james_joyce

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Eight configurable new power trays let players customize their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.

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Love

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Contact display redesign: Contacts are now listed separately as Active and Inactive, and players can sort contacts by a range of criteria including Name, Zone, and Level Range.

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Love LOVE LOVE x2! (<--- that's six loves)

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Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.

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At first I just thought this was weird, but now that I think about it, this could be really useful for a lot of ATs. For instance, my regen scrapper NEVER uses greens or blues, so they end up clogging the tray. Converting those to purples = love.

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Level Up Boost: Upon reaching enough XP to level up (at all levels), one of each type of large inspiration is immediately cast upon your character, and health and endurance bars are immediately filled.

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Unexpected and largely benign but welcome improvement. What happens if there isn't room for all the insps? Which insps take priority?

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Chat improvements: Right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.

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I'll probably never use this, but it's good design.

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More Real Numbers: Players can now display stats on powers before they choose them enabling more informed power selection and new temporary powers allow players to display enemy stats.

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lots of LOVE!

Also, sex.

Well, we know we're getting Plant Controllers and Axe Brutes. If it's only one primary and secondary powerset per AT, then that takes care of those ATs' primaries.

On the one hand, YEAH Plant Controllers!

On the other hand, No Mace Brutes?

I hope they keep doing this issue by issue until all appropriate powersets are given to all appropriate ATs.

* Eight configurable new power trays let players customize their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.

* Contact display redesign: Contacts are now listed separately as Active and Inactive, and players can sort contacts by a range of criteria including Name, Zone, and Level Range.

* Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.

* Level Up Boost: Upon reaching enough XP to level up (at all levels), one of each type of large inspiration is immediately cast upon your character, and health and endurance bars are immediately filled.

* Chat improvements: Right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.

* More Real Numbers: Players can now display stats on powers before they choose them enabling more informed power selection and new temporary powers allow players to display enemy stats.

*highfives all around*

Hey guys, what's going on in this thread?

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My opinion for what's it's worth:

I love the new costumes and emotes, and don't mind paying for them. However, $9.99 might be a bit high. I agree with others here that $4.99 would be more reasonable.

The new pieces are awesome, though. Good job.

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main() { printf(&unix["\021%six\012\0"],(unix)["have"]+"fun"-0x60);}

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Silly low-level language. When will you learn? *laughs at ampersand*

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Aaaaaaaaah!

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Untucked t-shirt.

<--- jealous

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I wonder what useless twit is necroposting and deleting his posts in an effort to hide his tracks.

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I didn't even know you could do that!

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I LOVE the npc costumes - and I'm actually quite mystified as to why they need to be so temporary

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I'll put one of the benefits of the real-time expiration out there:

With the real-time expiration, people wear their costumes constantly since you know it's going to expire at a set time no matter how much you wear it now. It gives people an incentive to wear the costumes NOW, while they can. Almost everyone I saw was wearing a costume constantly, and it was a lot of fun. Feels very Halloween-y

With an in-game timer, people would probably horde and ration the temp powers, and you probably wouldn't have the same type of atmosphere. Then you'd have people throughout the year wearing the costumes, and it wouldn't feel as season appropriate or special.

Just something to consider.

I loves me the costumes, except POOR CHOICE OF LOST COSTUME!

Where the bleepity-bleep is my TV Helmet?!

But, other than that, awesome fun times. I've found that Strongman and Shaman are my favorites.

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Chibi Mako (colored)

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Is Mako squeezing a stress ball?

If so, that's awesome.

I mean, it's awesome regardless, but... you know.

I'd imagine a good solution would be an extra bit of UI being added to the top of the compass.

You could do a clickable alert that, when clicked, opens another window telling you which zones are being invaded and what their progress is. Have this message flash a few times when it first appears.

Or you could do an alert warning ticker that just tells you right inline which zones are under attack. The flaw with this one is that it's easy to miss. You'd probably need the openable window in either case.

The cool thing about this solution is that it can be applied to other things later, like Steel Canyon fires or Supatroll Raves. Might give those events more publicity without being intrusive.

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There will be always be another thing they can do, another task that Positron can give out, but the previous one will get done once, or failed once, and that's it. If someone fails to save the war walls, the war walls will come down. And with the right game design and infrastructure, that will be a much better game.

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I would love this, but it necessitates having randomly or procedurally generated content. No number of developers could churn out enough content to keep up with the demand this would generate. We would therefore need program capable of generating way better content.

A system that facilitates quality player-created content would probably be useful in addition to this as well.

I think we'll get there, but I don't think we're even in the ballpark yet.

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And the Easter Egg from that novel.

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HRG has freakishly hairy knuckles!

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Electric Hammer

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Is it just me, or does this seem strangely specific?

It would be like if they offered us a fire whip, or staff of +1 animal husbandry.

I mean, it's cool and all, but it seems like this would be better as a hammer powerset, then giving us Chance for Electric Damage Melee IO sets.

