Question: Future Issues- Fixes- your view?

Honestly, considering Synapse is a victim of Crey, he should have been the contact for the Crey silliness instead of Manticore; put Manticore in charge of a low level Legacy Chain investigation then direct yourself to Sister Psyche after his Task Force is complete. Voilà, problem solved and you can probably still get Gearsmasher through missions or hunts.

Except that Crey hides behind legalities, and exposing them requires you to break the law. Manticore is rich enough to convince the law to look the other way, while Synapse is not.

Wouldn't a Wyvern investigation be more in Manticore's wheelhouse than Legacy Chain?

-Gate

Agreed. As much as I hate to mention the 200 Pound Gorilla, the Gorilla did a revamp (a few total reworks, but it's mostly just updating all the old quests to the standards expected of the the year 2010) of all it's old zones, and came out much the better for it. I'm not saying CoX needs it's own Cataclysm (that would be stupid), but polishing the old zones a tad, along with smoothing out those very interesting but tedious old arcs? Heavens yes.

While i look forward to more incarnate system to be opened up, saying everything else is a low priority is wrong on alot of levels ( not wrong you said it, but the idea of them being low priority) yes alot of people have asked for post 50 content and thats fine, but as this games about the journey to 50 spending a issue or so to get low lvl shaken'd up would benifit us all in the long run. thats why i said for now issue 22 23 cos it gives them time to get out incarnate system.

not worth sorting it now inorder in the long run to get lots more new stuff?
though at times, im excatly like that.

theres been loads of problems/issues dating back many issues that havent been fixed tho, thats why spending one or 2 issues could sort out those bugs- up to a specific issue ofc..i.e looking back from issue 1-17 and see what bugs there are that players notice and hate

you can add fixing the writing bug in our bio's, the cursor loves to jump around when trying to write your own story.

Spot on.. i'v had mixed views on this view. some love the sight seeing thinking bugs will be fixed in time and therefore made them enjoy the city around them. while others have hated leveling a charc cos it has a few issues or 2 and cos of that didnt take in the sights of the city..



yer but when u got bugs dating back many issues you kinda want them fixed while the new ones could wait when looking at it as time:bug

na we dont need something like cataclysm, but other games who have revamped old stuff in a good way has always been welcoming..
just a matter of..get lot done in a issue or 2 or 3 ( i dont know how long it takes to do this kind of stuff yet) or spend 5-8 issues slowly doing stuff (maybe more) while releasing more stuff..tho the longer it takes, the more that could prob up.
...........
This is what i expected really. alot of people wanting fixes and changes of the old Cyptic system.
but not all people want a issue or 2 to solve them thinking its possible to get revamps/bug fixes etc sorted as well as release new content for players ( ok not saying tht isnt possible)

IF devs were to do something like this i do think it would be best for the devs to open a thread specific to: what bugs are there in game that you like us to look at? and what revamps would you like the most?

Okay, pet AI. You get your new Synapse TF and run it with your Heroic mastermind. And while you're trying to play that new content, your henchmen are disobeying or ignoring commands, spawning as uncontrolled entities, getting stuck in terrain, disco dancing on stairs six spawns behind you, running into melee flaming patches of death in melee range so they can use their 80' ranged attacks and doing any of the numerous other mind-numbingly stupid things they do because of the bugs in the pet AI. How much are you really going to enjoy that new content if you're incapable of actually participating in it because you're too busy trying to work around problems stemming from bugs?

If your house has a short in the electrical wiring, leaky plumbing or dry rot in the support beams, slapping a new coat of paint on it isn't going to prevent that faulty wiring from eventually shorting out and burning your house down, or your basement from flooding, or the floor from collapsing when the supports disintegrate. Yes, pet AI might break again six months down the road. That doesn't mean it should be ignored, it means it should be more thoroughly investigated and better fixes to the problems implemented. And yes, new bugs are going to be introduced. That also doesn't mean old bugs should be ignored, it means there needs to be a tighter focus on quality, rather than churning out content that players can't enjoy because the bugs are preventing them from playing it.

