ScottyB

About 4 hours and 15 minutes from the time of this post. We might not get going right on the hour, because I'll be making doubly-sure folks know their roles, but obviously late-comers may delay things further.

Nevertheless, please try to show up early if you can! That will save time after the appointed hour, since I'll have already spoken to you!

I intend to do a no-retreat raid, but if the first bloom gives us trouble then I will announce a change so we can go in at full readiness. We'll be clearing all blooms (4 rounds).

The key thing will be not to get discouraged. A freaky dome of slime couldn't stop the Ghostbusters, and it won't stop us either!

PS: Still time to grab Warburg nukes! Particularly bio nukes, but all three would be good.

The notes in question:

Still going ahead with this on Friday, June 17th, at 9PM US Eastern.

There's time to go vigilante if you don't have an appropriate villain.

Right-click + delete involves a click and a short trip of the mouse to the context menu that opens at the location of the click. (Or a press of a shortcut key after right-click.)

The trash can would involve click + drag + release with a long trip of the mouse. (And there are other, minor ease-of-use issues involved in it being on a window that can move. Things like a trashcan are more convenient on the screen edge due to the way we develop our hand-eye coordination, which could potentially make it as fast or faster than right-click+delete, but that's prime real estate in the City of Heroes UI.)

Actually, that would make it better to implement the trashcan as a separate pop-up window that defaults to a location on the screen edge. It would automatically pop up and close along with the salvage window. This way you could re-position it if its default location is occupied by something else. However, not sure it's worth the dev time. Whoever works on UI should be adding Null the Gull's options to the options UI, first. >_>

I think something else would need to be done first: the abandoning of cars for invasions (and perhaps this kind of zone event). Basically, when something happens that might affect traffic, the cars on the street would stop and be replaced with destructible cars. (As opposed to continuing to drive through Rikti, zombies, Praetorians, etc., as if they have no fear.)

Do that first and this could be pretty cool! Otherwise we'd have people asking why blowing up a fleeing Family car doesn't cause the truck in the next lane to crash. (Or that apparently the Hellions' possessed car is getting run off the road by a pinto, because the current cars can't be stopped or pushed around.)

I'm sure he's not trying to be abrasive. Sometimes straight-talking comes off harsher online when there aren't any verbal clues as to attitude. I don't think he knows everything, but he's pretty knowledgeable! (Except, apparently, how bothersome it is for rogues to get around Paragon )

Anyways, even if any of my workarounds were workable, the four zones the hero Ouroboros connect to aren't worth the time. The only one not available to the RWZ or Pocket D is Independence Port. I had thought it was more versatile than that when I first made my suggestion. The actually useful thing to do is much harder - zone revamps. But that's already on the Issue 21 plate. We probably can't influence it that much at this point, but there's at least hope that more train stops will be (or at this stage for the devs, were) added to the big/long zones.

(I suppose one could also ask for the workaround plus a bigger list of hero zone connections, but I'm sure there'd have to be a discussion about how many and which zones, which just makes it more of a hassle.)

Although there's still the submariner in the hero/villain non-co-op zones, capable of opening alignment-locked doors for characters of the appropriate alignments. (NPCs seem to be the most power system in the engine!)

It might be less stream-lined, but dialog to choose your destination within Tesseract/Twilight's Son's conversation (to key the portal to your destination) might work around the apparent (and bizarre) limitation of being unable to call up an alignment-locked zone list from an alignment-locked zone. (Summary: instead of clicking the crystal and getting the zone list, you talk to Tesseract - like you would the submariner, but with the additional step of choosing the zone from among their dialog options. This, like the submariner, enables the "door" [appearance: crystal] so that you can go to the chosen zone.)

I was originally going to go with the brown/gold scheme of Ouroboros, but I decided blue/gold/white was prettier. I also wanted to use the Alpha belt, but it clips in the back; so I left it as the "classic steampunk" belt you see.

Rogues and Vigilantes can use Pocket D to cross over, but the number of zones available are limited (especially for going to a hero zone).

For Ouroboros, if the portal itself can't easily filter hero/vigilante/rogue/villain, then what about having a "Red Crystal" and a "Blue Crystal" - for example, villains can only use the red one, and the blue one tells them they're being prevented from using it. Rogues and vigilantes get the same warning they get when using the doors in Pocket D, that they're about to enter a particular alignment's territory.

