T_Immortalus

I definitely suggest using the /report in game to suggest this and making a thread doing so wherever suggestions go.

I certainly hate turnign off Energy Cloak on an energy aura brute and any other stealth power that rgants defense. It's annoying and make it much harder to do the missions.

I also very much HATE the npcs who have to fight absolutely everything, especially when there are ambushes coming right after the last one was beat.

The "rescue longbow agent from arachnos" mission is especially painful because the npc moves so slow, fights everything and the ambushes start ahead of you on your route out and always spawn immediately after the last enemy goes down from the previous ambush.
I'm surprised I ever make it out of there with a the npc alive.

The worst part is that npc claims "I'm too weak to help you fight so I'll just follow you out" and then proceeds to fight. WTH?!







I hope to all the deities int he universe that they are looking at escort AI and code for issue 19 and making it a lot less aggravating and stupid for us.




Here is an idea:
Characters, if they were real, would likely give the npc something to track them with, through stealth, or just "follow my directions out....head straight and then right at the intersection" to lead the npc out with stealth on.

That's a logical and easy way to explain keeping stealth on to escort npcs while still having ambushes after you because you have an unstealthed person behind you.

I haven't seen if it affects multiple servers at the same time. It doesn't even affect all players on the server, though it does affect a lot of them.
It seem to depend on what a person is doing. If you're in a loading screen you'll likely crash, but any other time would just mean crazy lag or nothing possibly.

I definitely think that either a specific piece of game code periodically goes wrong, at different times for different people, as a result of certain circumstances happening in game, or it has to be a server code/hardware issue that is generally fine but goes wrong sometimes.


I definitely am very sure this widespread specific problem is not caused by all the players' hardware and other software on their computer or their vastly different internet arrangements.


This problem is so very similar/identical on so many different setups in different locations that the only common denominator is the game and the servers it is on.

It pretty obvious that they broke something and need to investigate.




But, support tends to pull the same crap as the support people for WoW do. They like to ask about every detail of the person's computer, despite it being a common issue to multiple setups all different, and blame it on this or that until a long time down the road they claim "fixed a bug that was causing a crash....".

They won't admit there is a problem or even put much effort into investigating it unless they stumble on an answer without looking for it or it gets so bad that people start quitting, they lose money and whole servers go down.

You would have to change the function of R1 outside the game in your controller management software.
You change it to whatever key you have set as one of the "alternate tray toggle" buttons listed in "keymapping" in game. The default for those are "left-ctrl" and "left-alt". One defaults to activating powers in the second row of the old default power trays and one the 3rd row.

I've figured this all out, except how to make the location target powers work well with the gamepad. I'm still working on that.

Yes, my energy aura brute never put another slot in it. It would be more useful elsewhere and, at level 50, one endurance reduction will be more than enough.

It doesn't affect the strength of the build so I can take whatever travel power I want.
I'm not "I always have to go faster faster faster, GIMME INSTANT TRAVEL NOW!"

I enjoy hover and flight and I'm keeping those because I don't sacrifice anything all that good for them.


By the way, super speed may be fast, but fly tends to be faster when super speed has to go around a lot of stuff, or super speed needs a whole other power to go over stuff.

Fly is the perfect speed for me, not too fast and not slow.





I didn't take Power Siphon because it would have meant one less attack or no "One With The Shield".

I skip Build Up if it is available even unless I have no other damage boosts or I'm on a stalker with Assassin Strike.
Power Siphon is like Build Up to me, recharges much longer than the benefit. The maximum benefit is only 125% damage and doesn't last very long.

I chose to take other powers that are more appealing to me.



I still get the damage debuff to enemies with every kinetic melee attack so I don't lose that. All I won't have is the short term long recharge buff.




Anything else you don't like?

You can modify this build however you want for your own use, but I'm more interested in slotting as efficiently as possible because I'm relatively set on my power choices.
I'm taking hover and fly for "concept reasons"; I take hover and fly on every character because I just love it.
I want to keep energy mastery for better endurance stats and Stealth to stealth sometimes and look "ethereal".

I'm not really that set on everything else except taking as many shield powers as I can and getting Focused Burst for some range.