Every bug is critical. Unless you solo exclusively, every bug will be critical to you sooner or later, because you will be exposed to the effects of those bugs at some point in time. Bugs don't have to set the servers on fire or cause a worldwide brownout to be critical, they just have to negatively impact the experience of playing the game, and they do negatively impact everyone. If not directly, then indirectly as a result of teaming with someone who is directly affected by bugs which make their powers unusable or useless, missions which cannot be completed, AI issues, etc.

"I don't see the point" is short-sighted. It's like saying that you don't care if your neighbor's apartment is on fire. Your apartment might not be burning yet, but is it really wise to just sit there and ignore it, hope it's extinguished before it affects you? And when your apartment is engulfed in flames, would it bother you if no-one lifted a finger to help because they "didn't see the point"?

And should be dealt with promptly, not ignored for years, if ever fixed at all.

Yeah, you know what else negatively affects me, along with everyone else I play with? Defeat all enemies in warehouse (Peregrine Island) > Defeat all enemies in warehouse (Skyway City) > Take artifact to Azuria > find blinky in giant warehouse (Faultline) > hunt 40 Carnies in PI. I'd rather have Lingering Radiation not slow as it should (and I do actually have two /Rad Corruptors, so I'm affected by this bug directly) if that runaround could be condensed into two solid missions in a single appropriate zone.

And I would MUCH rather have that runaround condensed into two missions than have it remain as is while the devs spend a month trying to figure out why Lingering Rad isn't working properly, failing, and fixing nothing.

So yeah. Negative impact =/= critical. If a mission is bugged I can abandon and reset or autocomplete it. It will inconvenience me for a few minutes. If the Synapse Task Force is too long and boring it will inconvenience me for hours. If it's so long and boring nobody wants to do it with me it will inconvenience me for more hours. If it's so long and boring I decide it's not worth doing it will inconvenience me forever, since I can't get Task Force Commander without it.

I will say that missions with fancy new mechanics on unique maps are more prone to bugging, and shouldn't be used unless there is time to thoroughly test them.

I'm in kind of the same boat. I actually like the older content, missions and storylines, and I worry that "revamping" them will just destroy those stories. I've seen the level of "quality" of the newer writing. I still have nightmares about Roy Cooling's arc, and that god damn Montague Castanella. Who wrote this stuff? And to this day, I find the old Faultline FAR more impressive than the new one. I liked the chasms, and I see no reason why they couldn't have added bridges and elevators without flooding three quarters of the zone's total height. They could have left the hazard part be down in the gulleys and left topside safe.

However, I DO want to see a focus on fixing what's broke in current content, and actually finishing a lot of what they started. This Neuron approach to design where you start up a feature, then leave it hanging half-way through in pursuit of the next new shiny has to stop. The whole game is becoming one giant collection of half-features, bugged missions and terrible writing, to the point where even previously GOOD stories are destroyed by newer ones that contradict them and previously working mechanics no longer work. Just as an idle example, my "double" in the last instance from Agent Keith Nancy doesn't present any dialogue. He/she just runs off as soon as he/she turns blue.

There are animation bugs (Build Up puts you in a "fake" combat stance that messes up animations), there are effects bugs (custom forcefields do not align to the character properly), there are contact bugs (Robert Flores' dialogue still spits out all in one window), there are text bugs (Maria Jenkins' "Ask about this contact" info is still rife with typos and bad grammar), there is horrible writing (Montague Castanella has the propensity to say "want to?" a lot), there are mission bugs (if you log out while protecting "The Ghoul King," when you return the mission will be uncompletable), there are half-finished systems (powerset proliferation, power customization, base building), there are half-finished storylines (so what about them Devouring Earth? Who is Tub Chi?), there are costume bugs (Scales skin not available for Monster glove on Robotic Arm 3, Organic Sword for dual blades misaligned with one hand), there's just so much to do, fix or finish... And yet we keep getting "new" stuff while the old stuff is left to dangle.

