Samuel_Tow

See, this I don't get. The info IS in that "blob of text," which is split up into tabs for your convenience. How do you expect to find the information you need if you won't bother to look through the help material? Everything you need to know should be in the Help window. If it's not, feel free to suggest it being added. It's what it's for.

As well, /help was changed to open the help menu instead of talking in the Help channel because people were continually trying to use it to open the Help menu and were continually being given an opaque system message. It was changed by player demand. That players seem unwilling to actually read the help text provided is... Confusing?

Do me a favour - try to remember your question and check the help menu. I'd bet good money the answer is there.

That's "arctic."

I agree with this wholeheartedly. People cite technical limitations, but in this case our colour patterns are just tinting masks, so multiples shouldn't require reinventing the wheel. Standard Code Rant obviously applies, but the implementation suggested here is very different from that used in Champions Online, and it is something that has historically had precedent in games like Need For Speed: Underground, where you could have multiple layers of vynils that overlapped each other just fine.

One thing I want to restate about our patterns, however, is that they are just that - simple colour stencils and nothing more. We do not have the ability to layer actual TEXTURES overtop each other, and I feel we should. That would create a LOT of cool effects, such as laying tights overtop armour to give the illusion of a robot wearing "skintight" clothes, or indeed layer armour over skin, to give the illusion of half-armour designs.

No offence intended, but this shows me you don't really understand how the statistic of powers work. The powers that cost you the most endurance in actual practice are the ones that have a cost of about 4 or 5 endurance points. Reducing their cost may only shave off half a point or a single point, but when that power is being used ten times more often than your high-recharge power, that is a SIGNIFICANT reduction in cost. This is why I cite DPE, EPA and EPS. It's about power efficiency, not power cost.

Easiest example: Jab vs. Knockout Blow. Both have a DPE value of around 1.192, which is what many powers are balanced to. But even though Jab only costs 3.536 points, it actually costs you 1.152 per second over time. Knockout Blow, by contrast, despite costing 18.512, costs you around 0.68 points of endurance per second over time. Granted. Knockout Blow takes a bigger bite out of your endurance bar, but over time it actually costs LESS. A lot of small powers will also cost less per second of activation than some big ones, as well, though I can't think of a good example right now.

Knockout Blow has a cycle of 27.23 seconds, whereas Jab has a cycle of 3.07 seconds. In the time Knockout Blow cycles once, you'll have used Jab a little under nine times times. A level 50 endurance reducer is 42.4%, bringing Jab's cost down from 3.536 to 2.483, which is a gain of 1.053. A level 50 endurance reducer in Knockout Blow brings it down from 18.512 to 13. giving you a gain of 5.512 points. However, You'll have used Jab nine times, saving nine times 1.053, or essentially saving you 9.477 points of endurance. That's a not insignificant bargain.

Again, this stuff isn't simple, and that's the problem - using enhancements and slotting your powers is more complicated than Stamina, hence why people default to just taking the power. But this that I've been describing here costs me half an hour for a character's ENTIRE LIFE. That's a significantly smaller cost than three power picks and two slots, besides.

[quote]I play on whatever teams come along and have to be prepared for that. Not enough of them come along to be too picky, and the vast majority of them play on a higher difficulty.[quote]

Accuracy in a team environment is rarely an issue, as I've been finding out over the years. If team-mates don't have to-hit buffs or defence debuffs, the team together still pump out enough offence to offset any slotting inefficiencies. That's what a team is FOR. Unless you build for pushing the envelope (or possibly being required to), you shouldn't need to go beyond one enhancement. But again, if you DO, then Stamina is the cost. That's cost vs. return in action, hence it's balanced.

Outside of a few specific powerset combos, slots are more than enough overall. That's part of build planning - not taking too many powers that require too many slots. It's the cornerstone of playing a Kheldian, for instance. You CAN take almost all Kheldian powers, but you're never gonna' slot 'em all. You NEED to pick a few powers that don't require slots. You think Stamina saves you slots by not requiring you to slot for endurance, but it saves rather a lot more by having you take two powers that you basically don't slot and a third power that you slot only barely, instead of 5- or 6-slot monsters that you could otherwise take early on.

