Quinch

Since Energy seems to be the focus of the knockback complaints, I figure I'd add my two cents.

I don't have an issue with knockback, especially when it's applied to AoE. What bothers me about KB, and on energy blast specifically is that it's unreliable. Any AoE power with a non-total chance to KB will invariably scatter the spawn. Doesn't matter how accurate your power is or how you position yourself, a cone with a 50% chance of knockback will only guarantee that half of the spawn you hit will detach from the other half. That alone is the reason that, while I will cheerfully abuse the hell out of Gale, I don't see myself rolling an energy character anytime soon.

I like the suggestion. I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement, but from the UI perspective, it would be simple as hell to present.

Each buff or effect has its own icon in the status bar. Consequently, in addition to the "Hide autopowers" and... whatever other options you get when you right-click buffsettings icons, add a "Hide visual effects from this power" option to it.

Of course, considering PS' track record with UI changes and improvements, I won't hold my breath. {bitter? me? naaaw!}

Like it's been mentioned already, there's two reasons the capacity/lag/load issue is either nonexistent or can easily be made so;

First, I'd lay down ten to one odds that the game servers are virtualized. That means that hardware resources can be allocated dynamically from one server to another to compensate for increased or decreased load on any one of them. Judging by the comments in the admin channel during the Freedom stress-test, I suspect they are, or were, experimenting with load handling on the fly {scaling hardware alone, I'm sure, is only part of the problem}, rather than having to bring the servers offline first.

Second, even prior to that, there's already been a method of making sure a server doesn't exceed its functional capacity, even though I haven't seen it in action for years now. I'm talking, of course, about the queue. I'm sure that, should it come to it, it will be making a reappearance. It would also be possible to let the queue prioritize users according to their status {vreems > preems > freems}, thus allowing lower-priority players to utilize lower-load servers while preventing lockouts of paying customers. With the overall preference for higher-population servers, this will likely have the effect of non-vreems concentrating in one or two previously low-population servers, which may or may not be a bad thing overall.

Jello armor
Manipulation manipulation
Whine assault
Spin control
Anvil blast

/presigned, with an excerpt from the personal wishlist;

Continuous, dynamic music: As is, most of the music in CoH is limited to short clips that play when entering a new neighborhood. A continuous soundtrack that plays outdoor or in missions would help a lot with immersion. "Action" music that fades in once the fighting starts {characterized either by an NPC aggroing on the player or the player/teammate entering combat mode} would also make the overall experience feel more "super".

Well, if you insist, but Slow Or Dense But is a pretty weird name to take.

If she gives out a different mission than your teammate, it's always possible to abandon the mission and talk to her again, getting another mission.

That said, sure, wouldn't mind getting her order straightened out.

And here I thought I was just losing my mind again.

Yeah, had it happen yesterday. Seriously, I'm all for new features, but TEST STUFF BEFORE YOU BREAK SOMETHING ELSE IN THE PROCESS. "Half-a**ed" is not an acceptable QA milestone.

Edit: And neither is "Hey, it compiles! Ship it!"

I really have nothing at all to say to the OP.

Instead, I'll let this speak for itself.

It sounds like Praetor Keyes has trouble...



Unlocking.

Frankly, I'd love the option to do so... provided that doing so knocks you right back to Lv1. That way you keep your badges, souvenirs, unlocked costumes and pieces and so on, but still avoids the pitfalls of Lv50-rerolls.

Okay, but crazy, but I'm sure Freedom is the best thing to happen to this game is a pretty stupid name.

Another thing - free accounts can only have two characters per account - so what's to stop them from making additional accounts for another two characters each?

Since I haven't seen one around, I figured we could use a thread to discuss the Freedom move in terms of pre-stress-testing, basically taking what information we have so far and seeing how it could be used to harm the game if left as is.

So, a couple offhand things;

1. Free/Premium {imma just call them F/P from now on} can't, in the side-by-side comparison, use the Help channel. Considering how many trial accounts I've seen decide to subscribe based on the assistance they got from the community, leaving it in seems like a net gain overall. Problem is, with the influx of new players, odds are we'll see a resurgence of Help goldspam. How do we prevent that?
2. On a similar note, a lot of trial accounts have complained about the inability to find teams via tells or broadcast. Suggestion: Allow VIP to "sponsor" one or two F/P players, essentially giving them a slightly expanded channel use, say tells and broadcasts, at the rate of one per minute. The usage limit should serve as a shiny carrot to dangle to spring for a subscription while preventing a flood of replaceable spam characters. The sponsorship "token" would be returned to the issuer if the sponsoree upgrades to a VIP account; it would not be returned or refunded if they go inactive or get banned.
3. There is some content that's locked away from F/P players. How does that affect VIP players that decide to team with F/P characters? Will there be a warning system in place that will basically say "This Hero will not be able to participate in the mission/arc you have selected"? Some way to quickly identify account types would help prevent that, like an icon next to the name {like bronze/silver/gold star}.

What else can we break?

Masterminds tend to strike a pretty good balance between soloability and team utility.

Frankly, I'm not too hot on the whole auto-teaming idea. To be clear, I'm not against it, but what you propose doesn't fill any need I can perceive.

It's based around the premise that it's recruitment alone that presents the obstacle to teaming, and I can tell you firsthand that it's completely and utterly false. I lead PUGs almost exclusively, and nine times out of ten when I announce that I'm leaving and ask if someone wants the star, half the teammates will have quit in the time it takes me to type out a goodbye. If recruitment was the only issue, why does almost nobody ever step up and assume leadership instead?

There are, to my knowledge, two obstacles to be overcome in creating a team.

The first one is the lack of players willing to take leadership of a team. It appears to be a purely psychological issue, given how ridiculously easy* it is to act as a team leader. To be honest, I can't quite wrap my head around this, so I can't really present any solutions either.

The second problem comes from the opposite direction - the need for the team leader to contact potential teammates. Here the auto-teaming mechanism sounds great - at a glance. The problem is it doesn't provide the member with information about who leads the team, nor enables the team leader to approve his new teammates. Most leaders are mellow when it comes to their teammates, but there's still occasions when they prefer to team with {non}roleplayers, people who can string together more than three letters in a word or someone whose first words will be "u pl me rite". It would be blind inviting, writ large, only from the opposite direction. It would, on the other hand, be easy** to simply create a serverwide channel where prospective teammates and leaders could announce when and what they are looking for. There are already global channels on every server for that exact purpose, but as we've already established, people are lazy and convincing others to join anything they're not already familiar with tends to be an uphill battle. Conversely, a inserting a "Teaming" tab with a Teaming channel would probably have the same effect it had on the use of Help channel {i.e. much better}.

Just my two cents.


*really, once I've got enough teammates, all I do is set the missions. That is it, I am not joking, that is the entire extent of my frequently-praised "leadership" skills. Rocket surgery it ain't, people!
**standard code rant my bleached butt. If they could sneak in Architect Chat with the stealth that would put a Pre-I13 stalker to shame to be unused by damn near everyone, adding a serverwide channel can't possibly be difficult.