At one point one of the developers said that they'd rather make new zones, because revamping old zones took as much work. This was done at the time of the unnecessarily complete Faultline revamp. Later, War Witch said that with the War Zone revamp, they could redo the zone or redo the stories, and begrudgingly they chose to redo the story. My response to that was "Well, duh!" The Rikti Crash Site was good enough. Boomtown is good enough. Dark Astoria, Terra Volta, Eden, the Shadow Shard - ALL of these zones are good enough. You don't have to make new zones to replace the old, perfectly functional zones. What they need is more content put into them, and maybe a slight change to a SMALL part of each one. More Mole Points in the Shard, that small reconstruction area in Boomtown, something-something in Terra Volta and so on.

Years ago, a player posed the question: Wouldn't you rather have NEW powersets than to have proliferation/customization for the old sets? To this, my answer is "No, I would not." Will a new powerset for my Scrappers give them the ability to fight in melee with ice powers or protect themselves with armour made of ice? Of course not! Ice Melee and Ice Armour already exist. Only I can't use them for my Scrappers. Instead, I'm bound to get something specific an esoteric, like Gunblades or Rikti Melee or Ball and Chain. I want to use the existing sets on more characters. Furthermore, a new set won't give me a green Ring of Fire on a Scrapper, and it won't give him a red Dark Blast, at least I can't think of a set that will do that, especially one that can stack ON TOP of Dark Melee or Broadsword.

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I would never support an Issue which is entirely "bug fixes." That would be a colossal mistake. However, I do want and indeed expect bug fixes and the completion (or at least progression) of previous projects to be a large part of every Issue. I don't need completely new stuff coming out of left field, when the old stuff sits half-built and gathering cob webs and making friends with tumbleweeds.

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.

Hee. Neuron approach, I like that a lot Sam

I totally agree too, our development team simply seem to lose focus far to easily chasing the next new shiny before they've even resolved / finished off the current one.

As for bug fixes they should be done between issues. And there should be some indication from the development team as to what they have on their radar in terms of known bugs. As-is reporting bugs seems like firing mails at a black hole sometimes. I'm not asking for a dedicated ETA of when they'll be resolved, or statuses of each bug, but simple acknowledging the fact that, for example, Pet AI has been borked for nearly a year now (since City of De-moos) and they're aware of the impact it is having on ranged pets would be something.

Henchmen tend to be alright. The worst effects I've found are the knock-on ones on Controller, Domi and Blaster pets. Phantasm for example is pretty badly affected because he has a cone with knockback and the ability to summon his own aggrobot illusion within his perception range.

Mind you it's made my Plant Pet a bit better since she'll use her bite attack more.

*I cannot customise my Poison Gas Trap because the summoned gas cloud does not take custom colours and is always blue.

*I cannot customise my forcefields, because when they do, they become displaced and ugly.

*I cannot level up my Fire/Fire Brute because the Fire Epic cannot be customized.

*Every time I use Build Up without having entered into combat mode, my character enters as weird "fake" combat mode where he or she will drop back to idle after every attack, interrupting animations.

*Certain characters will be prevented from using inspirations after using an Awaken and before they fully get up, causing them to be rekilled and unable to awaken, while others won't be so limited.

*If you talk to the Ghoul King, die and log out, then the mission becomes uncompletable.

*If you get stuck in the trench behind the Terra Volta Reactor Complex without jump of flight powers, you can never get out.

*In the Chantry, Storm Palace and their copy in Black Swan's Shadow Earth, you cannot use reticle targeting, making summons and pseudopet powers like Ignite and Caltrops unsuable

*Stalker Placate is still ineffective if the placated character has a prior effect applied on them, such as the secondary effects on your attacks.

*A Stalker Placate can be broken by the character you are placating attacking you at just the right time, which happens quite often.

*A Stalker on a team will be attacked and his Hide broken if a team-mate attacks a spawn, even if that Stalker takes no action.

*Mastermind henchmen are idiots.

*Thugs will still not show upgraded costumes if upgraded too fast.

*There are still no Shiny Tights, and now no Animal Fur, on Large and Banded boots.

*There are no "short" versions of any of the Origin capes, the Valkyrie cape or any of the Magic Pack capes.

*Praetoria's contact introduction always consists of the "This contact I have introduced you to should blah blah blah" placeholder which was never fixed.

*If a team-mate is the first to enter Agent Keith Nancy's final mission, "your" double will be a double of said team-mate.