Sorry, but no. When recovery rate exceeds the endurance spent by a comfortable margin, you've broken the game. To expect this as baseline performance is unreasonable in the extreme, because this IS the practical equivalent of not having an endurance bar to begin with. You have it, but if it doesn't move, it may as well not be there. You CANNOT expect that all builds should always recover more endurance than you could possibly spend, and by "a comfortable margin." That's just ludicrous.

Endurance management is part build, part discipline. You are not INTENDED to recover more than use use, so it becomes a matter of how you use it and what you do with it. This is where DPE comes into play, telling you which attacks are how efficient and which you should use when. A cone is typically needs 3-4 targets to break even with single target attacks, and an AoE typically needs 4-5 targets. Use them on less than their respective minimums and you're spending more endurance on fewer targets.

If you WANT to break the system and void a balancing mechanic, then go for it. But understand that it has a cost.

Yeah, Quantums, even without the unresistable damage, are just a pain in the ***. It's not like Kheldians are gods among men and utterly overpowered, so I don't see why a cheap-shot enemy has to exist for them.

But it's not just Voids and Quantums that bugged me as a Kheldian. Practically everything did. Lieutenants hit me like they were bosses, minions swarmed and overpowered me quickly and minor screw-ups put me in BIG trouble. And mind you, this is coming from someone with a multitude of Blasters, so I'm used to fragile. But with Blasters, I both had more punch AND was actually harder to kill, perplexingly. I guess if I'd stuck with my Kheldian to the 30s and 40s things would have turned around, but the slog through the lower and upper 20s was just SO BAD it wasn't worth it.

A Dominator I actually managed to tough out until 31 or 32, but with them it was a combination of lack of survivability and lack of damage that did me in. Yes, they have good damage mods, but their damage mods are worse than those of Blasters AND their defences are worse still. Control does help somewhat, but some things you can't control, other things you can't control for long and still other things you can't control quickly enough. The dude felt anaemic, so I ended up axing the concept.

The point is that any AT which is designed to go into melee and STAY in melee, as any Assault/Defence AT should be, is going to need decent defences. Believe it or not, amount of hit points counts for a LOT.

I have very serious doubts as to how effective this actually is. I've never seen anyone get any use out of it, I've never been able to pull it off, myself, and even Rooftop Raider's old videos were only partially successful, as the guy himself admitted. Hence, I have a hard time believing this is a big enough concern to merit barring an AT. If you have videos of this to demonstrate, I'd be glad to see them.

Pardon me, but I've seen this argument branded around a lot. "Learn to play" tends to be the default response of people just brushing a problem under the rug. Dark Armour seems to be using up too much endurance. Learn to manage your endurance better. Oranbega maps are confusing and difficult to navigate. Learn to use your map. Running bosses are impossible to stop. Play a Controller. Dr, it hurts when I lift my arm. Don't lift your arm.

If I misread your intention, I apologise. I'm just instinctively suspicious of arguments that start with "learn to" at the head.

Huh... OK, I'll dig through the cables when I get home and see what U can read. I just hope the labels aren't on the side facing the other wall, because only one side of my case unscrews. The other is riveted shut. Will update as I get more info.

Seriously, guys, I wish I had a digital camera to take a snapshot of that rat's nest. It's horrible!

Alrighty. Be right on it as soon as Test patches on my work PC.

*edit*
There you go! This is two instances of the same texture - Metallic - one in pure white, one in pure black. Both pictures were taken in the same parking lot just outside the Tailor in St. Martial, and I specifically stood next to the green car to make the reflection obvious. You'll note the white costume reflects things pretty well. You can see the green car clearly, you can see the sky behind the camera, and if you look closely, you can even see a house off to the left on the side of his right leg, and even part of the blue car that's mostly behind him. It's not very clear what we're actually seeing, but it's not supposed to be. It's stuff reflecting off a guy's chest.

You will also note that the black costume reflects what I would describe as "bugger all." If you squint really hard, you can sort of see the lines on his right leg where the green car reflects just out of shot, but I accidentally swivelled the camera such that the darker patch of "shading" on his right thigh obscured most of the green car's reflection. If you have super bionic meta-human vision (or know what to look for) you can see the square shape on his right breast where a building comes up from the horizon, but that's about it. And all of that you can see because I just told you it's there and because you have a picture of the reflective suit right next to the black one.

