Old Complaints ~or~ 'A More Perfect Superhero Simulator'

I think Villains get off a little bit easier with that. There are a number of normal AND unlockable contacts that run up to and including 50, like Viridian, Shadow Spider, Television, etc. I still have three arcs running on Alpha, since I've not finished them. And then I'll have more to do.

Heroes, though, do suffer quite bad. The Hero-side lvl 50 content is...well...painful? The Old Praetorian stuff is literally maps of monotonous Defeat All, with the odd glowy in it. I don't really ever get to that point anymore, since my other high-levelers are parked in RWZ, happy to kick alien armour plated backside.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

There is an appeals process. You can submit a support ticket about the issue, and escalate it to someone able to arbitrate a decision. As for fairness in enforcement, well... part of the enforcement, as far as we know, is simply the discretion of the GM that answers the petition. You may not like it, but I personally would prefer such discretion to a rigid set of rules laid out.

No it doesn't. CYA means doing what it takes to keep the company out of trouble.

It is the case. Anyone who gets genericed has the opportunity to get a new (non-generic) name. Anyone who walks around with a generic name has it entirely through their own fault.

I guess I'm just not offensive enough to know these things. I shall endeavor to be offensive in the future.

All they have to do is check thier out-of-game Email and respond to the auto-send form letter with thier next three choices for a name.
They're only "stuck" if they choose to run around with GEneric3453 to try to protest the unfairness (in thier eyes) of being generic'ed.

Let's say that many folks don't know of this policy. How many of them never check thier Email?

I cannot agree here, and never have. There's nothing worse than thinking "Oh, hey, these two pieces I've used on two other characters would look REALLY cool together!" only to open up the editor and realise they actually clip too badly for anyone to wear. And then you go into the game, spot someone who DID wear them anyway, shake your head, and then everything in the game looks twice as ugly for the rest of the day. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather they kept as many of the clipping pieces out of the game as they could, because, ultimately, I expect a high-quality game that does not PERMIT anything which looks technically bad. I'd rather leave it up to the players to pick what looks good, not what merely works at all, and work off that much smaller pool of options.

To be quite honest, it always bothers me more that I can pick an option that SHOULD look good, but doesn't because of clipping, than it satisfies me when I find an option which shouldn't work but does. Yes, that means I am more pissed off that my long-haired characters should be able to use capes but can't thanks to clipping than I am that my High Collar cape characters have access to exactly two sets of shoulders that don't look terrible with that cape. "Let the players sort it out" is probably the worst policy a developer can have, as far as I'm concerned, because allowing the players to create horrible ugliness is simply bad for business. With every crappy clipping piece I find in this game, I like the graphics that much less.

As far as using trenchcoats and wings or multiple cape systems, that's a performance concern. I've not enough knowledge to guess how justified that is, but I don't think simply dismissing that is a smart move, especially since we're only guessing. It amounts to accusing the developers of utter ineptitude or outright lies, and that's not a step I'm prepared to take without some solid evidence behind it.

As far as the rest of the thread goes, those are, and it pains me to say this, minor problems. Quality of Life, one might say. Mis-matching colours and textures are always going to be a pain, but I'm not terribly upset at being limited in terms of colour. I honestly have no use for a hundred shades of red that all look the same, and this would just make matching colours exactly anywhere between impossible to needlessly cumbersome. I wouldn't be against opening up a few of the forbidden shapes and even allowing skin colours, but I doubt that'll happen. Between purists and juvenile idiots, that's just a bad call to make.

I can't really disagree with anything here, but on the grand list of things I want to expand on, they are pretty low in priority. I'd put more basic things like more costume pieces (jet packs, say), dynamic lights and a better text editor higher up, and that's with me thinking while half-asleep.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Yes, the "real" reason, indeed.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Speaking of ears, why on earth isn't there a "no ears" option for the full tights on the head? I was making a character and realized that if I wanted tights over his head, I'd still have his ears poking through them in all their glory. I could make them elf ears or vampire ears or goofy long imp ears but they had to be ears

Because devs hate... their own game?

... I can't say that with a straight face.

Can't you do human ears (or really any type, but human are smallest), and use the option to make it look like the head mask is covering your ears?