Did this video remind anyone else of the Space Ghost episode "Joshua"?

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Invention Salvage Drops

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This is great. Does anyone have the following information?

- Exactly what levels each enemy group appears in?
- Which zones does each mob group appear in?
- How many missions feature each mob group?

A tall order, I know, but I think that's the last piece we need to see if we can easily get either tech only or magic only at each level range. The mission and zone information can probably be culled from Paragon Wiki, but they don't list mob level ranges.

But regardless, this list is way better than it was before, and we'll be fine if it goes live like this.

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The fix for this is a little uglier, either two delayed queues of alpha stuff, one for character stuff and one for scenery, or some sort of priority system, so that even though character stuff is added later, it gets drawn first.

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Couldn't you just re-create the capes with the cut-out portion built in to the geometry?

You seem to know a lot about the 3d graphics stuff, so can I ask: I thought alpha blending stuff was a really expensive operation. If they're doing this to acheive effects like different cape shapes, could this explain why this game has such big performance issues around things like Arachnos lab maps, where it seems like they might be using the same strategy?

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No Offense Jack, but I would rather see PvP base raids working correctly before even hearing about a PvE option that was suppose to be for us PvPers

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Well, if they made PvE base raids, I'm guessing it wouldn't be for PvPers. To me, PvE content is more worth their time, since PvPers are in the minority in this game. At least I think so. PvE base raids would be player-created content, pure and simple. I think it would be a revolutionary addition to the game, and to the MMO market in general. I think it's worth their time.

Some ideas on this:
- SGs can hand place NPCs in their base, maybe culled from the collective Gladiators of its members (I'm hesitant about that, since it would be incentive for people to start grinding for gladiators).
- They can define limited NPC behavior, like patrols, and aggro rules.
- They can place NPC versions of SG members as bosses (Elite Bosses? AVs?)
- There would be some defined win condition that, ideally, the SG could define.
- There should be no XP or Debt, but there should be a reward of some type. Maybe an SO or temp power.

And of course, I'm not opposed to getting PvP base raids working too. It's just a matter of which is more valuable to players in general.

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Heck, I’d just like the PvE base raid part first!

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(O.o) Wow... (^.^)

And I swore I'd never use those new emoticons.

Edit: if this is a hint of things they're working on, then count me pleased as hell.

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Other really excellent ideas have been offered that would have been easy to create, but have also been ignored.

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I would not presume that any of our ideas are "easy". One thing I've learned from being a coder, most of the time you can't really tell how difficult something is until you know the legacy code.

I would not assume the devs are ignoring us. This is all a complex cost/benefit analysis. Remember, most of the game is not bases, so significant effort put into bases is benefiting a minority of the game. For example, if the choice comes down to adding some features to bases or making missions more dynamic, I'd choose the mission upgrades without question.

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...I stop off at our inspir bin on my way out, tp back to the zone, and enjoy my repeated beating of the guy who beat me... I've started using the empowerment station simply because we're going to run out of places to actually put the salvage... I die, I rez at the med bay, I stop off at the inspir bin, I grab a handful of teir 3s(which I later replace) and make the sob pay... never have to buy an enhancement again...

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All good reasons to pass through your base, but no good reasons to stay there.

The real problem, IMO, is that there's never a reason to stay in your base for any length of time, so there's therefore no good incentive to individualize your base to any significant degree.

So yeah, bases do provide a lot of useful stuff, it's just that none of it is really intrinsic to the concept of a base. You might as well just pay a monthly inf fee and reap the same benefits from your normal UI. There needs to be something to do while in your base that has to do with the rest of the game.

Raids would be good (but only some people like PvP). Missions in your base would be better, IMO (everyone likes PvE).

I'm not saying they should get rid of the stuff in there now, because I do think it's good (or at least a start). I especially like the mission computer and enhancement bin. But again, they're just peripheral to the base itself.

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I enjoyed my time in here for what the game was, but I just don't believe anything truly extraordinary is going to actually be delivered, anymore.

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Ye gad, man! You make it sound like your cat just died! I certainly didn't intend for this to lead to anyone's departure!

Thing is: so bases aren't that great. So what? Wasted development effort? Sure. Wasted potential? Sure. But I don't think anyone would say that it's a make-or-break feature. It didn't work out like they wanted. But it's like 1% of the game. I say we keep suggesting how to make it better, and then get over it while we play the rest of the frickin' brilliant game.

OK, so I'm doped up on NyQuil right now. Sorry about that.

Here's the writeup of his speech.

The only thing that jumps out at me - he claims bases are unpopular because people don't like paying money to contribute to group identity. I don't think that's correct. I think they're unpopular because
1) they're too expensive for casual players, and
2) they don't have anything to do with our day-to-day activities in CoH/V.

Now,
- make them cheaper
- let us place NPCs, scriptable bosses, and a scripted win condition in them
- let us open them up to other players to run as missions
- get raids working
and see if that makes them more popular.

*waves magic wand*