Puppycrusader

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, so this totally off my head, but here is what we know about the chat bug:

When the chat box is not active (shaded out) nothing appears in the chat bar, no matter what keys are pressed

The use of W A S D, numbers (in market), and attack power keys/binds all show up in the chat box after they have been pressed, when the user begins chat.

I am guessing it has something to do with the client logging key strokes because we get a hundred 'W's since this is what most hold for forward movement, and only get one "15,000" because we only press these keys a limited number of times. On a side note, I tried changing forward movement to 'Q' and got a hundred 'Q's. Also, I have noticed that if I bid on something that runs past, say, a million inf, not all of the '0's are present.

It's like phantom limb syndrome. The body still thinks the limb is attacked to the body and they brain still registers, falsely, itches and other sensations.

The client thinks the chat box is active, when it is not. Because the client thinks the chat box is active, it is registering that what keys are being pressed should appare in the box.

Maybe the issue is with code that switches active keyboard input from movement, text input, and numeric input. It would seem to me that it isn't so much a conflict of two codes, but a corrupted code, maybe something that is only half there (like the neural pathways that were connected to the limb still exist, even tho the limb doesn't)

Is it possible to have a shadow code, or an echo of a code, something that wasn't completely removed?

As you can tell, I have NO idea what I am talking about, just ramblings of a madman. However, don't let that discourage you from making arrangements for me to pick up the badge-that-won't-be-named.


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It always seemed to me that the chat bug is copy-pasting parts
of an input cache/buffer. I just don't have any insight into what
the trigger for it happening is.

So, yeah...in a manner of speaking, you're not far off. Such
being the case, the game "records" a certain extent of keystrokes,
probably for netcode reasons, and is randomly pulling portions
of it out and into the chat window.

That'd actually cause me to look into how the game impliments
text copy/pasting to begin with, but I'm sure they already
thought of that by now.

[ QUOTE ]
Since the males got that hair, it would have been nice to see some clothing for the leg section of the female, like regular stockings isntead of fishnet.

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You can sort-of simulate this using colored Tights. There are a
couple shades of brown that look fairly good for it, white/black
are givens, and, well, you hardly need an option for nude
shading. Wilder colors apply as appropriate to your character's
lack of mental stability/poor fashion sense.

They are lacking in translucency of course though.

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To me... going through the Dev Digest only for pure information and not for the wonderful amount of fun and silliness would be somewhat like eating a watermelon just for the seeds!


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And it's the opposite for me. I only look at the dev digest for
stuff relevant to the game in some way. I'd rather not sort
through pointless off-cuff comments, or babble about movies.
Not that I don't think the devs have a right to post such like
anybody else - I just wish they wouldn't get Digest-ed.

Anyone can be funny(unintentionally or not.) If I'm going to go
through the trouble of eating a watermelon, I want the juicy,
relevant fruit, and the useless, pointless seeds get thrown away.

"Seedless" watermelons are the best!

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That idea is only made famous by high level IO users who either make a tough mm set (Robots/FF, or anything FF) or people who believe bodyguard

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It was also made "famous" by something Posi or Castle or BAB
said once, about the mastermind originally supposed to
have been the tank of CoV, but that intent didn't translate into
actual play, or something like that.

A lot of people just picked up the first part and ran with it.

[ QUOTE ]
The CoH story bible really does exist. Between heroes and villains it’s well over 600 pages and growing. We started it to help keep things in our massive game straight. We try to keep everything consistent between the game, the web, and our ancillary products but over a hundred different people have worked on CoH at this point and it isn’t always easy

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Ever thought about packaging this up in a neat, straightened
format, along with accompanying art works?

This is the sort of thing people like me who aren't really all that
hot on the boosters and such, would love to buy.

Chain and Jacob are both pretty good attacks, honestly. With
the powers you've taken, if I had to get rid of one to pick up
Chain, I would ditch Lightning Clap. But if you've been getting
good use from the Clap, YMMV. I find it to be a skippable power
personally.

