Update to test (05/17/11)

Everything fun always gets nerfed. I won't be bothering with interface any longer.

I find it interesting that people in this thread seem to think they have to have minor/trivial damage powers turn into rapid-fire crashless nukes in order to have "fun." I'm not sure if that's hyperbole or just a grossly skewed perception of game balance.

Reactive Interface still adds more damage than a purple damage proc in every power you take. It just no longer turns powers that normally can't kill -1 minions into powers that can kill +3 lieutenants. If the power as a whole had been nerfed I could understand the outrage, but it only affects a small subset of powers in the long run. And the promise of Interface's capability was never "Turns all your powers into spawn-wiping nukes even on the highest difficulty the game has to offer." So not sure why people are ready to give up on the system thanks to that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Its funny though they said the power was working as intended before and I'm 100% positive one of them said it was working as intended on a ustream video recently too and then they suddenly decide to nerf it.

i agree that how the reactive proc currently is working is a tad overpowered, but i think its the only reason interface is even worth getting if your teaming a lot

the debuffs i think are either too minimal or the fact they are resistible is why i dislike interface, the stack limit i can understand but with with how they are currently implement is too low to even matter in most situations

i have one of my toons who went diagmagnetic because of the -regen, if he didnt already have a tier 4 i would change to a reactive no question because the debuffs are just so minimal for high end content, especially vs AVs and GMs due to their high resistance of the debuffs

so what you can stack -20% tohit on a minion, the minion will prolly die before all 4 hits land anyway unless your using very weak attacks, but that same debuff on an AV will be more like -4% which is darn near negligible especially with their acc bonus

basically with how weak interface currently is all of my toons will most likely be going reactive since the extra DPS is very noticeable even without rain type powers. the debuffs on interface i consider negligible because even at the max stack amount it barely evens out with powers that have that debuff in them, broadsword for example does -10% def with almost every attack and that -def stacks without a limit except for the duration of the debuff

if the debuff was unresistable i would actually consider what interface i was going with. the reason why i say it should be unresistable is because of the low stack limit, the stack limit being 4 from all sources it should be unresistable if the limit was higher like 10, then no, it should stay being resistable

So.... am I the only one who bothered to look and see that the new Steam Punk Booster emotes had been added to the quickchat user interface?

Each of these include sound effects. They are:

• Inspiration - The character rubs their chin and then raises their fist to the air as a light bulb appears over their head.
• Hot Temper - The character has a tantrum stomping the ground with the right and then left foot and then lets off "steam" at the neck area.
• Train Whistle - An old fashioned steam whistle appears in the air and the character pulls the cord twice.

The new jacket is very nice, and woman don't get it. Again.

And the fake dress thing looks pretty ridiculous.

All I have to say is that I agree that 1 target limit on interface is taking it way overboard.

Very quick look through things...

And this very well may not be complete yet...

The backpack and the wings are awesome.
The auras are also quite nice. The ornate Victorian pattern aura thingy (forgot the name) seems like an option that a lot of people will love and the kind of thing that will lead to a lot of people wanting more of that sort of thing with different patterns, symbols/styles and such.

Many of the female's Victorian and classic steampunk pieces are nice additions.
Really, most of the stuff adds some nice fancy outfit options (as Jay had hinted at a while ago).

Things missing that may or may not be coming still (as it just popped up on test and there very often is more... but I also don't want to sell that as though people should count on that)...

Females do not have the long jacket.

Males do not have the new belts.

My criticisms via a very quick perusal: most (if not all) the new pieces are the types that have their own details/patterns and no further options. Most of which have a color that cannot be changed (mostly just the buckles/metal bits/buttons and such): the male's Jacket has that yellowish line along the seam, hats have set hairstyles and hair COLOR (two tones for the hat, none for the hair)...

Some of that seems like stuff that, if they aren't already planning to/working on it, perhaps player feedback could help to add a few more options for things (like the lab coat with the science pack getting the two tone and the color-able buttons options).

The faces: I saw the improvements in where the eyes sit in the head... But I thought that the style of the faces were a bit off. As though they were in harsh light or something. Perhaps too much contrast in the shading... THEN AGAIN, I did only check with ONE very pale skin tone... so, I'll check that out more!

Anyway... I'm going to try and not throw too much subjective feedback about this pack. It is what it is.

The backpack and wings and auras are worth the price of admission... the additional neat costume pieces are bonus... (ooh, didn't check the guns!).

The lack of customizability for the individual pieces concerns me some... but that is often the case with these boosters. I'm sure a lot of mixing and matching will be enjoyed by many.
And it all looks very nice, for certain.

I particularly am happy to see the new mustache option.

OH... and the new female's Victorian hair style is very nice (although, it suffers from the only one color choice option, while there are these darker/blackish shading to the hair).

*definite thumbs up, but some questionable customization trade-offs, in my opinion*

Why. Can. I. Not. TEST THIS?!

Why is there still a difference between US and EU test?! We wer told that they were going to be one and the same! What the frag is going on here?