If I could, I would probably take Weave to replace Maneuvers(or maybe in addition to this) for higher defense and less need for set bonuses, but that would require too many power choices. That will be a possibility with issue 19 though.

There should be a "mode" button on your gamepad that allows you to switch from analog to digital which will likely enable it once switched to analog.

Other than that, you may need to enable the joystick under the controls tab in options or reinstall the software for the gamepad or just mess around with the software for it.

Well, you can set two of your controller buttons to be the alternate tray toggles, like left-alt and left-ctrl are by default, and two buttons to be jump/fly up and down which wrks quite well for the 4 triggers on my controller.
That makes it easy to bind up to 12 powers to the 4 face buttons on the right of the controller.

You can bind all your targeting needs tot he digital pad on the left as well. That still leaves you with the 2 buttons under the analog sticks and the 2 buttons in the middle of the controller.


You don't really need to bind toggles to the pad since they stay on even when mezed after you activate them once.
I find it best to setup my numpad to activate certain spots on my trays for those toggles, even fly and hover and sprint, and other powers that are used a lot less.



The only trouble I have is how I am going to make location target powers work with the controller like "shield charge", the mastermind pet summons, "teleport" or any other similar power.
That's the hard part and may just require using the keyboard at those moments. Luckily, those powers usually recharge so slow or are not needed most of the time so it may work.

Well, I guess we'll just have to make it usable while mezzed then or move all store and contact npcs inside a building away from combat so that we never have an enemy sneak up on us when we happen to be shopping or reading the story.


Mez protection only works BEFORE you get mezzed, except in special cases. That means it needs to be up and any time it is down while you have enemies nearby is bad.


It's not just a quality of life thing, especially since it used to work as intended.


Also, the "says it is recharged, but won't activate" thing is definitely a problem for click powers that aren't on auto. It would really suck to try to activate it when you need it and just find out you're wasting time you could be tryign to save your hide with another power.


Of course, the mez protection being down isn't an issue for those with toggle mez protection so I guess you could say "play a different power set with a toggle" despite the fact that it is broken and needs to be fixed.




You can't solve a clear problem by saying "just go do something else", Bill.

Well, it would be nice if it was up while I was targeting something like a store npc or the Praetorian tailor in case some enemy wandered, or was lured, by and aggroed onto me.

That's why I have this issue. I hate having mez protection down especially when it is caused by doing something I have to do, target an npc to do business.

Well, the solution is in the exact same location as the resolution settings.

I don't use the increased size, but then I don't have such high a resolution, possibly not as proportionally small a monitor either.


Good to know what the solution is, but again it was not the game that was the issue. It was your display settings.

Sadly, we can't change the font in any window except the chat tabs.

Just suggest they add an option to increase the size and put up with it until they do. Keep suggesting it every week or two through a petition in game to keep them from forgetting about it.

Your problem is because you don't recognize that your monitor is not set to 2560x1600.


Th reason you only see part of the game when you set it to 2560x1200 resolution is that your monitor is a lower resolution so it only displays what it can, starting from the upper left corner as that is where the screen is "anchored".



Check your desktop resolution then set your game to match.
They have to match or the game will be bigger than your screen or smaller than your screen if you set the game lower.




I can't believe people still have this issue?


"The game is broken because it's too big to fit on my screen at this resolution. "

"Are you sure your desktop is set to that resolution too?"

"I know it's not the desktop so I won't bother checking."

"Just check it."

"Oops. I guess I did have the desktop resolution set much lower than I thought."

"/facepalm"










Just check your desktop graphics settings and make sure your resolution there matches your resolution in game by changing one of them to match.

Yep, Active Defense does it too.

It will show that it is recharged, but will not activate.


It happens after loading screens, the enhancement management screen and the tailor screen.
My guess is it has something to do with the powers "refreshing" or just the graphics refreshing when your screen changes.

Hell, it could be another issue with the DBserver.



Edit:
Although right now, I'm much more annoyed and aggravated by the crashing then login issues right after because of the DBserver and the "infinite lag" where my ping goes from 200 to over 4k or higher for a minute then snaps back down to 200 like it never happened.
It's definitely the server because the npc enemies lag as much as I do when it happens.

I don't advise changing your resolution, or the resolution scale slider, to anything other than the monitor's native resolution(usually the max it will display).

