Woot, unwanted buff problem solved?
By
AzureSkyCiel,
Posted on: 2011-05-26 19:42 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Bah! you think too small, Null is greater than an Incarnate! His power is so great, the Well draws its power from him. (Don't ask how Null gives it)
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Null must be an Incarnate
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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.
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Astral Merit < Empyrean Merit < Null Feather|
Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Bah! you think too small, Null is greater than an Incarnate! His power is so great, the Well draws its power from him. (Don't ask how Null gives it)
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Blue Steel's favorite vet reward is the 15 month one, as the feathery wings let him look a little bit more like Null.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Gull-Man, bitten by a radioactive seagull one day and gains incredible powers! Today he fights for justice!
Null-Man, arch-nemesis to Gull-Man! One day hit by a radioactive seagull's droppings! Today he fights for destruction of all seagulls and those empowered by gull-strength!
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Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
Mender Silos' plans are a small part of Null's plans.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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The Menders have no idea. Silos is the most gullible of them all!
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Mender Silos' plans are a small part of Null's plans.
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Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
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*record scratch noise* |
Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
The Menders have no idea. Silos is the most gullible of them all!
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Well played, Sirrah.
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
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I figured a well placed pun for an NPC that was pretty much born out of a play on words would fit the bill.|
Originally Posted by Melancton
*record scratch noise*
Well played, Sirrah. |
With: Apologies to Black Scorpion for the stolen material.
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Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
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Or instead of introducing yet another npc to solve a meta-game issue they could use meta-game tools like the options menu to let us choose these things. I will never understand the devs' reasons for adding tons of unnecessary npcs to the world to deal with something that our characters shouldn't have anything to do with. Like difficulty settings, or merit vendors. |
Originally Posted by TonyV
The one drawback that I can imagine is that you wouldn't be able to do it on an on-demand basis. For example, if you don't mind being Speed Boosted in lab maps but hate it in caves, you can't just turn it on and off at will. Hmm, maybe this NPC could be a "phonable" contact? I mean, if it has the power to negate powers, shouldn't it be reachable remotely?
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Existing stores in the game, or the trainers, could have handled these merits as well. Or just like we can craft and convert Incarnate stuff within the UI we could have done the same with merits and alignment merits. But no, we get a new npc which we have to go talk to whenever we want to change a setting that could just as well have been reached through the regular options.
Just like the difficulty setting npcs - why not put the difficulty settings right there in the mission menu? Why do we have to do an immersion-breaking runaround and go talk to some impersonal npc to change what is a meta-game setting? I will never understand it and I will probably never stop complaining because it seems like the devs will never stop adding more of these meta-npcs to the game.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Or instead of introducing yet another npc to solve a meta-game issue they could use meta-game tools like the options menu to let us choose these things. I will never understand the devs' reasons for adding tons of unnecessary npcs to the world to deal with something that our characters shouldn't have anything to do with. Like difficulty settings, or merit vendors.
Existing stores in the game, or the trainers, could have handled these merits as well. Or just like we can craft and convert Incarnate stuff within the UI we could have done the same with merits and alignment merits. But no, we get a new npc which we have to go talk to whenever we want to change a setting that could just as well have been reached through the regular options. Just like the difficulty setting npcs - why not put the difficulty settings right there in the mission menu? Why do we have to do an immersion-breaking runaround and go talk to some impersonal npc to change what is a meta-game setting? I will never understand it and I will probably never stop complaining because it seems like the devs will never stop adding more of these meta-npcs to the game. |
Agree 100%. Sticking these options into an NPC is just weird.
I can craft super-magic incarnate powers via a pop-up interface, but I have to go rummage in a box to use a-merits? I have to go to some totally random, unexplained and hideous dressed NPCs in order to trade them merits for drops? Why? What do they do with this vast collection of merits?
It makes no sense and just clutters up things (the Merit Vendors are particularly annoying).
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It doesn't really bother me. If it takes trotting to an NPC to make sure I'll never again go hurtling down the center of the wedding cake room because someone hit me with SB at just the wrong time, then I can live with it.
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Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Agree 100%. Sticking these options into an NPC is just weird.
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"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in."
