Live Feedback:Issue 12: Major Gameplay Improvement
By
Agonist_NA,
Posted on: 2008-05-20 24:07 in Developers' Corner
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Major Gameplay Improvements[*] Eight configurable new power trays let players customize their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.
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I think it's one of those things where we'll look back in a year or so and wonder how we ever lived without them.
Can we get a rationale from the devs as to why they felt the need to remove anonymity from the game with the removal of the global/local wall? Some of us actually liked having a bit of seperation between player and characters.
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Can we get a rationale from the devs as to why they felt the need to remove anonymity from the game with the removal of the global/local wall? Some of us actually liked having a bit of seperation between player and characters.
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Those in the know always had the ability to find your global name, it really wasn't hidden, and in-game stalkers (not the AT, the creeps) would use that to harass people while hiding behind the inability of a less savvy player from finding out who was harassing them.
And so now, there's no hiding IF YOU MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN. That's the important part. If you interact with people through /tell or chatting in broadcast or on a global channel, everyone will know the global name attached to the local name. No more hiding behind trolling throw-away characters.
However, IF YOU DO NOT MAKE YOURSELF KNOW and IF YOU HAVE THE NEW /HIDE OPTIONS ENABLED, then you will retain your anonymity. The Developer, pohsyb, went out of his way to make /hide truly hide you from others. You won't show up on searches, they can't figure out if you're online with /tells or /whoall or /ignore or any other tricks that stalkers use to find the person they want to harass. Of course, if you chat in broadcast, you reveal yourself to everyone in the zone, or if your toon is physically seen, then people can interact with you.
In the end, this change holds people to accountability for their actions and will eventually make the need to hide from them less pressing. But, the ability to hide from them has been greatly improved for those who want that.
It's a win-win.
Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides
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Can we get a rationale from the devs as to why they felt the need to remove anonymity from the game with the removal of the global/local wall? Some of us actually liked having a bit of seperation between player and characters.
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Removed due to content although QFT
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
The hotlinks seem broken cross-coalition. Likewise, you can't click the name of someone who speaks in Coalition from another SG. And the colors in Coalitions are all kinds of screwy.
Jerk 4 Life
In brightest day, in blackest night/No evil shall escape my sight/Let those who worship evil's might/Beware my power ... Green Lantern's light!/(Meowth, that's right!)
My Arcs: #4827: Earth For Humans. #6391: Young Love.
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Can we get a rationale from the devs as to why they felt the need to remove anonymity from the game with the removal of the global/local wall? Some of us actually liked having a bit of seperation between player and characters.
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What removal of anonymity? All they removed was the illusion that you where anonymous. The tools to find out your global existed all along and could be used by anyone who was aware of them.
Essentially all they have done is made the tools for this a bit more obvious.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
Did they ever make any changes that let you really hide when you log in? Fer'instance, if I want to log in a character for just a second to check something, any friends and such will get the message "heroname is now online" before you get any change to hide. It never made much sense to me that you didn't have the option to hide BEFORE you log in, since your appearance is recorded and displayed for all your friends to see. Is this still a problem?
Hey, sometimes you want to check stuff out and don't have time to chat...
(Liberty) Trick Dacy - Forge Steel - Hypother Mia
(Freedom) Folgus Sprit
(Infinity) Marcus Solomon
(Protector) Thylacine
(Justice) Ashkicker - Revile
I logged onto my main character:
I globally went hidden (to test it)
I was hiding from everything possible, all settings.
I logged off and immediately logged onto another character.
I was completely visible.
I *Should* have been still globally hidden but locally available.
When I typed in to locally hide, I noticed I was globally unhidden again.
This has been repeated for seven characters so far. The server side is not keeping track of the global hide feature any longer.
Seems they need to check into this ... or... I am misunderstanding the way the new system works now.
Member of Team Awesome���
Justice Server
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This has been repeated for seven characters so far. The server side is not keeping track of the global hide feature any longer.
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Its stored on a per-character basis now.
"We all lose in the end, that is the intention" --Emanuel Lasker
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<ul type="square">[*] Added "Spam" Button to email window. It will ignore the sender as a spammer and delete the email.[/list]
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Does this also take care of whatever is necessary behind the scenes to report the spammer/incident? Or should we still be filing petitions in addition to using this new button?
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<ul type="square">[*] Added "Spam" Button to email window. It will ignore the sender as a spammer and delete the email.[/list]
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Does this also take care of whatever is necessary behind the scenes to report the spammer/incident? Or should we still be filing petitions in addition to using this new button?
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Yes. It ignores the sender (their global, from what my chat log has been telling me) as a spammer. So just click that button for e-mails, and also left-click the spammer's name and select "ignore as spammer" for any tells you may get.
Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
...why would GLOBAL hide be stored per-character?
So every time I log onto a new character if I want to hide I have to ASAP hit /ghide before someone notices me? :/
What shall claim a Sky Kings' Ransom?
PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
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...why would GLOBAL hide be stored per-character?
So every time I log onto a new character if I want to hide I have to ASAP hit /ghide before someone notices me? :/
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Because:
- someone might not want every character they have to be hidden
- you might be sharing an account with someone else, and their characters might not want to be hidden, but yours do
- if you don't want to talk to your friends, just ignore their tells and hide. They'll think you logged off again, unless they see you physically.
- because the /hide feature should be defaulted to unhidden. It's not a feature a lot of folks would use regularly, so why have it default to hidden with one command?
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
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Character slots in the character selection screen can now be reorganized by dragging and dropping. The sort order is stored in a file on the client, but only if "Remember Account Name is checked on the Log-in Screen
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The information is NOT stored on the client. It is stored on your local hard drive, as a file named playerslot.txt. While it remembers the character order, it STILL ignores the first character on your list, and automatically selects the character that was ORIGINALLY at the top of the list, pre-I12.
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Added option to disable loading tips in the options window.
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This does not work. I disabled them, and I still get them every time I load a mission.
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The mouse scroll wheel will now affect scrollbars when the mouse is over a scrollable area. This can be disabled in the options window.
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Based on moving the slider for the Scroll Speed, and seeing a number in green, it seems that the default is 20, but it starts at 1. If 20 is the default, shouldn't it be set to that?
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From the Closed and Open Beta process folks really seemed to love the Quality of Life game play improvements.
Give us your feedback about the QOL/UI improvements from Issue 12
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Other than the above, I'm very happy with the QoL/UI improvments of I12! Great job, devs!
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Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:
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This has been repeated for seven characters so far. The server side is not keeping track of the global hide feature any longer.
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Its stored on a per-character basis now.
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Awesome. 
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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Character slots in the character selection screen can now be reorganized by dragging and dropping. The sort order is stored in a file on the client, but only if "Remember Account Name is checked on the Log-in Screen
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The information is NOT stored on the client. It is stored on your local hard drive, as a file named playerslot.txt. While it remembers the character order, it STILL ignores the first character on your list, and automatically selects the character that was ORIGINALLY at the top of the list, pre-I12.
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Just for clarification, your local hard drive IS the client. The NCSoft hard drives (and computers) are the server, your computer is the client.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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Character slots in the character selection screen can now be reorganized by dragging and dropping. The sort order is stored in a file on the client, but only if "Remember Account Name is checked on the Log-in Screen
[/ QUOTE ]
The information is NOT stored on the client. It is stored on your local hard drive, as a file named playerslot.txt. While it remembers the character order, it STILL ignores the first character on your list, and automatically selects the character that was ORIGINALLY at the top of the list, pre-I12.
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Just for clarification, your local hard drive IS the client. The NCSoft hard drives (and computers) are the server, your computer is the client.
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Yep. Glad I refreshed, so I can just go QFT instead of double posting.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
What happened to indented word wrap? It makes it hard to tell at a glance one text string from another. It actually hurts my eyes now a bit to read the chat windows.
For example, before it was like this:
[Channel Name] {Global/Character name}: "Text......................
----->"More text.............................................. ..................
----->"More text............................."
Now its like this:
[Channel Name] {Global/Character name}: "Text.....................
.................................................. ....................................
............................."
Before you could easily make out a conversation between multiple people, now it feels like everything is a run-on sentence. Please give us the option to change it back to the original functionally.
<AR>
You know I haven't seen anyone mention either in a beta thread or here. This one...
Yeah someone fixed the bio section of the character creator so you can backspace in it without it going nuts.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
I thought I noticed that too, but on going a little deeper I don't thin it's *totally* fixed. It only goes crazy if you do a lot of deletions while jumping around, and not when you are deleting from the end of the text. This is still a huge improvement.
Well I tend to typo like mad and backspace a lot to fix it. This normally makes doing my bio semi frustrating. I just finished creating my newest villain Dracoterranis and realized I had done all that backspacing to fix words and not had it go wonky on me once. Even if it still does it occasionally this is a vast improvement to it.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
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Character slots in the character selection screen can now be reorganized by dragging and dropping. The sort order is stored in a file on the client, but only if "Remember Account Name is checked on the Log-in Screen
[/ QUOTE ]
The information is NOT stored on the client. It is stored on your local hard drive, as a file named playerslot.txt. While it remembers the character order, it STILL ignores the first character on your list, and automatically selects the character that was ORIGINALLY at the top of the list, pre-I12.
