PirateCrew

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It eludes me completely as to why you would think an enhancement designed to reduce the recharge of a single power should have an effect on the powers of pets as well.


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Probably because the help text of various recharge-enhancing IOs looks like this:
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Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
Enhances Damage, Accuracy, and Increases Attack Rate
...


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"Increases attack rate" can easily be interpreted to mean that the pet's attack rate is being increased by slotting the IO. The people who thought this was a normal, expected result of slotting the IO didn't need to execute an epic logical long-jump to reach their conclusion.

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Given that this has been stated, repeatedly at that, as unintended behaviour that they just had no means of fixing, why does it come as such a surprise that they eventually fixed it when they found the means, or rather the motivation to fix? Specific powers were tagged to not accept specific enhancements, yet people still assumed that their being able to sneak that kind of enhancement despite the specific ban and despite what the developers were saying and have been saying was absolutely intended and would never be altered?


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The Set Enhancement recharge is only one aspect, and I'm not seeing much surprise on that point by itself.

1) recharge from set IOs affecting pet attack rate - I saw this "publically" stated as unintended behavior, but not recently enough and in the clearest way possible. It may be intuitively unintended to some but not everyone. For example: slotting a MM pet with EndRed affects the summoning cost and the pet's attacks...Acc and Dmg affect the pet's attacks...and recharge will now affect only the summoning.

2) recharge carried over from buffs on the player such as Hasten, SB, AB, AM - perhaps that had been publically stated as unintended behavior (I'm not sure - never saw it myself). It seemed a bit odd to me, but in light of all other in-game oddities it wasn't obviously unintended.

3) recharge placed directly onto targeted pets from outside buffs such as SB, AB, AM...I've never seen that stated as unintended, and in fact this type of buffing always appeared to be 100% intended to me.

The sheer scope of the change and its side effects (on NPC pets, on the unique benefits of RechRes powers and pets with RechRes, etc) was clearly not expected by most posters. Even those aspects of the change which (as I noted above) may have been directed at removing unintended recharge benefits were not dealt with clearly enough in a comprehensive discussion that we've all seen. Thus, the wave of sudden surprise / disappointment posts is both predictable and understandable.

Defenders' Lightning Storm on Test had not been updated (when last I checked) to have its attacks be unaffected by +recharge.

Please update the patch notes from this:
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• Pet Powers Change:
o Recharge times on pet attack powers will no longer be affected by any outside source. This includes buffs and debuffs. What this means is that pets can no longer have the recharge time on their powers increased by player buffs (like Speed Boost) or their recharge time decreased by player or NPC debuffs. This change was made to allow pets to correctly cycle through their attacks instead of getting locked on using the same attack over and over and neglecting to use other available powers.


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to this:
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• Pet Powers Change:
o Recharge times on pet attack powers will no longer be affected by any outside source. This includes buffs and debuffs. What this means is that pets can no longer have the recharge time on their powers increased by player buffs (like Speed Boost) or their recharge time decreased by player or NPC debuffs. This change was made to limit the effectiveness of pets to match our original design; a bug was allowing nearly all pets to exceed intended levels of damage and control. This fix also allows pets with multiple powers to correctly cycle through their attacks instead of getting locked into using a single power, and allows Recharge Intensive Pet IO sets to have the intended effects.


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A little honest & open communication goes a long way... too bad this discussion with the community didn't start months ago when the RIP set bugs were reported. Most of us can accept a clarification of design intent, as long as it happens when you discover a problem and not after even zombies can tentatively poke at the code changes and realize the truth.

Some of us have a way with numbers - we can look at a spreadsheet or whatever and almost instantly see the effects.

Unfortunately, we're not controlling the merit rewards or pricing.

My solution to the CoV market and recipes has become "very low expectations". A sad outcome to an otherwise fun side of the game.

I believe Sister_Twelve's point was that this time, what actually happened was a combination of a global merit reward buff *and* an adjustment for median completion times.

An adjustment for median completion times, if performed alone, would (as she described) decrease the reward for a task as the playerbase gains experience in the efficient ways to do the task. I'm not going to enter a debate of whether that's a desirable gameplay/reward mechanic...but it is accurate from a mathematic and behavioral standpoint.

I am moderately hopeful that future downward adjustments will be small for several reasons:
1) biggest outliers have been dealt with
2) playerbase has had time to test the various arcs for speed and remaining outliers are more modest
3) larger dataset fueled this round of adjustments, making it more accurate
4) markets are not in good condition - the player and developer discussion is focused on increasing merit rewards or decreasing costs and on CoH/CoV balance

Since your post mentioned testing the west coast server path...

Do you have two accounts (or can you create a trial account?)

Also, can you open two instances of the client on your computer at the same time? For the purposes of this test it will help to reduce the variables...

