command lines are deleted from a demo file as it clutters up a video.
PLAYER- Defines the Object as the player in the demo. The Player is extremely important as their location effects what will be animated on the screen.
DEL- destroys the object. The object number can then be re-used.
SEQ- Appears to be animation sequences for objects. I have been unable to do anything useful with it.
CHAT- Anything on any chat channels during the demorecord. This includes system messages and anything in any of the chat channels, including global channels. Go here for more info.
HP- The current Hit Points of the Object.
HPMAX- The maximum Hit Points of the Object.

New in I7

BASE- This command appearers when you record a demo in a base. It follows the map command (which has no variable) and the variable seems to be the map of the base encoded in binary.
DYNLIB- I have only run into this command in demos of bases. It comes after a NPC command and apparently supplements it as NPC commands in base demos appear to be limited to v_base_object and v_base_object_unselectable.
DYNARRAY- apparently refers to who controls the various sections of Recluse's Victory and is probably used to update the in-game maps of that zone. 0 DYNGROUPS DYNARRAY |100,0|100,0|66,0|100,0|100,0|100,0|100,0|66,0 is an example of when neither side controlled any part of Recluse's Victory.
SKY- Unclear what this refers to at this time. Every SKY command I have seen is exactly the same except for the time value. 118 SKYFILE SKY 0 1 0.000000
XLU- This command appeared way back in CoH beta and then dissappeared until I7. Not sure what it does even after playing around quite a bit with it.

Spent a lot of time recently playing with demo files so I thought I'd put together a new guide. You can find a easier to read version on my VG's web page.

Here is a brief outline of how I make a video from action is CoH.

Use /demorecord filename (i.e. /demorecord HamidonRaid) in the game to get a video started. This doesn't create a video, it creates a file based on the CoH/V internal programming.
I use Sloth's Demo Edit and CoH Demo Editor v0.8.9 ]CoH Demo Editor v0.8.9[/url] by Balshor to modify the demo file (though I often end up doing a lot of the editing by hand). Balshor's is particularly useful for changing camera angles and character locations.
I then play the modified demo file with Sloth's DemoLaunch I make sure that I have all my CoH graphics settings turned all the way up at this time.
I use Windows Media Encoder to capture it.
Then I use Windows Movie Maker to cut my new video.

Organization

When you open a demo file with a text editor, you will notice that each line is broken up into 4 sections (though the 4th section can be blank). Every line follows the same format, Time ID Command Variables. For example, 1 0 Version 2 begins every demo file. 1 is the time, 0 is the Object, Version is the command, and 2 is the variable.

The first section designates the Time between the this line and the previous line in milliseconds. Important to make clear, this is not the time that this line takes to execute but the time between the completion of the previous line and the beginning of the current line. Many commands take longer to execute than the amount of time indicated on the next line.

The second section is the ID of the object that the line is about. IDs can refer to characters, NPCs, effects, the camera, and other things. If an object is deleted, it's ID can be reused. Most Object IDs are numbers. 0 is used to set the demo's variables (map, time of day, demo version). I7 introduces 2 new IDs DYNGROUPS and SKYFILE. DYNGROUPS- comes after the time of day line in demos taken in Recluse's Victory and Grandville. It apparently refers to who controls the various sections of Recluse's Victory and is probably used to update the in-game maps of that zone. It is unclear what SKYFILE refers to at this time.

The third section is the Command which either defines the Object, a part of the object, moves the object, or have the object do something.

The fourth section is the Variables for the Command.

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2: Pets will not attack anything while in Defenisive mode
2a: Because of Jousting, a scrapper can jump over me, use impale for massive amounts of damage, and be gone again before my pets can aggro.


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I have stood there and watched while my pets are in defensive mode as they attack someone who is attacking me. I have been the person attacking a mm with henchmen in bodyguard mode and had them attack me. So they do attack people while in Defensive mode.
Jousting is not a MM or bodyguard issue, it is a Jousting issue. Most players don't have the time to do anything before the Jouster has gone away.