Eh on a technical level, i disagree. they set the limit, as i understand, because multiple animated costume bits tax systems, particularly lower end ones pretty badly. my experience with champions suggests that there is truth to this, though that may be a comparison too distant to make. but while i had a outfit that looked very good on my plant tom using the bolero and wings, i understnad that it can be inconsiderate to knowingly take adantage of a mistake that could compromise the enjoyment of a teammate for my own vanity. So while id prefer it didnt exist and we could have animated tails and hair with a trenchcoat and wings, It does make sense.

Sadly, no. Even if you cover the face fully and use, say, the robot face (which has no ears), the mask, usually the bottom hafl details, such as ninja masks, etc, will still bend to allow for ears that are no longer there. In essence, there will be sticky out bits where there would be ears if you had ears there...which you dont...
Yes, it hurts my cerebral core too >_<

As to the two animated thingers rule...alright, fair doos. I guess I get so sick of the 'clipping rule' (and Jay) that I immediately flip the switch into RAGE mode as soon as I see it written down
Hm....what about making things like trenchcoats and tails (if we ever get animated ones...and hair ) have two 'values' I guess...one that animates, and one that is 'solid', like the current tails and all other jackets? That way, if your system can handle multiple objects, you can have it on, if not, turn it off?
Although I guess that'd still double, if not triple the data the server had to send...I think?
I hate being tech ignorant! >_<

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Can't you just pick the Tights texture for ears and have them match the colour of the mask? Or are you talking about removing the ears as a 3D model?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Removing them as a 3D model. If I have a character with red tights over his head (and maybe some eye/mouth holes), he still has goofy fully-modeled red ears poking out of the side of his head. Which makes it look less like tights and more like someone spray painted his head.

Maybe this is a common comics thing, I dunno, but it looks silly. Minor gripe from me though since I rarely use that head option but I noticed it the other day.

There is an option to do this, it just isn't mapped to a key by default. Go into the keymapping under the camera section and you'll find it. I've got a pair of standard keys on all my characters that deal with this. The first one puts the camera centered behind the character (distance doesn't change) and the second one turns the character to match the camera view. Both are very handy.

I'd love a better variety of colors with say the old 256-color palette available for both skin and costume... but then I don't see the big deal with skin-colored tights either. How is that different than some of the stuff we see now?

And heck YES! Why does the skin color bleed through on some colors? It makes white very hard to use.

I'd also love for the interface to be less clunky. The "right-click on person vs name" bringing up different options is especially annoying but some of the other stuff mentioned is almost as bad.

Don't EVEN get me started on boleros and wings *grumbles*

For my own pet peeves:
* Contacts red side are badly handled and the bug where the brokers/detectives give you expired contacts if you happen to be a level that's evenly divisible by 5 makes it worse.
* Task Forces all require too many people to start, most should be cut in half.
* Task Forces should allow you to move the star around freely.
* Fix the store screens so hovering over stuff will tell you what you are buying or selling. This used to work and got broken somewhere along the line.
* Almost forgot and related to the OP - let us introduce others in our party to our contact. That would mostly solve the problem of parties not being able to run arcs for merits. And most of all - ALL ARCS SHOULD GIVE MISSIONS OUT IN THE SAME ORDER!

But all in all, those are minor things that I don't mind too much. The game is pretty awesome despite a few petty annoyances.

Should be noted that there's a secondary issue that's far more annoying than this, which is the shorthand inconsistencies between recipes and crafted enhancements. I can deal with the Market server being slow, I understand that. The naming inconsistencies though...that just seems like sloppy work.

I wish that could go away and die a cold, lonely death.

Now these complaints I can get behind. Not having to remain fullscreen in AE was a shocking and greatly appreciated surprise.

A secondary bonus that could come with a costume creator UI upgrade would be a comparison window, as in, take an instant "save" of one costume and compare it to what you're working on actively.

Mainly because they confuse and frighten the people at the USCO and USPTO.

Additionally, the devs aren't really suited for the task of solving the horrendous problem with IP law in general. It sucks but unless you're planning to get into a position capable of fixing the problems...

They are as specific as they can be.

Too specific = Easily abused.
Too generic = Impossible to enforce.

The rules seem to have hit a nice balance, at least in my view, but when your ("universal" you) toon is sitting on the dividing line, any compromise probably isn't likely to make you happy. And based on what I've seen reported, the GMs are generally pretty willing to work with you if the complaint was bogus and flagged inappropriately.

