Schismatrix

But i love our plant monsters disguising themselves as trees on occasion, so i guess it all balances out. Bonfire is a great way to wake them up.

Most of the unlockable weapon models that belong to NPC factions cannot be colored because the colors are part of the texture. The Devs gave us access to the same pieces that the NPCs use instead of building new versions of the NPC weapon for the players.

The Rulaaru, Vanguard and Roman unlockable pieces are exceptions to this because they were designed as pieces to be used by players from the start.




(Aside: i do have a bad habit of using apostrophes correctly, and i was referring specifically to the Rikti Katana in my last post in this thread. i even put the apostrophe after the "s" when indicating possessive plurals. At this point it seems unlikely i'll ever break myself of the habit. (Not capitalizing "I" when referring to myself is a signature affectation, not a literacy fail. Silly, i know. ))

Actually, when i looked up the lyrics i read part of a transcript of an interview where the guy (whose name name i forget and am not going to look up again ATM) who wrote the lyrics said he was inspired by political cartoon from the 1800's with trees in it, but he didn't have a particular message in mind, he just found the imagery amusing.

They optimized the graphics code quite a bit while revamping it for Ultra Mode, mostly by bringing it more in line with the OpenGL spec if i recall correctly. This has caused some compatibility issues with certain driver and card versions, but overall CoX runs much better at the equivalent non-Ultra settings compared to before Ultra Mode's release.

Nope, can't change any of the katana's colors. It's still a neat weapon.

Hah! **tosses a By-Tor out to distract the Snow Dog**

(And i'm not even a big Rush fan, but my roomie is. )

This usually works well for me. i use the same basic macro, but i usually have several targetcustomnext chained in the macro, especially by the higher levels.

Example: /macro find "targetcustomnext enemy alive sapper$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Death$$targetcustomnext enemy alive succubus$$targetcustomnext strewth"

The main advantage to macros over binds is that you can easily edit them on the fly by right-clicking them.

True enough, i guess, but i think i'll continue using my phone's browser to access the forums and server status page just like i'm doing right now.

Golden Girl 2: The Goldening?

Or another Zero G Pack. We've got at least 5 different temp powers that grant flight and only one that gives leaping? Totally unfair.

Actually, unless that part of the code has been rewritten, there are, and can only be, ten attack vectors/defense types. Back around issue 1 the Devs wanted to add Toxic defense in addition to the damage type, but couldn't due to the way that part of the game is designed. Prior to adding Toxic damage Vahzilok zombies were spewing attacks that used untyped damage that could not be resisted at all. Back then Science was considered a really sucky origin by some people because it meant you faced enemies early on who used unresistable damage.

Even with the programmers Paragon Studios has now i'm not sure it would be considered worth the effort of rewriting the combat engine to permit new defense types. Then again, maybe it's already been done, but it certainly hasn't appeared in the live game yet.

So, adding damage types is fairly easy and adding defense types is not. Nothing is impossible, but some things (like adding additional defense types) haven't been considered worth the investment for almost 6 years.

Right now there is no electrical damage or defense type, nor is there any real need to add it.

Yes, for the moment.

The Devs can currently add additional damage types, but not attack vector/defense types. Still, this all started because a poster thought that some armor types were specifically useful against electrical attacks and their side effects. The current combat system doesn't work like that. The ability to resist or overcome a status effect once it hits has nothing to do with the name of the attack. A status effect of a specific type, magnitude and duration works exactly the same regardless of what name the attack that inflicted it has.

The links in my last post covered all that anyway. Currently damage types can be added, but attack vectors cannot. All electrical attacks currently in the game use energy damage and are generally tagged as being defended against using energy defense and the appropriate positional defense.

So you're saying you disagree, and then stating your position to be nearly the same as Arcanaville's. Obviously you read the post if you're quoting and saying you disagree, but the position you state after saying you disagree seems to be effectively the same as the post you disagreed with. Or are you saying math should be ignored until, somehow, it is determined (apparently without using math) that things are unbalanced, and then you might use a little math? Or is it that you feel math should be a minor consideration in the design process and should be considered inferior to hunches and guesses?