Just use the UI scale slider like you did and leave it at 125%.




Honestly, I used to play on a 17 inch screen at 1440x900 with the UI scale at 85%, but my new 23 inch monitor at 1920x1080 has to have it at 100%.

It's natural to have to mess with settings when things change.

The higher the resolution you display something on, without also increasing the screen size proportionally, the smaller things will be displayed.

It's not an issue with the game, just an issue with your monitor running as expected.



Say you went from a 15 inch monitor at 1024x768 to one at 1600x1200.

In order for everything to appear the same size you would need a monitor 1.5625 times as big or 23.4375 inches.

Of course, that would make the increased resolution look exactly the same as the lower resolution monitor, just cover a bigger area.



The point of increasing resolution is to increase detail. If you increase the size of a monitor without increasing resolution then you see gaps between pixels a lot easier.

That's why people get bigger and bigger monitors with higher resolutions so they actually gain image quality with a bigger image area.



That's why games have the UI scale sliders and everything has text size options, so you can adjust them to be more visible.

Which I thought was the point of the stealth debuff, so you could lead them out without detoggling your defenses.

That makes it a real pain to lead them out on characters that use a stealth power for defense like Energy Aura characters and every stalker.

I'm betting it's because the expected reward is greater than 70% of the losses.

After all, the payback rate for slot machines is supposed to be 95% from what I have heard, but it doesn't say who that 95% will go to or how it is divided up.


People expect to get lucky.

Also, addiction to risks like that aren't common enough to claim "the majority of people do so", so the 70% number above, which is likely for most people not as susceptible to addiction, still stands.


But of course, the level of risk/loss we are willing to tolerate or work through depends on the situation.

A video game is hard to tolerate risk and loss because it's a completely controllable world, by someone, and supposed to be fun, not drudgery and disappointment.

We expect to be rewarded fairly quickly and easily in games compared to other things.


This also comes into play with work. We've always had the old adage "if you work hard you'll reach your goals" which keeps us working hard even if we hate the job or it really isn't good enough to get anywhere.
It comes from a time when working hard really could get you ready for the future and make your future life easier, but that was because our lives were no where near as dependent on the world and people around us.
It was practically a guarantee back then.





Anyway, it doesn't surprise me that most people are unwilling/unable to go through much frustration when playing a game unless the rewards are worth more than all the frustration until you get them.
There are exceptions, but this mostly rings true.

That's why mmos have to constantly be tweaking to be the best/most fun or they will lose more players than they gain and spiral into shutdown.

They may not have been intended to be, but they can be when built well. Scrappers can even tank when built well.

It's not very common though.

Well, how about as high as that accuracy buff they had to add is? or half of it per enhancement?

That's the point they set as a baseline after all. It was meant to degrade to the point where it disappears at the time accuracy enhancers catch up to the value it provided.
Why not just make the accuracy enhancers catch up earlier so we don't need the degrading buff?

That's simple enough.



Edit:
Making enhancements provide more value is a lot less "giving them free power" than a buff they don't even have to slot for.

"Increasing player accuracy to compensate is counterproductive: the devs would just make the critters even harder to hit"

What do you think the degrading accuracy buff did?
They just said "here, free accuracy because you need it" when they could have buffed accuracy enhancements to the same value so people still had to slot for it and sacrifice other enhancements to do so like it should be.


I think my idea is a lot better than a free global accuracy buff.




Edit 2:
The point is it's an alternative to a free global buff to accuracy for everyone that would have solved the issue just as easily, if not more easily.
It would require less coding and actually make players want to slot the accuracy enhancements more at low levels rather than slotting as many of them as they can "because it's required" or slottign noen of them "because the global buff is enough and 8% is worthless".

By the way, 8% is the ++ level as well. The TOs degrade as soon as you level up anyway so they're even less helpful.




Edit 3:
It's not like they have enough slots to abuse it at early levels, but if they did then they would be sacrificing any other enhancements they could slot.

Right now, most low level enhancements are ignored as worthless because we need to slot for accuracy and endurance reduction first and foremost, then damage if we even slot for that.
Sure, soem may slot mez powers for more mez time, and we may use the occasional recharge, but they are all too low level to allow us any room to use anything else in our limited slots.