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Yeah complete with an AoE Judgment poop...
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Null must be an Incarnate
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Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
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I agree. Kind of kills the immersion in the game to talk to a Seagull (or any NPC) to turn off some external buffs.
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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Or instead of introducing yet another npc to solve a meta-game issue they could use meta-game tools like the options menu to let us choose these things. I will never understand the devs' reasons for adding tons of unnecessary npcs to the world to deal with something that our characters shouldn't have anything to do with. Like difficulty settings, or merit vendors.
Existing stores in the game, or the trainers, could have handled these merits as well. Or just like we can craft and convert Incarnate stuff within the UI we could have done the same with merits and alignment merits. But no, we get a new npc which we have to go talk to whenever we want to change a setting that could just as well have been reached through the regular options. Just like the difficulty setting npcs - why not put the difficulty settings right there in the mission menu? Why do we have to do an immersion-breaking runaround and go talk to some impersonal npc to change what is a meta-game setting? I will never understand it and I will probably never stop complaining because it seems like the devs will never stop adding more of these meta-npcs to the game. |
Paragonian Knights
Justice Company
Anyone thought about Null the Gull being an anagram?
Well don't because the results are terrible.
Examples:
Leg Hunt Lull
Lent Ugh Lull
The Lung Lull
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I suspect that it's because it's a lot simpler to plop an NPC somewhere, toggle a flag to make him or her interactive, and write up what goes into the dialog boxes than it is to design a whole new interface. One can be done in a few hours; the other would require at least several days, resources from other design groups, plus a lot of extra QA and testing time to make sure it didn't break something else. I can't remember exactly where it was said, but I know I've heard recently that the suggestions that really make their radar the most are the ones that don't require what they call "new tech." If they can use existing conventions in the game, or can be accomplished with minor tweaks (such as plopping a new contact down), those are the ones they like the most, as it allows them to focus more time, effort, and resources on getting more done.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
I will never understand the devs' reasons for adding tons of unnecessary npcs to the world to deal with something that our characters shouldn't have anything to do with. Like difficulty settings, or merit vendors.
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I thought it was reflected well when, during the Ustream, someone mentioned adding another option to the Null the Gull. It was phrased as, "What would it take for you to..." Black Scorpion thought about it a few seconds and said, "Four hours or so with no one interrupting me," and sounded like he could quite possibly get it done before 20.5 launches. If he had to go through getting the option added to another interface instead of just throwing another line of pseudo-HTML in a dialog box, I'm pretty sure there's no way it would even be close to happening.
Like I said, though, I think we could have the best of both worlds. If they made a merit vendor, Null the Gull, field analysts, and any other option-setting NPCs a phonable contact, it would be a lot better I think, because you wouldn't have to hunt people down to set your options, and you could do it "on the fly," so to speak. "Oh, I don't mind lab maps, hang on a second so I can call Null and turn Speed Boost back on." In fact, really, if the contacts are callable, you don't even need to have the models cluttering up the city. You could have all of them be like Penny and Message Man in Praetoria; heard but never seen.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Shh don't tell anyone, but I would do a lot more than go talk to an NPC to avoid this problem. I would fight Trapdoor, Ebil Honoree and that Vanguard punk Honoree pals around with in the Incarnate arc all at once, to turn that **** off. |
Originally Posted by Remidi
It doesn't really bother me. If it takes trotting to an NPC to make sure I'll never again go hurtling down the center of the wedding cake room because someone hit me with SB at just the wrong time, then I can live with it.
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Take a jaunt to turn that off? Hell, I'd Walk from under the Atlas statue to the far end of the Storm Palace WITH NO JETPACK to turn it off. I'm down with it, no complaints here. Thanks Devs.
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Need a SB?
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Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
Hell, I'd Walk from under the Atlas statue to the far end of the Storm Palace WITH NO JETPACK to turn it off.
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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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If I was walking to the Shard from Atlas I might take one. You never know.
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Originally Posted by TonyV
Need a SB?