Prepare the second account with a level 1 test character on a low-volume east coast server (such as Liberty) if the account doesn't already have a character on one of these servers.

login with client #1 to your normal west coast server, open netgraph, and play normally until the problem is observed.

Login with client #2 to the test character (or have it already running in the background) and compare netgraphs. Do they both have similar profiles?

My simultaneous east/west coast netgraph profiles are sometimes very different when I experience server/client communication trouble. This experiment may help eliminate your ISP, network, and computer as a root cause (if the east coast netgraph profile is much better).

A significant difference in netgraph profiles won't conclusively prove your problem is 100% network related. The problem could be introduced somewhere in the handshaking process in the server and/or client code (completely unrelated to network conditions), or be a combination of network conditions that trigger a handshaking bug/weakness.

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Looks like you tried something along the lines of what I was about to suggest.

This might at first sound less useful to post... but I have *not* experienced the "Sync bug" as defined above by FatherXmas in over 6 months. Even before then, it happened very very infrequently.

Servers: Infinity, Virtue, Champion
I use a single ethernet cable from my computer to my DSL modem.
CenturyTel is my ISP and my telephone service provider.
I live in a very rural area (60 miles from nearest city).
I have many characters at high level (L40+) with set bonuses, badges, etc.
I visit high-population zones (e.g. Talos) frequently, and visit the markets frequently.
I sometimes have two instances of the client running on one computer at the same time, connected to the same server or different servers.

I hope it is useful to know what seems to avoid the problem, as much as knowing what may cause it. For those who are reporting problems, I encourage you to mention the server(s) involved, your ISP, and consider using netgraph to watch for unusual packet loss or lag spikes.

If one of the leading theories is a problem with lost packets, then I can add this bit of evidence...I have two accounts, and often notice lost packets (in netgraph) with a server on one coast, while my connection to a server on the other coast is fine. When my client-server connection is losing packets, it has trouble firing attacks and has rubberbanding, and is more likely to lose connection to the mapserver. However, it has not recently caused a de-sync immediately after successfully entering a zone.

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right-click the power in the tray, bring up the info tab, and scroll to the bottom. Is there a list of powers the pet has? Those powers can be expanded if you click them. Maybe PA doesn't have it?


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Thank you
Yes, the PA has a listing of attacks there. I used to think it only displayed base/unenhanced values, but I can see the effect of slotting enhancements as well.

That Phantom Army power detail tab matches the enhancement screen and shows the near doubling of damage from the recharge-intensive pet set IOs. Apparently the Acc/Dmg non-enhancement bug is only affecting actual combat...the important part. *sigh*

Ah....my apologies, I should have been clearer.

The Accuracy and Damage Buff values reported in the mouseover popup window on the enhancement slotting screen are the values I'd expect for my Phantom Army power when I have these Expedient Reinforcement and Call to Arms IOs slotted.

However, the To-Hit and Damage values reported in the pet combat logs do not match the expected values. Empty slotting gives the same result as full slotting with ExpReinf and Call to Arms. In addition, the floating damage text and miss animations match up with the pet combat log.

The Real Numbers (Combat Attributes and Attribute Monitor) windows do not show Pet attributes for me, except on my Mastermind...if you know a way to display this, please share!

Didn't see this issue listed yet; at a minimum, it affects Illusion Control-Phantom Army and the following sets:

Expedient Reinforcement
Call To Arms

The Accuracy and Damage enhancing components of these sets have no visible effect on damage or accuracy when used in Illusion Control's Phantom army.

The issue may be more widespread, but this has been the scope of my testing so far. Another thread reported issues with Damage-enhancing IOs in Soulbound Allegiance.

Your thoughtful Sasami avatar made me hunt down another song...

No Need For Tenchi in my pants. (the opening theme from the TV series - Tenchi Universe on Cartoon Network)

The Hampster Dance in my pants. (Hampton the Hamster)

Love Is A Battlefield in my pants. (Officer [Pat] Benatar, of the Sky Raiders)

Thank you for sharing the information with us. I certainly appreciate the efforts to increase the amount and frequency of communication.

I'm hoping the story arc merits will outweigh any decreases in random recipes from TF/SF runs under the current system...I guess we'll just have to wait and see how player behavior (hoarding merits to buy one recipe vs spending on random rolls) affects the availability of midrange recipes like SciDerv A/D/E.

Due to my extreme alt-itis induced by the great powersets & character creator, I like the idea of fairly easy-to-earn set recipes (purples being the exception) so that we as players can experience the fun of IOs for all of our characters and never give up in frustration over the lack of items on the market, or bad luck with the RNG. Just wanted to share my viewpoint...

Again, thanks for your work on the Merit System, and thanks for listening.