Now stop squinting and look at them side-by-side. The left one looks shiny, glossy, metallic and pretty reflective. The right one looks like it's made out of velvet. And note that only the chest and pants of the white costume are actually white. The gloves, boots and that chest pattern are darker. They're still Metallic, but you can easily tell the difference.

See what I mean?

Ouch!

There IS a tutorial about enhancements available in-game. It's available via Menu -> Help -> Rewards. There's also a help file on Inventions and about five help files on the Architect. And let's not try to bring up the "people wouldn't know where to find it" argument. It's an option called HELP in the frikkin' MAIN MENU. Where else would it be?

Hmm... You know, that's not a bad point. It's the next best thing to skipping a power pick. I've often found myself spreading slots too thin because I kept taking slot-heavy powers, so a power that doesn't need may (or any) would actually be pretty sweet. I guess that in itself is reason enough to grab it. Hmm...

One accuracy Common is going to cap your to-hit against most things. Unless you plan on cranking your difficulty hard - in which case I have no sympathy for your build concerns - this should be more than sufficient.

As far as damage to endurance goes, that's where DPA, DPE and EPA come into play. It's a fairly simple stat to work out (basically, damage divided by animation time, damage divided by endurance, endurance divided by animation time, respectively), and it helps out BIG TIME. Arcana and others have done a lot of work in pinning down exactly how the subtleties of these work, but suffice it to say it's not hard to figure out on your own, or indeed find guides for.

And again, you never have to sacrifice "damage" for endurance. Even with an accuracy and three damage slotting, you still have two slots left over. You COULD slot recharge in these, but all that does is lower your damage over time, but does little to lower your burst damage capability, which is really what comes into play for most ATs that really revolve around killing things before you die.

Granted, that's not exactly "simple" as such, but as I said, solving endurance problems through enhancements is more complicated than Stamina. It's not an inferior choice, at least not by much, it just takes more work figuring things out to achieve. It's be a LOT easier if our in-game numbers actually supplied us with DPE metrics, but they don't.

Or that, I guess. I prefer to look at the numbers because a lot of rare salvage pieces don't sell well, so listing them TOO low would sell them for, like, 5 and lose me some Inf. I gather that doesn't add up to much, but it's a lot like what I do, just with trivially lower base prices.

So, essentially "lrn2ply?" That's not very productive.

I've seen a few people do what passes for "kiting." Rooftop Raider (what ever happened to the guy?) used to be amazing at it, and without Hover, either. He used REALLY huge jumping arcs with Combat Jumping and Hurdle. I have no idea exactly how he did it, but he seemed to manage to keep out of melee sometimes.

That said, this is something I've found completely unrepeatable and, with all due respect for Rooftop Rider, looked like crap in actual action. The game isn't designed for this, and travel powers were made to suppress to combat exactly that practice. In my experience, in tight quarters, you're not going to keep away from melee enemies. If you're on the ground, they'll run up to you and hit you as you're animating your attacks. You can back up or jump over them all you want. You WILL get hit animating Power Burst or Executioner's Shot.

Furthermore, range IS NOT sufficient defence just by itself. Sure, you can avoid some attacks from some enemies. Then you get hit with things like the Rikti, the Nemesis Army, Malta, the Rogue Vanguard, the Soldiers of Rularuu or all the lovely Praetorians whose minions have as much RANGED powers as your average lieutenant. God damn Siege's minions each has Power Burst! These kiting tactics my or may not work in the lower levels, but in the high levels where things can two-shot you from range, they just don't cut it. And I've tried.

People keep bringing this up with an Assault/Defence AT, and I never buy it. Kiting by itself is NOT going to keep a ranged character alive, and even if it did, you're still missing your melee attacks. And, no - jumping over an enemy animating a melee attack is not good practice if you have more than one melee attack worth using. You don't put down a melee attack chain by jumping over. I've tried. It just doesn't work.