*The double in Keith Nancy's final mission is supposed to have dialogue. That dialogue is no longer available, as the double flees as soon as the fight is over.

*Robert Flores' mission to hack three cameras only lets you hack one, at which point the mission is over, giving you a clue detailing how you hacked three.

*Masterminds will, by their very presence, cause bosses and elite bosses to run away wildly, reducing iconic fights into the Benny Hill show ending. And that bites.

*You can still override power animations by hovering, moving forward, using Build Up or an inspiration and never stopping to move. I've reported this multiple times and even been moderated for it, and nothing has happened to it.

*NPC dialogue, especially from the Launch era, is still rife with ugly, illiterate typos that even a cursory read would have caught.

*Angus McQueen's story to prevent a second Rikti invasion makes no sense when the second Rikti invasion has clearly happened in the Rikti War Zone.

*Crimson and Indigo's secrecy no longer matters, since Roy Cooling makes it clear that knowledge of the Malta Group is quite public. Before him, Ancient Roman Daedalus seems to know about them off-hand.

*Harvey Maylor's secrecy about the leader of the Carnival of Shadows' true identity makes no sense, since Tina McIntyre's arc reveals that to be Vanessa DeVore for absolutely no reason.

*Neither the Reichsman TF nor the Reichsman SF make any god damn sense, in our out of context.

*The storyline of the Column vs. Council struggle is irrational and illogical, and no attempt has ever been made to fix it.

*Kheldian White/Black Dwarf form has high magnitude status protection when active and can be activated while held, but if you are held WHILE it is activating, it is interrupted.

*You are unable to disable ANY toggle when held, including Hover so as to land, or Rest, so as to get out of a ten-times-duration hold, if you rest with one while your click status protection times out.

*Hunting 50 Carnival of Shadows performers in Peregrine Island still exists, and several times over. There can't be this many on the entire zone.

*Mission entrances still send you to Architect Entertainment or, worse still, to Monster Island.

*Clicking on a Longbow helicopter pilot and selecting a destination still leaves you waiting for over 10 seconds before anything happens.

*The game still spawns ambushes without staggering waves in many missions, causing multiple waves to appear on top of you simultaneously.

*Sister Airlia's mission to protect Ghost Widow can still be taken at level 35, but both the Ballista and the ambush of that mission never spawn below level 40.

*Devouring Earth creatures spawning level 45 and up have no variety other than just Granites and Sentries.

*Missions will still occasionally spawn enemies 2, 3 and even 4 levels below their set level, even when said enemies exist at the mission's set level.

*Protean still attacks the "dead" scientists in the last mission of Leonard's arc.

*The PPD Sergeant who's supposed to help you in Roy Cooling's second mission is still unable to get past the sewer entrance and disappears.

*Enemies still get into the walls of caves and the ceilings of office buildings, making them unhittable.

*Masterminds still sporadically lose ownership of their henchmen when zoning, including losing the ability to unsummon them short of using /releasepets, which few people know about.

*When creating a new Mastermind, your default options and window settings will be loaded. If you saved those from a non-Mastermind character, you will have no pet window, and finding out how to enable that is not trivial.

*"Real" numbers still refuse to acknowledge the existence of pseudo-pet powers like Fulcrum Shift or Blizzard, giving you false stats on these powers.

*There are still NO numbers, real or otherwise, for Mastermind/Traps/Detonator. There have never been such.

*Combat Stats for toggles are still screwy, showing multiple instances of the same power and jittering as toggles stack with themselves, a problem which was NOT present when Combat Stats were introduced.

*Mastermind default binds still lack one that puts henchmen into Bodyguard mode. No explanation that this even exists is in the game anywhere that I've found.

*There is no channel select option for the Help channel, either in the chat dropdown or in the tiny chat icons above the chat line.

*The text editor for writing bios and e-mails is still completely ******, not to put too fine a point on it. It won't pass new lines, it will write symbols in memory but not put them on screen, it will refuse move the cursor properly, the cursor is hard to see, it will randomly ad tags like "br" or "nbsp;" for no reason, it will "lose" its new lines, it will write outside the text box, it won't scroll with you as you write...