Worst-case scenario (like, "it only works in Pocket D because there's an intra-zone transition first") then I think doors could be added to the sides of the Ouroboros structure, leading to small interiors with their respective crystal. (Although, the Midnighter Club doesn't seem to have that problem. The problem might be that the "lock" only prevents "door" openings, and not menus/zone lists... which would probably still be solved by putting a door between the player and the crystal.)

Good idea if it would work, or too much of a hack?

Spoiler alert: Kicked Hami's... uh... membrane. Actually it was a bit more harrowing than that. But ultimately successful.

---
Original Post:
The Abyss is too pretty an area not to use for Hamidon raids, so let's make the mythical Justice redside hami happen - maybe even turn it into a regular thing!

If someone would like to take over coordination of the raid, feel free to speak up. I think I understand the basics and can set up binds for the orders... but I'm kind of in it for the fun of it. Good effort is more important to me than success or failure, and I know that may not mesh with the expectations of others who might want a more serious and experienced leader.

So: Friday, June 17th, shall we see if we can start a third hami of the week, redside on Fridays?

I'm not sure I like the idea of completely brand new zones, as Paragon is pretty big already, but...

Past versions of zones could be neat. Especially 1963 or maybe a year later, so that Recluse's version of Arachnos has been established. And then we could see more of the retro-Arachnos uniforms, too! And the signature heroes in retro outfits!

Ostensibly they could be co-op, but there could be villain- or hero-specific contacts, too. So heroes could go to St. Martial and try preventing 1963 Arachnos from doing something that would alter the timestream negatively (or maybe even some enthusiastic Longbow willing to try crippling Arachnos in the past and hope there's no Butterfly of Doom), and villains could try to forge a future more favorable to Recluse (but not one that, y'know, prevents us from being born or anything). The Menders might have co-op missions where heroes and villains team up to prevent truly disastrous events.

There could also be a 1936 Paragon zone. There's a lot in the history, plaques, badges, and bios to build from but nothing interactive, so a chance to see (and become a part of!) history would be cool. The year in particular is when the Citizen Crime Fighting Act was passed. Or proposed. It depends on which badge your're reading... blame the inconsistencies on meddlesome time-travelers?

And of course, access to the zones could have something to do with the Menders and the Coming Storm. Even though "now" is the time when (where?) the most changes need to be made, what about the people of "now" making a difference "then" to... I don't know where (when?) I was going with this. But that's what time travel's about, right?

So in summary...

Where would it be? (Paragon City, Rogue Isles, Preatoria, Co-Op, other)
Not where - when! (1936 Paragon and 1963 Isles. Huh. Look at those dates...)

What would the zone's history be?
It would BE history!

What unique features would you incorporate?
Not "unique" per se, but being time-travel related there'd probably be some time(level)-shifting going on.

Who are the enemy groups?
Must have 1963 Arachnos. For the 30s, gangsters of course. Also, Nemesis' "Brass Monday" attack was in 1932, so Nemesis soldiers could be on the streets. And Midnight Squad founder Dream Doctor worked on uncovering the sinister nature of the Circle of Thorns during the 30s.

What are the main issues for inhabitants?
1936: The Great Depression; the emergence of super heroes. 1963: Arachnos overthrowing (or just overthrew) President Marchand.

What level characters are best suited for a trip there?
Probably level 25 to 35 for the 30s, and levels 30 to 40 for the 60s.

What about Giant Monster(s) or zone events?
1936 could have bank robberies (anyone remember the old City of Heroes trailer, opening with 30s Statesman and the gangsters?) 1963 could have Arachnos crackdowns, where soldiers of Arachnos roam the streets in force.

* Reply about how one of the joke items is seriously going into the suggestions forum.

* Which will then be posted without using Search.

I was getting this pretty bad with my Radeon HD 5750 (Windows 7 64-bit OS, too). Outdoors only, with it being much more prevalent in Praetoria.

Bringing reflections down to medium, turning off occlusion, then bringing occlusion back up to the lowest active setting, seems to have significantly reduced it in Praetoria (and I haven't seen in happen anywhere else since).

The thing that confounds me is the part where turning off occlusion gets rid of it, but then I can turn occlusion back on without trouble unless I really ramp it up along with the reflection settings.

These settings don't require a client restart so it can't hurt to give it a try and share whether or not it worked for you, too.