The jumping occurs fairly often, but as for "worth it versus",
it probably depends on how comfortable you are with melee
cones yourself. Some people really, really hate them, and
others are fine with them. If you hate them, Chain will make
you feel better. If you're fine, then there's no stark advantage
one way or the other, though Chain makes more targets
easier.

Optimally, since they both contribute to electric's AOE carnage,
I think you'd want both if at all possible.

[ QUOTE ]
Why do I need this when I have it in the game already? O.o

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You don't "need" it. But as others have said, there are two
advantages with it.

1) If you aren't/don't want to keep backups of your game
install, this gives you a more up-to-date copy to reinstall from,
should you ever need to(IE: less to download to patch up.)

2) It comes with a free month, and a free voucher for one of
the two "booster" packs. This saves you $5 if you still want one
of the boosters you don't have.

If either or both of these is appealing to you, there you go. If
not, no reason.

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another thing that bothers me is it "seems" that these people in control are doing what they can to manipulate the media, forums and try to sway popular beliefs with their alt accts. you can see it with the appearance of new faces that astutely challenge, shot down, belittle and basically shred someones post insisting that their way is the right and only way of thinking.

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I have to hold you up right here. I have to grant the possibility
of many dissenters being alt accounts, because I have no way
to confirm or deny identities of anybody.

But I consider it unlikely, because forums for any internet game
that's at least moderately popular, are routinely made up of us
overopinionated trout-sniffers.

Granted some are more obnoxious than others -
DOOOOMcriers, brown-nosers, and certain folk I've seen lately
who I guess learned debate from hannity and colmes. But it's
nothing new or exclusive to CoX. It's just the way us nerds are
on the internet.

As in the DracoPosi threads, I saw as many "new" faces
ragequitting, as I did brainlessly touting the party line, I think
it's just enough people have gotten agitated lately to bother
coming to say something.

[ QUOTE ]
I feel that this particular exploit, the meow farms, would have been dealt with very differently if it wasn't happening in the midst of a publishing blackout period. I imagine it would have been fixed a whole lot quicker, but because they couldn't touch it they had to remind people of the rules.

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They knew about this particular problem back in beta though.
And it had been going since MA went live, with steadily
increasing popularity - well before the "blackout." Basically,
they had a chance to nip it in the bud before it was even a
small problem, failed/chose not to do so, and the result was
the firebreathing DracoPosi, followed by the fields going up in
flames.

The BETTER course of action would've been to do something
about the "exploit" when they were made aware of the exploit.
Letting it go as long as it did, only created the feeling that there
was tacit agreement that using it was OK, greatly excerbating
all problems when it was removed in such a dramatic fashion.

[ QUOTE ]


As far as the testing of the tickets. ill go and double check but really SaintTzu already has. he got what ..75-100 tickets first mission then 118 or something like that the second. you can get better rewards if ya ran a paper mission. they are just as fast. But they are a hell of alot easier and with better rewards.

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Assuming that's where the cap is actually cutting off at. I
don't imagine it is, or else there'd be a giant uproar about it.
The average mission in many arcs have always paid out about
that for one person, and that IS our fault, actually.

Many MA players are so ADHD, they go around 0-1 starring
any arc that takes a little bit of their time. Oranbega map?
Zero star. Too large of a tech map? Zero star. Too many
objectives? Zero star. Kill-all of any kind, no matter how
small? They'd give you -5 stars if they could.

So people write shorter missions so as to not get ratings
griefed by these players, and the result is small rewards.

SaintTzu's issue was that the cap is not working correctly, or
not working as advertised, and cutting off bonus tickets
incorrectly. Not that the overall rewards weren't large enough
for what he was doing.

[ QUOTE ]
If I have to explain why Arcanaville is excellent at crunching data and testing, when SHE showed the devs problems that they never even knew existed so many times in the past.... well, I don't think there's anything else I can say to prove it to you. Go read some of her guides, if you're so inclined.

Here's a start.

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I think the issue he had is more this:

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Plz explain why his testing is so superior to others and how SaintTzu is too incompetent to test this issue out. An issue that he found and brought it to light in this thread.

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To me, it came across like cult of personality worship. Mileage
varies, but it definitly came out funny.