*The chat line will occasionally remain open even when you've sent a message, preventing you from moving. It will also occasionally write text in memory but not display it onscreen, dumping it in the chat line the next time you go to write in it.

*The "Your reputation has grown! Go seek broker/detective!" pop-up will still randomly pop up for no justifiable reason.

*Cysts and Voids and Quantus oh my! These will keep spawning even when the Kheldians on the team have left and logged out.

*People will occasionally be set to Hidden when they did not choose to hide, causing messages to appear to bounce, necessitating that they hide for real, and then unhide.

*Global friends will still remain green even when they are offline, causing you to think they're online and sending them offline messages, instead.

*Global friends will still sporadically drop friendship, but only one-sidedly, necessitating the other side to remove said friend, and only via the Remove button, before two-sided friendship can be re-established.

*Sending a team invite to a person who's zoning, or just before he zones still cancels the invite window without giving the sender any notification.

*You still get stuck on tables, ladders and chairs without being able to jump without backing up first. You still get stuck "sliding" on the edges of buckets, waist bins and tubs on the floor.

*Teleporting to the ceiling still does not work. Red reticle of doom.

And that's just off the top of my head.

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.

The latter. People want new things. Most people would talk about how tiny the Issue was, or not even consider it an Issue because "there wasn't anything in it". I know this because we already get complaints about how little new content is released.

And bugfixes are something that should be done on a continuous basis; not as something done all at once in place of new things.

Really Sam? Not being able to customize a character PREVENTS you from playing?

While there are a couple of nasty bugs in that list, that is NOT a list of show stoppers, nor would most of them, by far, have any REAL negative impact on GAMEPLAY.

You don't like the CoH stories very much, you don't like that you cannot realize your 'vision' for your characters. I get it. These are NOT show stoppers. They do not PREVENT you from playing the game. Your pedantic attitude does though.

But, as I have posted before, I do not really want to interact with you anyway, because you are such a negative person. So, again, I see a couple that are certainly nasty, but almost all by far would never get more than a "Hmm, that's odd" from me.

How hard is this? Seriously. Most of the APP powers are copy/pasted from powers that can already be customized. I. Want. Matching. Fire. Give to Eva. Please. If you can't give to Eva, some explanation as to why would be appreciated.

If you're referring to their tendency to go charging into melee at random, all pets are idiots. At least Mastermind henchmen can be pulled back. Eventually. Not before Ghost Widow heals off that robot though.

And the Magic Pack high collar can be used with regular capes for male characters, but not for female characters.

I've also seen this happen with one of the missions from Dean. It may be a general problem with doubles.

This isn't the only mission where you're given a "required" objective that you don't have to do. There's a tip mission where you rescue a negotiator from the 5th column, the objective changes to "lead her out," a lead-out dot appears, then immediately vanishes, you are ambushed, and your objective becomes to defeat the ambush.
As does Traps.

NPC dialogue in Praetoria is worse.

Nothing happens when you click the door to the Smuggler's Ship to go to Striga. You must click it twice. Same with the helicopter.

There is no indication that the Smuggler's Ship is how you get to Striga. The entrance was changed but the contact dialogue sending you to Peebles probably wasn't, since I've heard several people in Talos asking how to get to Striga in the last few months.

Where have you been? They got proper variety with i18.

Of course the Quartzes are still instant-death for any character that relies on defense, and the DE in tip missions have 64% to-hit for some stupid reason that I can only chalk up to "Castle was sick of everybody soft-capping everything and becoming effectively invincible".....not that people who rely on defense tend to go near DE, because, quartzes.
AE text boxes are like this too. Don't even get me started on all the other AE bugs and issues that have been completely ignored.

Now I realize they can't fix anything at once. I realize sometimes bugs are introduced that they can't even find, let alone fix. I do think a complete, regularly updated "Known issues" list would go a long way to letting players know that "we are aware of your concerns and are trying to work on them." At least we can stop complaining about the same things over and over again hoping a dev will read it.

Oh and one more thing: Finish. What. You. Start. Please. The sad thing is, I don't think this ADD approach is necessarily the devs' fault. Players want new shiny, they resub for new shiny, get bored of new shiny, unsub and wait for next new shiny. So they have to keep giving us new shinies.