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Just for clarification, your local hard drive IS the client. The NCSoft hard drives (and computers) are the server, your computer is the client.
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When I think client, I think the updater. Silly me. However, problem I mentioned still exists. As well, there's this problem:
Sorting characters, then going back to the Server Selection screen, selecting another server, doing NOTHING, returning to the Server Selection screen, and going back to the first server will reset your character sorting order back to pre-I12 defaults.
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Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:
Can you put back the line breaks in SG Motd field in SG settings? I used to be able to format the sg motd with line breaks, now the entire field became one long word-wrapped wall of text. 
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Character slots in the character selection screen can now be reorganized by dragging and dropping. The sort order is stored in a file on the client, but only if "Remember Account Name is checked on the Log-in Screen
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The information is NOT stored on the client. It is stored on your local hard drive, as a file named playerslot.txt. While it remembers the character order, it STILL ignores the first character on your list, and automatically selects the character that was ORIGINALLY at the top of the list, pre-I12.
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I am finding that it is not stored AT ALL. "Remember Account Name" checked or unchecked, nothing I do will force the client to remember the new character order. The thing is bugged and not working. The new order will remain until you quit the client or log any character, but then reverts to the pre-patch default order. And I also am seeing that, for the brief time that the list remains rearranged, the oldest character on the server is still the highlighted one when you choose that server, regardless of where you've dragged it.
User Interface:
<ul type="square">[*] Character slots in the character selection screen can now be reorganized by dragging and dropping. The sort order is stored in a file on the client, but only if "Remember Account Name is checked on the Log-in Screen.[*] Added Hide Delete Recipe prompt option to Options window.[*] Added option to display a rating from a Player Note above the players head in the options window. (Note: All ratings or notes you create about other players are only viewable by the writer. Others do not see them.)[*] Added option to disable loading tips in the options window.[*] The mouse scroll wheel will now affect scrollbars when the mouse is over a scrollable area. This can be disabled in the options window.[*] Missions headers now show the level of the mission.[*] Auction house inventory now shows count of slots used / slots total.[*] Kicking a member from supergroup or removing a global friend via button-click will present a confirmation dialog.[*] Disable Camera Shake Option Added (found in options window)[/list] Contact List Improvements
<ul type="square">[*] Contacts can now be sorted by the contacts name, name of the zone, and contact relationship. All contacts that are active will appear in the active tab.[*] Added Broker Tab for Villains and a Detective Tab for Heroes to Contact User Interface.[*] When sorting Contacts by Zone, contacts in the current zone will always appear at the top.[*] In all sorts, Contacts with missions you are currently on will always appear at the top.[/list]
Fixed Bugs<ul type="square">[*] Fixed a rare bug that could cause the main "health bar" window to vanish.[*] A couple small additions to help improve performance for dial-up users:[*] Added Option to disable combat numbers on power buff icons[*] Added Option to disable sending buff information altogether[/list]Email
<ul type="square">[*] Added "Spam" Button to email window. It will ignore the sender as a spammer and delete the email.[/list]Power Trays
<ul type="square">[*] Eight additional power trays added which can be accessed by clicking the + sign on the upper-right of the Power Tray Interface or via commands (/show tray1, /show tray2, show tray3, etc).[*] These trays have no jelly to click on, but can be dragged about by clicking on non-occupied slots or dead space.[*] These trays are deformable.[*] Added command /clear_tray which will remove all non-macros from all power trays.[/list]Player Notes
<ul type="square">[*] You may now rate players and write notes about them.[*] The notes are stored by global name.[*] The note list is stored locally on your computer and will bring up the same notes for any character you play with.[*] Only you will see the Player Notes that you write and ratings you give. Since these notes are stored locally on your computer, other players cannot see your notes and ratings.
**Conversely, you will not be able to see any Player Notes or ratings that other players may have written about you.[*] It can be invoked by typing /playernote <name> or by clicking "Add Note" on context menus.[*] There is a new option to display the rating you've given a player above their name.[*] Additionally, you can enable private message logging to store private message logs on a per global name basis.[/list]In-Depth Power Information
Detailed Power Information is now available at Power Selection, Level up, Respec, and Enhancement placing screen as well as a new tab in the info window. This information shows the powers basic data along with every effect the power has.
<ul type="square">[*] There is a slider to see the effect of the power across all levels.[*] There is a class selector to see how the power would perform for each class.[*] There is a PvP toggle to see how powers will change in PvP.[*] Powers that spawn pets will show all powers the pets use and their effects.[/list]
From the Closed and Open Beta process folks really seemed to love the Quality of Life game play improvements.
Give us your feedback about the QOL/UI improvements from Issue 12