Arcanaville does not have a patent out on basic math. A
problem that's pretty simple to look at and check out, is better
reported to the devs as a non-WAI bug, rather than "nah, this
can't really be an OFFICIAL problem until Arcanaville says it
is..."

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In terms of the game, I've been trying to view MA primarily as a tool to provide the creative outlet for the CoX subscribers, which I think is innovative for any MMO currently out there. Does anyone think this is the way MA was intended to be viewed, or am I in the minority?

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And/or as an alternative to doing the same content you've
already done two-dozen or more times.

Problem is, only the most diehard story-fans are going to use
MA without rewards, and even they're going to get tired of
doing that after playing enough bad ones.

Like it or not, I'd wager MOST players do not want to use MA
"just" to experience 95% of the stories in there. The true
cream of the crop, SuperAwesome stuff...maybe. Maybe some
of them. One time. Otherwise, no.

Without providing incentive on par with the normal game, to
make playing that content an acceptable use of time, MA
would be a complete ghost town and a "commercial" failure.
The players wouldn't be playing, the creators wouldn't be
creating because noone plays, and it'd just sit there as a weird
looking building in multiple zones, that you have to visit once
per character after level 10 to get rid of the contact.

I suspect that's not what the devs wanted to see from it.

[ QUOTE ]


While you've been focused on what's been changed in a negative way, you've missed what's changed for the positive. It's still 90/10 in the positive for the majority of the players. It's why the game is still active after 5 years.

Devs are allowed to change things after it's gone live. To expect otherwise is folly. They don't always get it right out of the gate, and they've buffed a lot of things as well.

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Sometimes what you care about is what gets nerfed, though.

For instance, even if they got the PVP changes right(which it
seems from afar that they haven't yet,) I wouldn't care,
because that has little to nothing to do with what I play the
game for.

For other players, though, even though 90% of the game
might be improved, the 10% of PVP is what they cared about,
and being ruined for them, they're gone.

For me right now, it's the abysmal handling of the MA that
keeps pushing me down. It's just one thing after another
being taken out of it, with no sign until possibly I15, of any
changes for the better, or anything being placed back.

Sure, I'm interested in other things. The Going Rogue
expansion has me perked, and I like what I hear coming
for Dominators. But the MA is the biggest part of the game
I've been interested in since I first started playing, so all the
negative removals and changes make me feel worse and
worse about the game as a whole.

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[ QUOTE ]
I call it like I see it. And I see the tickets as being the frosting, NOT the cake.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can respec that but what about risk vs reward? theres no salavge drops or io drops. so in place they gave us tickets to compensate. Which was awesome. it did alot of good to the villian side market. this will have a very bad effect on the market now. my take a min for ios to dry up but with merits the way they are now tickets. its looking grim again for villians ......i truely hope though i am wrong. nothing at the BM to buy sucks serious donkey.........

[/ QUOTE ]

Being a mostly-redside player, I've enjoyed the boost in
availability as well. But I don't think this is going to change too
much, aside from what's already changed from the instability
created by the recent anti-farming stuff.

I'd like that cap to be higher, personally, but assuming you
came up with a mission that generates the ticket cap, and
weren't kicked in the crotch by Positron's Radiation Melee:Nut
Buster attack for farming, it'd only take three missions
to generate all but the highest-tier Gold roll.

The power players will still be able to generate a good amount
of tickets. Those of us lesser folk will take a little more work to
get the same, but it'll still be an improved situation over being
jerked all around the isles doing stale content for piddly merits.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When I put in the work, I expect to get something in return

[/ QUOTE ]

When you start calling your gaming time "work", I think it's time to start looking at your priorities.

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Not supporting or defending the guy you're arguing with, but
I think you know full well he meant "work" as in "effort." If
you want to do...well, basically anything other than lay in bed
all day, it takes effort to do it. There's nothing wrong with
putting some into a game if you're enjoying it.

Hell, even laying in bed all day takes effort after a point, when
biology starts setting in.

Since you guys keep removing stuff from the MA, can we get
some word on when we can expect to see animations and maps
and things put BACK in the MA?

Recent problems aside, I don't know how you expect it to be
considered a usable product, if everything's subject to indefinite
removal.