NOT amused by this!

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

Throwing in my opinion, I don't think there's anything inherently overpowered about Interface as a whole and fast-ticking powers. Narrowing it down further, I don't think think there's a problem with the Reactive -res in them either.

Reactive DoT + rains/etc clearly does a lot of damage, but it seems to me that this is a rather heavy-handed change to Interface as a whole just because of one outlying case. I agree that Reactive DoT probably needs to be toned down, I just don't think they should gut Interface procs in general to achieve that.

And for full disclosure, my main Incarnate is my Fortunata, who doesn't use Reactive at all, and the closest thing I have to a rain power is Psionic Tornado. If the change is per cast instead of per tick it doesn't affect me much, but I still object to this (hopefully proposed rather than final) change on principle.

I don't really know much about the Interface procs, but I do know one thing - putting proc chance on every tick in a rain power is just asking for trouble, and one need no further evidence than Ramiel's first mission. I recall running that with a Fire Blaster and trying my bestest most strongest attacks to relatively decent results. Then, by chance, I tried Rain of Fire and found it DESTROYED everything under it because the fictional extra unresistable damage was proccing on every tick, and that power ticks every half second or quarter second (I forget which).

I can't say if the actual current change is the right way to go, but A change in how procs work in rain powers should not have been unexpected. In fact, I would expect rain powers to be held to the same standard as AoE powers and tweaked to achieve a similar overall proc performance.

*edit*
I haven't had a chance to check the Steam costume pieces.

Quote:

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.

Having seen the Steampunk pieces, I find myself profoundly disappointed in how such lovely pieces can be so horribly mismanaged.

Forstarters, anything brass on any of the pieces is not colourable. I don't know if the developers honestly believed that in asking for Steampunk, we were secretly asking for the brown-orange of brass and copper. Having non-customizable colours on any piece is a horrible design decision if said colour isn't black, and it isn't here. Furthermore, the two male hats come with a predefined hair colour, one black and the other brunette. Why? Even as restrictive as regular hats with hair are, we at least get one colour for the hat and one for the hair.

The problem is that a lot of these pieces are designed with three, sometimes even four item colours spread between primary, two detail colours and one accent colour. However, we're not playing Champions Online. We don't have the ability to customize four colour per costume piece. Designing costume pieces with four colours, therefore, is a huge mistake. This takes costume pieces which could have been great additions to a wide range of concepts and reduces them into parody novelty pieces that are only every useful if you're looking to make a steampunk character clad in brass and copper, never you mind that steel was just as popular of a construction material.

Perhaps the biggest offender in this regard is the boiler backpack. Not only can we not colour the smoke/steam (and we really should be able to), but the secondary colour applies to only half the secondary pieces, leaving the rest a brass brown. Why? Why design it like this, a though expecting that I'll have a third and fourth category of colours to apply over the rest of the piece. We either need to rework the existing pieces to allow colours to affect more of them, or otherwise need copies of the pieces that we can actually colour. What's the point of customization if you can't customize? Why are our graphics artists continually making pieces that don't fit together with anything outside their own set? WE are supposed to be designing our characters, aren't we?

There's also the gender inconsistency. As was mentioned, men get the Victorian jackets but women don't, and for no real reason that I could determine. Inversely, women get the belt options, the ones that look like a boiler jumpsuit taken off and hanging around the waist, yet men don't. Why? Women get only a skin for Victorian gloves, but men get 3D model, and again - why? And why are all female Victorian boots high-heeled?

I was looking forward to this pack with great anticipation, but having seen not just how badly it's being mismanaged but how profoundly it misunderstands the concept of character customization, I'm not sure if I'll get it. And that's coming from the guy who got the Party Pack the day it came out. Poor show, guys. REALLY poor show.

Quote:

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.

Went through all three models on an AR character. Only thing I haven't looked at or tested I think are the dual pistols.

For the most part, quite impressed with this pack.

Really like how adaptable the path aura is in terms of the colors it can take. I was able to do blood, slime, toxic ooze, oil/ink and even water(!) with the right dirty shade of cyan.

A couple requests though:

• Would it be possible to get the female steampunk sleeves put in shirts as well?
  
• That Steam Jump rocket pack: is there ANY way this could be made available as a persistent costume item that turns on, like the craftable rocket boots, with flight? It's too damn nice to not be able to use it like that.

• Female jackets do NOT show up in sleeveless jackets. These both would work nicely in there IMO as costume framing details. Please consider unlocking these two parts for the sleeveless jacket option.

Still not got a chance to test yet, but what Sam mentions does sound like a bad idea. having an 'Original' option for a peice with the current settings, and a 'Altered' option where you can colour the metal sounds like a better idea. And would also work on MANY other pieces than the pack parts.

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

Any word for a fix for the AE's profanity filter bug?

giving males only the nice long jacket is nothing new. The Devs have always been a bit behind the times in what they think is appropriate for men and women to wear. It has always been this way and player feedback on this account falls on deaf ears. I would not expect females to get the long coats.