It seems to me that Arcana's position is that consistent math and processes should be used for initial balancing and design, but that adjustments should be made for how things work in actual play. Maybe i was misinterpreting, because that seems far more sensible to me than pulling numbers out of the air based on hunches and guesswork and then making sweeping changes when it fails to automagically balance everything. (Although i do seem to recall seeing the latter somewhere before...)

Damage resistance has nothing to do with status effects.
There is no such thing as an electrical damage type. Most electrical attacks do energy damage and some also do smashing damage.

Status effect resistance (which reduces duration, and in some cases magnitude) and protection (which prevents the status effect from having any effect unless the effects magnitude is greater than the protection) have nothing to do with damage.

If you or an enemy has a magnitude 3 protection from immobilize effects and 100% resistance an immobilize will have no effect unless its magnitude is greater than 3 and the effect will will be removed in half the time it would have been with no resistance.

It doesn't matter whether the power doing the immobilize is electric fences or stone cages, if an attack applies an immobilize effect to a target only the magnitude and duration of the immobilize attack and any resistance or protection from immobilize the target has are relevant.

This is of course assuming that the attack hits. Defense will prevent an attack from hitting, but again there is no such thing as an electrical type of attack for defense or resistance purposes.

There are 10 attack types for defense purposes that are divided into two groups:
Positional types: Melee, Ranged, AoE (Area of Effect). [3]
Delivery types: Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Psionic. [7]

There are no other defense types, and due to the way the game systems were coded more cannot currently be added. (Which was quite annoying for the Devs when they added Toxic damage shortly after launch. They could add resistance to reduce the damage done by Toxic attacks, but not a Toxic defense tag.)

There are currently 11 known damage types. Damage removes hit points and that's all it does. The types are only really relevant for determining whether damage resistance will reduce the damage done by the attack. Electrical is not one of the 11 types.

Follow some of the above links for the relevant Paragon Wiki entries if you want more details on how that sort of stuff works. Or just take my word for it. (i do not seriously suggest taking my word for it without confirmation, but i won't stop you if you do. )

From a game mechanic standpoint there's no such things as electric powers as an attack type, so enemies can't specifically be resistant to "electrical powers". An enemy's resistance/protection to being immobilized has nothing to do with any of the other effects or the name of the immobilizing power.

If an enemy resists a type of mez effect or damage it doesn't matter what the name of the set or power it came from might be.

My first thought was "Polo!"
Then again i've been drinking. <.< >.> *shhhh*

Well, i DJ'ed at a strip club for one night and didn't particularly enjoy myself. The girls were nice, but the owner was a complete sleazebag. With extra scumminess. Actually though, the DJing itself was rather fun. i was working the no alcohol section for that night.
A friend of mine was a DJ there for a couple years, and the stories i could tell about that place... (The night my ex-GF who's still a good friend dragged me there with a a bunch of her girlfriends and i ran into an old friend who was currently stripping there is the least of them. )

Anyway, regarding the main thread topic, always good to see new faces. (So to speak.)

That's not how it works, but i can understand the frustration. (i'm guessing you're referring to the Hami mission in the LGTF.) i just had the respec crash happen to me a couple days ago, so it will be nice to see that fix go live eventually.

At three bucks the DVD alone is worth it for the moment. Of course now that you have it already patched up to date you could just copy the game directory to a flash drive as a backup and for quick install if you want to play on another system. Also, an even more up to date DVD will be available this summer when Going Rogue is released.

My current system is a fairly old Core2 Duo with a 9500 GT and it runs fine with reflections and shadows set to high with ambient occlusion disabled. Also i've been playing mostly redside lately, which has always been a bit of a drag on my framerate, so i'm not really displeased with Ultra Mode.

Someone earlier in the thread babbled about how their WoW raid rig or some such was still a bit slow. WoW does have much lower system demands and graphical details than other current MMOs. City of Heroes came out before WoW, and even before the creation Ultra Mode CoX still had much higher quality graphics. The recent WoW trial i tried out really brought that home for me. WoW is not much of benchmark for stress testing newer (or even somewhat older) systems.