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Given that it's likely this will be the kind of option that people will toggle on or off and leave for the rest of their play time, I don't know if that's going to be too big a problem. You can go once, set everything and that's that. In general, I don't expect the majority of people will have to deal with him more than once or twice in a character's life, and if TonyV is right about it being much easier to set it in an NPC's dialogue than in the options then I expect doing it quickly is regarded as being better than doing it "conveniently."
Then again, I expect that because I said this, there will be hundreds of people coming out of the woodwork with examples as to why they would need to change things on the fly. I do think that the best solution is probably making these game-changing contacts phonable in their own tab in the contact list, but in my mind it would be best to get the tech in fast to come with the changes to buffs and then adding the "convenience" factors when they can be worked on.
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It kind of bugs me that this is something set via a (silly in-joke) NPC rather than a menu option like all the rest, but Tony V gives some plausible reasons why it might be so. That said, I would like to see it moved to the menu and the gull dispensed with ASAP.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
Agreed on the silly injoke aspect. I was assuming this was just the devs messing in the uStream chat. Are they actually intending this to be controlled via talking to a seagull?
I though the Null the Gull thread was worth a chuckle and all, but this is just daft.
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This is what I assumed from the UStream as well. I see it as a fast, temporary fix to something players would like asap that doesn't require extensive testing. (Count me among those who want AoE SB asap!) And I don't doubt it would require extensive testing, given the wonkiness of the options menu as is. If it takes Null to shoulder the birden of these and future QoL fixes, I say let it be.
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Originally Posted by TonyV
I suspect that it's because it's a lot simpler to plop an NPC somewhere, toggle a flag to make him or her interactive, and write up what goes into the dialog boxes than it is to design a whole new interface. One can be done in a few hours; the other would require at least several days, resources from other design groups, plus a lot of extra QA and testing time to make sure it didn't break something else.
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+1 to making the settings NPC phonable.
(As well as maybe throwing in other NPCs that control settings.)
If a button to "call" them could be tossed into the options menu, too, that might be nice. The button(s) would say "Buff Acceptance" (and perhaps "Difficulty" for calling Field Agent/Fateweaver) but do the same thing as calling the contact. Hopefully that wouldn't be as difficult as adding the actual controls to the options menu UI.
One reason to prevent people from claiming Reward Merits from anywhere: to prevent them from restocking on inspirations from anywhere. Most importantly, in the middle of PvP. Similarly, super inspirations from incarnate merits can be purchased at the new vendors. Not something you want people to have access to in the middle of a fight.
I don't see why Field Agents and Fateweavers can't be replaced by a single hidden instance and made phonable, though.
As long as this is a short-term solution I don't mind it being Null the Gull. If they plan to leave it like this then I'd want a classy NPC, at least. (New players, regardless of whether they RP or not, would probably be like "WTF?" when they find out they have to talk to a seagull to change some of their settings.)
So for those who weren't watching the Ustream tonight, they announced (with everything subject to change, of course) the tentative solution to the "but I don't WANT to be Speed Boosted!" complaint. Nuts and bolts of it: There will be an NPC that you can talk to that will give you a bunch of options to turn off buffs. Not just Speed Boost, but also things like auto-accept or auto-deny Mystic Fortunes and such.
There's even a possible contact in the works to be that NPC.
Certainly sounds like a reasonable solution, a quick fix that wouldn't require any special UI design; just something that could be plopped in with existing tech. The one drawback that I can imagine is that you wouldn't be able to do it on an on-demand basis. For example, if you don't mind being Speed Boosted in lab maps but hate it in caves, you can't just turn it on and off at will. Hmm, maybe this NPC could be a "phonable" contact? I mean, if it has the power to negate powers, shouldn't it be reachable remotely?
Anyway, just thought I'd post it out there for discussion, and for info for anyone who missed the streamcast tonight. The recording will probably be publicly available on the Paragon Studios page later.
Edit 1: Oh, and they said that the NPC would possible also be able to tell you exactly which Praetorians you have left to defeat in chasing down the Dimensional Warder badge. Coolness.
Edit 2: I know there were a few more things they said Null would be able to do, but the shock of Black Pebble shooting Tunnel Rat and--dare I mention it?--an actual Pebble sighting, I can't remember much before that. Anyone care to add stuff I missed?
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)