Well, I have a couple of pre-made examples. Let me know if these count:

1. Samuel Tow on Victory: Katana/SR Scrapper who routinely runs Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, Evasion, Combat Jumping and Focused Accuracy. He's on Common Inventions now, but back when he was on SOs back when he hit 50 in January 2005, and he was running Stealth back then, too. He was unpleasant to play back in the day, but one respec later at around I6 when ED hit made him perfectly capable with just SOs.

2. Crash McGuier on Victor: Martial Arts/Invulnerability Scrapper who routinely runs Temporary Invulnerability, Unyielding, Invincibility and Combat Jumping, with generous helpings of non-perma Elude. Never had a problem with her. Got her to 46 some time in 2006 or 2007, getting her from 42-46 after Inventions came out. Up to 42, she went on SOs alone. Since that, she ran on Common Inventions. Got her to 50 some time last year.

3. Revenant Jack on Victory: Dark/Dark Scrapper who routinely runs Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, Obsidian Shield, Cloak of Darkness, Oppressive Gloom and Hover. He did that on SOs just fine, he does even better now that he's on Common Enhancements. Got him to 33 back in 2005, putting him off for two years to play CoV when that came out. Picked him back up last year and I got him to 41 on Commons, I believe. Never had a problem with endurance. I didn't list Death Shroud because I haven't slotted that on him yet (will do in the late 40s) and I didn't list Cloak of Fear because it sucks.

No Stamina on any of the above. Outside of Sam back in 2004 (when it really WAS a pain, but my build sucked), I've never had a complaint about this. Ever, really. They all play just fine. If anything, I'd complain about Dark Armour's lack of knockback protection and Martial Arts' anaemic damage.

One counter-example:

Ezikiel Bane on Victory: Stone/Stone Brute. Getting him to 50 sucked. Big time. Stone Armour basically required me to run all of its toggles. That's Rock Armour, Brimstone Armour, Crystal Armour, Minerals and Rooted, and he was running Mud Pots, to boot. I got him to 50 on just SOs, but it was not a fun ride. At one point, some time in 2007, I respecced him into Stamina, dropping the Presence pool, basically because it Presence fixed all of Stone Armour's drawbacks, and he's doing just fine now. I COULD have played him without Stamina, but it was a chore to do so. This is THE ONLY character I've ever taken Stamina on. Ever. In all the almost six years since I started in May of 2004, this guy is the only one of mine who has Stamina.

I currently have 8 50s (I think). They are:

1. Kat/SR Scrapper, no Stamina, no Sets.
2. Stone/Stone Brute, YES Stamina, no Sets.
3. AR/Dev Blaster, no Stamina, no Sets.
4. Energy/Energy Brute, no Stamina, no Sets.
5. Energy/Energy Blaster, no Stamina, no Sets.
6. Mercs/Traps Mastermind, no Stamina, no Sets.
7. BS/Inv Scrapper, no Stamina, no Sets.
8. MA/Inv Scrapper, no Stamina, no Sets.

Outside of that one YES Stamina, I've had no problems to speak of.

To be fair, most of the information IS available up-front if you read the tutorials, but since you can skip those, your point remains. I agree with you completely (for a change ) in that the information IS out there for people who want to look. Even at the very laziest, it's still easily available for people who care to ASK. You can't ask for more information than that.

It really doesn't make any sense to restrict missions like this just for the hell of restricting them, which is why I'm inferring there has to be a better reason. It COULD be Going Rogue related simply because it's used to differentiate heroic from villainous content, and this is central to a system of allowing players to only START content on their side while still participating in content on the other side. It's only a very loose inference, however.

This functionality tags certain missions as such that certain team-mates are not allowed to try for. This could easily be used to filter full-hero-ONLY missions that Vigilantes can't take and full-villain-ONLY missions that rogues can't take, as well as probably vice versa. Since they've alluded to there being reasons to stay pure hero or pure villain and that provides a system for doing just that, I thought I'd at least bring it up.

There's too much information in there to make it EXCITING and not take five hours, which would be considerably worse. Tutorials and documentation are there for people to read so they know what they are doing. People who go into games, or try to use machines and software without having bothered with the instructions deserve no sympathy, as far as I'm concerned. You can always replay the tutorial, there's a Help section off the menu, there's a link to ParagonWiki in the loading tips, there are people in-game and on the forums to ask... There's not having information available, and then there's not being arsed to learn anything.