Mandatory Standard-issue confuse power on custom lts using
mind control or illusion has GOT to go.

This was a horrible, horrible decision.

[ QUOTE ]
This just in! Comm Officers forming a PROTEST LINE outside the Infinity AE Atlas building.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL!

Got a screen of that?

Yeah. Honestly, it's a well-done video, but it's not the sort of
thing you can air for a commercial, or that's going to get people
who don't play the game very excited.

Its real glaring flaw is what all of the CoX promo vids suffer
from - written from a developer "explain the features" point of
view, instead of a marketing "Yeah, see this? And this? This
is what awesome is. You want to be a part of it."

As such, while it's great for people already playing the game,
to get a better idea of what MA will let you do...it's way too
belabored to serve as a good out-of-game promotion for itself.

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[ QUOTE ]
Positron, I am a little concerned about the possible rate griefing involved with being able to rate an arc that hasn't been played. Especially when there are badges involved in rating unrated arcs or ones that don't have many ratings. A lot of people will probably get their badges simply by going down the line of unrated arcs, slapping a 1 star rating on them, and getting their badge in the process. I've seen rating systems on web-published content experience things like that, and that's WITHOUT the enticing badge. Please reconsider allowing someone to rate an unfinished arc.

*EDIT* Been here since CoH beta, and this is the first time I've posted after a redname.

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I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.

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If you're going to be passing rated judgement on content, I
have to ask. Why SHOULDN'T you have to endure all of it to
judge it? Those ratings are going to be visible to everybody.

Some arcs might be awful, sure, but having to endure it to rate
it strikes me as a natural end result. I'm a bit boggled it would
be seen any other way.

That's true. I should've noted I speak from the perspective of
a PB.

I don't play WS much.

[ QUOTE ]
the real question is why many players don't see taking Dwarf From as a viable power choice.

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My biggest problem with dwarf is the recharge and animation
time of its attacks.

It only has three, they're all slow to go through, and two of
them are tremendously slow to come back up, unless you
have Hasten. Even more than dwarf's comparatively low
damage output, the amount of time you spend sitting there
doing NOTHING(Except maybe taunting), is the worst thing
I find about the form. The attack times simply aren't well
balanced at all.

I think taking a look at this would be the best place to start
in making Dwarf more desirable.

[EDIT]: Speaking of PB White Dwarf. No opinion on Black.

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Subjective: I only go for Toy Collector on one or two characters at a time because it's a grind. The reason people snap a present and leave the snowmen is that they become useless once you have the defeat badge - giving candy canes as random salvage would get people fighting them instead of leaving them. Using the Rikti/Zombie code - as someone suggested - may be a good idea if it's possible.


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This. I understand and respect the idea of "cleaning up after
yourself", especially in areas where the spawns are likely lethal
to lower levels. But it becomes such a pointless timesink, that
I wind up going like this:

At first: all present spawns are killed.

After awhile: Well...noone's likely to run into this one, I'll leave it.

Awhile longer: I don't have time for this. People can just watch
where they're running, and I'll clean up this and that one that
are almost guaranteed to cause trouble.

With more motivation to bother after the defeat badge, I
wouldn't sacrifice cleanliness and safety for expedition.

[ QUOTE ]
(more of a Quick reply than reply to Poster)

If everyone gets the reward on Flashback, why cant that be changed for story arcs as well?

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I'm guessing because they were able to easily bundle it in with
the handicap/badge award system flashbacks and TFs contain,
that don't come along with running story arcs normally. That's
what I would've done.

Regular story arcs are completely seperated missions, that
just happen to have an end point. People can join for the
last mission, and be there at the end of the arc, rather than
participating in all the missions the merit reward is supposably
accounting for. Since it doesn't force other players to run the
entire arc start to finish, and can just show up for the last
mission, it'd be hard to award merits without adding some kind
of bookkeeping for how much of what arc people have run as
well.

Unless someone else did all the work for them, the arc
holder is the only one guaranteed to have participated from
start to finish.

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They stated expressely that it was a goal of the market to serve as a mini-game.

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Where?