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My, you are naive. Many of the announced fixes don't actually 'take.' And that was one example of that fact that there had been problems which you don't seem to have ever acknowledge despite having played a MM to 40 on Live while that bug was active. In fact, if you have a level 40 MM, then why do you say...

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Yet, I have never had the problem you have described and neither have many other masterminds I have talked to.
Please flame me some more for pointing out your arguments are not logical and the problems you and a few others are having are not Universal. Keep up the evil devs wont acknowledge they are screwing me and fixes didn't 'take' rants and continue to say I don't know what I am talking about, it really shows your increadable grasp of game mechanics and what testing is for and really helps the devs find out what the actual problem is, if there is one other than your incompetence.

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If you knew what you were talking about, and if you read the patch notes, you would see things like...


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• Fixed bug where a Mastermind's pets would sometimes end up under the control of another Mastermind.


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Indicating that pet AI is bugged. So, your premise that us MMs haven't been controlling our pets correctly is idiocy.

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The referance you posted stated the bug was fixed, meaning there is still a bug and the devs were lying? If not it doesn't support your contention. If some people are having a problem and others aren't, it dosen't automatically mean there is a bug. There could be many other things effecting henchmen so when there is an issue instead of automatically screaming bug find out if you can replicate the issue. One of the points of testing is to find out why things don't behave the way you think they should.
The Masterminds I have talked to that don't have these problems are constantly telling their minions what to do. Basically as or more often as they are using any of their other powers.

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Play one before you tell us that we're simply making things up or are complete idiots in that we don't know how to give commands to our pets. It's the AI that's broken, not the players. No red name has ever responded to our bug reports about disobedient pets with a reply that it's working as intended and we need to control them better.

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I played 1 to the high 30s in beta, have a 40 Necro-dark on live and played thugs-poison at the event so I do know what I am talking about.
So what is the response to your bug reports, "We have cocked up the AI on pets please be patient while we find the bug."

Since Masterminds were introduced there has been the cry, "my minions aren't smart enough." What I think the actual issue is that a lot of people who play masterminds think they just have to tell their minions what to do every so often and they should run around doing exactly what they want them to. If your guys run off chasing someone, you tell them to come back, if they are running of 50 yards down the street and climbing a fire escape to go after someone, you tell them to come back. If you get knocked senseless and can't tell your guys to stay in bodyguard, you pop a break-free and tell them to stay in bodyguard.
Tested a stone-SS tank agains a friend's Thug-poison MM and once he actually figured this out he was able to stand up to me pretty well and it came down to me focusing on his guys 1 at a time and taking him out or one of his minions knocking off my toggels and the rest wacking me fast.
In RV I also jumped into one of the big MM tp-foe traps just to see how long I lasted. Had at least 2 gang wars on me plus everying else they had set up. Could have stayed in there forever except their debuffs finally broke through enough to drop Granite.

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How about teleporting the turrets of a captured pillbox inside your own base, making it impossible for the opposing side to "defeat all defenders" and recapture the pillbox? That's a rather bad exploit, I think. And if those turrets I saw inside the base weren't teleported there then the bug where the turrets follow a defeated hero to the hospital is still around.

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Turrets still follow you into the hospital. Check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5pSrm_MwWM which is video I took of the last minute of the event.

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As I said before, choose between your VG or your own needs. Supers do this all the time in comics. The game mimics comics.

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I guess my question on this issue is, then why isn't there an unlockable contact and an Accolade for people who have earned a bunch of Prestige as well?
The devs are saying two different things here, "You and everyone else in your SG have to stay in SG mode to have decent SG things" and "We reward people who are never in SG mode with fabulous prizes."

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but i saw some turrets a week or 2 ago that were lvl 50...did they change all of them to be 54, or are some 50 and some 54, or what?

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I've seen reports of both. All the ones I've seen were 54. However I didn't sweep the whole zone so it's entirely possible there's some disparity in how things are spawning.

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Swept whole zone the other night all turrets were level 54.