The base in-game systems, such as basic power use, ordinary enhancements, inspirations, contacts and so forth, are deliberately simple enough for people to figure out with a modicum of thought given. The more advanced game systems, such as Inventions, complex temporary powers and exotic power combinations, are not as simple, but if one wants to know about them, the information is there. Short of sending a PlayNC representative to people's houses to read off their manuals to them, there is no way to FORCE people to learn if they can't be bothered to. More tutorials will not help.

This actually reminds me of the old system bug that told you "Keyboard not detected. Please press any key to continue." It ain't workin' like that.

That's actually a one-sided question with a partial answer, making it incredibly misleading. People pick Stamina over endurance slotting for the simple fact that endurance slotting is harder to plan out, harder to achieve and generally more cumbersome. Endurance slotting can meet AND EXCEED the benefit from Stamina if one knows what to do and how to go about doing it, and I'm talking SOs here. Few people want to bother, however, because "just take Stamina" is so much simpler. That, and to really fix endurance with enhancements requires SOs, which become all of two levels later than Stamina.

And, to add to this, everyone's answer is "just take Stamina," but then everyone seems to conveniently ignore all the complaints from people who feel like they HAVE to take Stamina, but hate having to dedicate the slots. Stamina is NOT a free power pick that anyone would be crazy not to get. To get Stamina, you need to NOT get three other powers, and early on when you actually need those power picks. Stamina has a cost, but people keep ignoring that fact and arguing that it's a must-have.

Obviously, slotting endurance reduction has its own cost, too, but as far as I'm concerned, that cost is significantly lower, at least depending on what you want out of a build. If you're determined to pump out as much recharge as you can, you're going to need those slots, but I know enough people who don't build for that to know it's not everyone who feels that way.

Stamina is a choice. I would really not be opposed to just getting it for free, because to be honest, flat stat boosts just aren't cool as powers to take. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm more than convinced it's well possible to play without Stamina on practically any build, and I have ample evidence in my own characters to prove it. Not everyone may LIKE to, but that kind of luxury has its cost.

The rest I can sort of agree with, but this I just can't go for, if for no reason other than because THIS is the probably the primary reason I gave up on Kheldians forever and ever. I got two-shotted one too many times and ran around in constant, abject fear for my life, so I just can't agree to this. I don't want Tanker health, but at LEAST Blaster or Blaster-like health is the lowest I'd go for.

I actually have a problem with low hit points values in general, and again, is one of the reasons I gave up on Dominators in general. Any AT which is expected to enter combat, especially melee combat, ought to have more base hit points than that. I realise Kheldians and Soldiers of Arachnos have similar values, but from what I've played with these values, it just doesn't work. Not for me.

If this were true, you could easily solo with your grey-side "toon" on the opposite side if you flip over to the opposite side. I actually like the fact that access to both sides is not unlimited. You CAN team cross-faction, you just can't BE cross faction unless you fully cross over.

Branching out into a new market with a localised version of the game (why do this to begin with is beyond be, but that's besides the point) is too big an investment to make "just in case it works." Frankly, I fell that the EU version of the game was a gigantic mistake, as well, because to this day I can't understand what perks it has over the US version for us players that just happen to live in Europe. I don't know what those perks are, but I'm sure they can't make up for fewer servers with fewer people on them and lack of direct access to the development team, so yeah. What, exactly, was the point of that?

Far as I'm concerned, merge all versions of the game, let all players play together and just market THAT to people across the world. I never died because Customer Support for the game was located on the flip side of the world, and Asian players are obviously surviving this situation, so I'd say just roll with that. Stop waiting on a localised version of your game that nobody's going to prefer over Original Game: Classic, anyway and just market the damb thing as it is. People will buy it.

I realise it may be strange for American companies to expect players to play a game hosted on servers half-way across the world and with Customer Support and a community 10 time zones away, but we who don't live in the US manage just fine. We'll manage without "our" version of the game, believe me.

They introduced the Hero/Villain tags into missions a while ago. That ought to come into play for SOMETHING.

Because if there is no point in being pure Hero or pure Villain, then those options have no reason to exist post Going Rogue. Or rather, then Vigilante and Rogue have no reason to exist, and it would be smarter to just retrofit heroes as being able to go to the Isles and villains to Paragon City.