And for the most part, I'd (completely pulling this statement out of my ***) have to imagine it's actually pretty hard to "accidentally" copy an existing IP with the existing system. Most of the popular media that's relevant to this discussion is so incredibly integrated with the gaming culture that I'd honestly say you're lying if you're playing this game and haven't heard of the larger names.

Unless it's obviously a ripoff, I don't really care what people do with their toons and the toons' appearances. But even then, all they're going to get from me is open mocking for their created failure.

CoH has, to put it bluntly, an assload of potential character slots for a reason.

Honestly, I can't actually offer any solutions to this because I'm just not able to really justify the issue in my mind. CoH simply hasn't been designed over the last years to expand "upward", so that's probably why the complaint just doesn't work for me. Level 60 isn't likely to happen (that said, level 50"+" has been discussed regarding the universal slots and other similar things).

Positron is also at a low level and not everyone likes to lose their powers (and it's likely to get nailed, probably the hardest of all, in the next round of averaging, alongwith everything else unfortunately). I wouldn't say it's due to an uninteresting story or whatever, I'd say it's more due to those two TFs each being a posterchild for extremely poor design (Positron kind of feeling a little lame for not having any sort of "real" boss fight and Dr. Q for having you run the same three missions over and over).

As for running for speed to get the reward... Who are you to judge other people and their method of enjoying the game? I revel in trying to maximize speed while mocking the people that "require" prefabricated conditions to get the same or worse performance (kind of like that thread claiming the LRSF Phalanx encounter is too hard).

The search browser's irritatingly limited design.

Improvements I'd like to see to it:

(a) The ability to hide people that are already teamed from the list ("Truncated to 50 from 358 found? GREAT! Except their names are all m***********g grey on this list!").

(b) The ability to designate the search area as "local" so I don't have to hunt my location from the dropdown menu (preferably a button next to the dropdown menu that can be clicked without messing with the menu itself). Additionally, I don't recall since I haven't been on in awhile but I seem to recall searching a zone like "The Hive n" gets to be kind of wonky.

(c) Self-defined level parameters. I don't want the 41-44s on my search. Or even the 45s or 46s!

(d) As a continuation to the function provided by (a), the ability to advertise my team, or more specifically, the ability to put my team on a large list of teams that could be searched by other people, sort of like a more literal version of "looking for team" where you actually get to look at a list of teams. (And of course, the ability to hide my team from the list, however the list itself should default to "on" so the function doesn't go entirely forgotten like the LFG flags people can put up on the existing list or ignored like global channels by those unacquainted with it.) Also, it'd be nice to be able to advertise to a self-defined amount, maybe even down to the team's character list if it were possible.

(e) This one's a bit of a pipe dream because of the myriad of tricks that make it impossible to define the condition but if someone is AFK, I'd like the system to designate it on the list.

If nothing else, (a) is extremely unobtrusive for development and I'd really...really appreciate if I could get that tiny increase to my degree of control.
And if I could have only one thing on that list, then (d) is probably my biggest desire.

I have heard of a few characters getting generic'd because they just happened to share names with obscure Marvel characters that showed up in three whole issues in the 70s. And speaking for myself, I know approximately zilch about comics. There are actually quite a few of us non-comic-fans knocking around. Yeah, everybody knows Batman and Spiderman, but there are a lot of characters like Deadpool that I didn't know about when I started playing--plenty popular enough to get you generic'd if you get too close to them, but not popular enough that non-comic fans know about them.

From what I've seen, just matching the name is enough at times, even for relatively obscure characters. Most of the incidents I recall happened in the first year or two of the game, though, so their criteria might have gotten a little saner since.

I liked your mention of the Tailor/Enhancement GUI problems.

I have one big QoL issue which, if fixed, would make me very happy.

The costume change window.

I would like it much more if the costume selection window was "sticky," like so many other elements of the GUI are, so you could place it on a certain part of your screen and it still open in that location the next time instead of always opening dead center, completely blocking the change you'd just called for. I'd also have the window close by default once a choice has been made to make it easier to see what your CCEmote looks like. While I'm at it, I'd have the choice in the dropdown CCEmote menu be sticky, as well, saving each toon's preferred change emote.

d

I actually tested this before the break. Using similar NPC models with different number of cape FX systems. Here are the results:

• 100 NPCs - 0 capes = 48% loss in frame rate
• 100 NPCs - 1 cape = 75% loss in frame rate
• 100 NPCs - 3 capes = 92% loss in frame rate

So yes, there is a reason that we don't want players loading themselves down with multiple cape systems.