There are also things on that list that undermine the game experience and frankly look sloppy, and leave a bad impression on new players, should be easy to fix, but aren't fixed. Such as typos and excessive ambushes. How hard is it to edit a line of text? Or remove a few ambushes? We've been told Mission Architect was created as a dev tool, so if they're using anything remotely similar to what we're using it's extremely easy, especially since they have players spotting and reporting this stuff for them.

+1 on this list.

And there are some GREAT seeds for content within some of the dry, used up, old as a dog i0 content. If only it would get a good revamp with current mission tech.

ie. Currently running the Terra Conspiracy story again. This arc in particular cries out for a revamp.

• • First: Localize the story so it starts in Founders, then progresses into Eden. (No arcs take place in Eden. WHY?!)
  • Tanya--the object of this story and the affections of Hamidon--should be remade using the custom powers.
    • Starts out as a simple hostage.
    • Then the next time you free her, she has a few plant powers and works as an ally. Green hue to her skin
    • Then shows some signs of insanity and you fight her at boss level. More plant powers. More planty costume parts.
    • Climaxes with the EB version of her. But as giant Devoured as she is now +plant control powers.
  • Less defeat alls and stealth defeat alls
  • On the "protect the safehouse" mission, use the "talk to mob followed by ambushes" mission structure introduced with GR.
  • More ruddy tunnels
  • One custom DE overgrown tunnel map towards the end of the mission
  • Custom outdoor map at the end of the mission of a city block with its center overgrown with vines and other DE elements

In general, the old content could be EXCELLENT. But it needs a reworking starting from the oldest and moving forward. Keeping it in unchanged as filler makes no sense at this point IMO. IF this stuff were reworked--like the Jenkins arc--folks would run these stories again.

Seriously.

How hard is APP customization? We don't know, obviously, but it looks like it would require a pretty big change to the flow of character creation to me. As it stands now, you can customize any power your character will have in his/her primary or secondary at creation. The question is, what kind of changes will be needed at character creation to make it so that you can customize pool powers you might or might not take? It would probably involve new character creation screens or variations of techology that don't currently exist at character creation to get this done.

Don't get me wrong, I want this too. I've just never been convinced it's going to be easy. It actually looks like a pretty big change.

Standard code rant applies, of course.

Fix't. But yeah. That and power pool customization charge right into these issues of both tech and interface.

Yes, it does. I don't know about you, but I don't have a habit of playing ugly characters. If I have a blue fire primary and a blue fire secondary, I WILL NOT play a character with an orange fire epic. I will play another character instead, and so Kragoss will rot in limbo until the developers add Epic customization, or until I delete him. Yes, seriously.

I never said anything about "showstopper" bugs, nor did I ever implied they were. As for a REAL!!! negative impact on gameplay, yes, they very much do have that. Every time I meet with one of those irritating bugs, I get a little more pissed off. After seven years... Sorry, I'll do it your way: After SEVEN YEARS!!! of having my character drop out of combat mode and running into the same damn typos, I start getting a little bit upset.

It's like having a pebble in your shoe - sure, it won't cause you physical injuries, but every time you pull your shoe on, it's aggravating, and every time it becomes just a little more aggravating than before.

It's to the point where the entire game is starting to look quite frankly unprofessional, sloppy and amateurish. A good game title should not be rife with lazy bugs and unwieldy design after seven years of existence.

I don't know about you, but I don't have the habit of playing games I don't like. After all, didn't people recently go out of their way to tell me that "The Incarnate system is not mandatory! You don't have to play it!" or do I remember wrong? Because no-one is forcing me to do something I don't like, I tend to not do things I don't like, and that includes avoiding shoddy writing and buggy gameplay. Therefore, they very much do prevent me from playing the game, or at the very least enjoying the game when I play it, and again: I don't play games I don't like.

If you don't want to communicate with me, then here's an idea: Don't. Put me on ignore, and you'll never hear from me again. But if you DO choose to communicate with me, then please don't insult my intelligence with passive-aggressive jabs at my person and preferences. I didn't sit you down and force you read what I wrote, and I certainly didn't force to respond to me, so kindly take responsibility for your own actions.

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.