This is not how things are being done. As of Going Rogue, we will have four possible alignments - Villain, Rogue, Vigilante and Hero. Balance demands that there be a point in assuming any one of them. It's basic game design, to the point where I'm starting to think I simply misunderstood what you were asking.

Speaking as someone who's constantly surrounded by glossy black plastic (*sigh* computers these days...), I can definitely testify that a black item, as long as it is shiny, WILL reflect things very strongly. Much more so, in fact, than any white shiny object I can currently have a look, though admittedly that's probably because I lack the right objects to compare. It has been my experience that white objects tend to show too much of their own colour, masking reflections, whereas black objects show only their reflection, hence being more clear. Of course, that's because real-life plastics tend to have a transparent glossy layer over the plastic itself which is reflective. I don't really know how that works with raw metals, but I do know that metals painted black tend to reflect more than metals painted white.

On the flip side, what we tend to see as a "metallic shine" isn't actually white OR black, but more just "reflective," as in we don't see much of the underlying surface so much as we see a reflection of what's around the surface. Playing around with reflection maps and raytrace reflections 3D Studio Max (way back when) showed me one thing very clearly - an object that is 100% reflective actually loses its own texture to reflection. We see such mirror-like surfaces as greyish-white because light tends to focus on points or sharp edges, condensing into white lines, and light also tends to reflect directly into your eyes, again causing the objects to white out. And as we're surrounded by light and objects that are usually grey or light, these mirror surfaces end up looking greyish and shiny.

Now, as far as actual implementation goes, I don't actually know how this works. You are, however, probably on the right track inferring that reflections are a transparent layer overlaid over the actual texture. I've done some research into computer graphics transparency models, and what I can infer from observation is that if this really IS transparency, it's using the Dark Theme subtractive model. As a painter, that should actually be right up your alley, because Dark/subtractive calculations mimic paints and dyes, in that they assume a white base that reflects all light, to which you add pigments that block specific colours.

Our Dark Themes as used for power customization actually do an inversion first when determining colours. That's because you pick colours to BLOCK, so picking blue would actually give you yellow, because you block blue and let everything else through. So the system does an inversion, such that when you pick blue, you block everything OTHER than blue. The reason I suggest that's what's being used here is because a white base - a colour which would block everything other than red, green and blue, or in essence block nothing at all - is going to be a very clear base for other reflections. If white shows all colours and blue blocks red and green, you still get a blue reflection. Black as a base, on the other hand, blocks ALL colours, so really nothing you try to add to it is going to make much of a difference, because it's already blocking all colours to begin with. That's why black shiny and reflective objects actually end up looking dull and matte in the game.

That's kind of disappointing, really, because I find black to be one of the more stylish colours, especially for metals and accents and sunglasses, and I'm continually finding that it just doesn't shine well. And it should.

P.S. I need a refresher on transparency models...

*edit*
I found the article I was looking for. It's a pretty good read for anyone who's interested in how transparency in computer graphics works. I believe it was BABs who originally pointed us to this article, though I may be mistaken and I don't want to misquote the guy any more than we already do. SOMEONE pointed me to it, and it was never discounted as being a good source for reference regarding this game.

No offence, Tech, but if I've been able to run for six years and never take Stamina with I think one exception, so can you. The fact that you don't WANT to is what makes this a want power, not a need power. This is the pace you want to hold, so that is the price you have to pay. I manage to run at a very good pace without Stamina and I've never really regretted my choice.

I will agree that there may or may not be a few certain combos that really benefit from Stamina, but most can do just fine without it if you don't live under the impression that you must crank up the difficulty into the stratosphere or you're not man enough. I see enough people into their 40s without Stamina to know it's not just me, so I refuse to agree that it's a "must-have."

And to address what Bubba said - almost all builds benefit from Stamina, yes. If your goal is performance above all else, then the theme of power picks really isn't going to matter. Pick whatever's best. Not everyone's priorities stack that way, however, and for some of us it's quite possible to skip Stamina and take a power that's cooler, instead. One doesn't have to run at ultra mode difficulty or solo Rikti Pylons to feel accomplished if one prefers a different kind of experience.