I read about that in the feedback thread (that the store seems to know what's in your global email, regardless of whether you've claimed it yet or not). Which made me think, even if there's no global badge system, why not use hidden emails (or at least, segregate reward emails from player emails)? A "Claim All" button could be provided in case your claims are out-of-sync (if it happens for the same or a similar reason the MA badges and epic ATs get forgotten sometimes). So normally you don't have to update it, but if you notice something's missing then you could force an update.

The cooldown for accepting your claim is similarly disappointing news. Even if the database needs some time to update your claims, it could queue it. I don't see why the player shouldn't be able to queue up some claims, and receive a warning that the availability of a large number of claims might take about 30 seconds to process (for a large number of claims, like "I bought everything"). I'm sure people would be happier hitting a button once (Claim All) and watching as their rewards slowly update, than pushing a button, waiting, pushing again, and repeating until they get through everything they've bought.

The fact that there are feedback and discussion boards created just for the half-issue makes me cautiously optimistic that there will be improvements, and maybe some dev insight as to why it's being done the way it is. It looks less and less like it will be based on a technical reason (or solely technical reason), though.

@reiella: I did mention earlier that new development (a new database for flagging incarnate rewards) should be possible (most things are possible, given enough resources) but it would be a new development and require its own maintenance after creation. Whereas there's already a system capable of delivering attachments, that with some tweaking has been repurposed to provide persistent emails claimable on multiple characters, and already has established support procedures.

Doing it the global badge way would most likely take longer to set up and cost more to maintain, and you're getting the same net effect. If the "there's something red in my inbox every time I log in a character that hasn't claimed something yet" situation is a problem, it shouldn't be too difficult to have reward-class emails be ignored by the indicator (since they will already ignore certain other limitations of the email system).

@Lord_Kalistoh: That depends on whether or not my speculation is right, and there is no true global badge system - only badges that check your NCSoft-controlled account, outside of Paragon's direct/casual/daily control, and badges that check the MA system.

Ultimately, if it was possible to award an in-game-earned* badge across multiple characters simultaneously, then doing the work for certificates doesn't make sense. (Vouchers would still make sense, but not certificates.) Dismissing the faster, easier solution because you don't want to introduce too many new badges to the game... you'd have to be amazing at fighting for resources to get even consider that!

* In-game-earned vs. NCSoft-account-earned may be an important distinction. We learned that the server list merge was possible with special cooperation between NCSoft and Paragon to do whatever database work was necessary to move and rename accounts. But their normal relationship is account/purchase history handled by NCSoft, with Paragon holding the game database (characters, arcs and so forth).

I can't remember, but at any point did Gertrude assume that Hamlet would marry Ophelia (thus making her a daughter-in-law, which in passing would be considered a daughter)?

It's not uncommon for eager/enthusiastic parents to already begin referring to their future in-laws as immediate family, depending on the culture. Even if the children aren't really engaged (but considered "serious").

That's all a long-shot, of course, and I have no interest in reading Hamlet again.

Authbit looks like it checks your NCSoft account. (All the things listed under it refer to the boosters/packs/ordered editions, which as I said before are acquired outside the game.) There's still no indication that an authbit can be added to an account from within the game. (Hence why a voucher/certificate needs to be claimed first, and won't be available at creation.)

Other than the MA hidden badges, and "Global_Badges_25"/50/500K (which might not actually have anything to do with "Global" as we mean it), I don't see any badges that hop from character-to-character. The list is up to Going Rogue, and there haven't been any new global unlocks not associated with veteran status or special editions, which probably check authbit before awarding. I'm still seeing the setup as, when you log in, your global association with MA is checked and then any badges that should be earned are awarded.

It's likely that when you claim a certificate it will award a hidden badge for the unlock, as with other costume pieces.

With certificates, there's no difference between them except the attachment. Each badge, however, is unique. Hidden badges don't take up UI space, don't have descriptions, etc., and the same hidden badge can be used for both a voucher and a certificate (in case you can buy something for a specific character cheaper than buying account-wide) (assuming that these badges aren't truly account-level, otherwise you'd think someone would realize, "hey, we're moving this hidden badge around using the email, why not just use global badges?").

I'd be surprised if they did have global badges capable of being awarded from within the game because then certificates shouldn't exist. But it's precisely because certificates exist that I'm guessing things work as above. I'd rather believe they're working with their limitations than forgetting what they've got available to them.