Some minor QoL idea

Its been a while since we had one of these and a few things have been running through my head of later so I decided to start a fresh thread. Some of these may have already been suggested by others .. in fact i am sure they have but if you don't remind them occasionally the Devs forget small matters...

Okay let's see ...

1. A Time Stamp for chat. I know that gets confusing with all the different time zones the game is played in so we make it very simple. NC Soft is Pacific Coast Time so THAT is game time.. Can't do the math? just remember East Coast is PCT +3 so [17:00] (5PM for you non military time fans ) is [20:00] or 8PM on the East Coast. Why do we need this? You have been busy doing a respec on your character or at the talior tweeking your outfit and when you come out you see a global post advertising a TF or trial you'd enjoy joining. But how long ago did that team leader make that post? 2minutes ago? or 20? A time stamp will at least give you an idea of when the post was sent and save you the trouble of sending a tell to a leader already 3 missions into the task force. Other applications? how about copy and past to prove someone is being a complete jerk and posting the same thing again and again and again in a zone.. with a time stamp you can show they posted the same stupid text 20-30 times in 5 minutes. There are other uses I am sure

2. More information on the Badge progress menus. Great I have 19 of 22 recipes crafted for a 45-50 level badge but of the 2-3 different types assocaited with that badge which ones do i still need to make? Eliminates the guess work and quite possibly wasting influence crafting things you already made enough of. Now i have heard a rumor that something along this line is coming soon but .. example two concerns Maria Jenkins Arc and the Dimensional Warder badge. Great I just finished the last mission from Maria and no badge. I check and it tells me I have 13 of 14.. So WHICH praetorian did I miss?

3. Add Incarnate Powers to profile list. This comes in very hand for any team leader doing the Apex or Tin Mage TF. How many times have we seen one form and when the leader goes to start is informed that someone on the team isn't eligible because they don't have their Alpha Opened? Plus come on... think about this at level 50 the thing still lists BRAWL as a power. OHHHH WOW he has brawl now I know we can't fail! LOL If they can list a level one inherent power don;t you think they shoul list the level 50 (+) ones as well. They do tend to come in a little handier on missions than brawl does.

4. Add Alignmemt to Profiles. Same sort of thing. I personally have joined Cathedral of Pain trials and we get ready to head into the host SG base and "Oh Gee.. We have three Rogues on the teams and they can't access a Hero base." Time to start recruiting again. YES it would be nice if people actually paid attention to thing like that but sadly there are players out there that have no idea that they can't do stuff like that. they assume when they go Rogue or Vigilante that they are in a Blue or Red zone so they MUST be able to do all the same things as everyone else... How many times have you had a Rogue join a blue side TF and try to use their Ouro portal? .. Then you all get to wait till they make their way back from cap Au Diable before the TF can continue. This is another idea that team leaders will enjoy since it takes some guess work out of that.

Okay so far that's all I have but I will be thinking of more and please feel free to add your own. Just remember if they don't know we'd like it they may never get around adding it to the game.

Eliminate the missions required to buy from the stores above 30(Blue side): This is a why do WE need to do a 'Special" mission just to shop and no one Villian side has to issue. To make matters even sillier once a character hits 35 they can hit the coop stores in the RWZ or Cimerora and eliminate the need to PROVE to the store contact they are "worthy" (???) of buying enhancements. Or to put it another way.. " I just spent the last 27 levels beating up villains and now I have to do you a favor or I can't shop here?" Hmmmm let's see how long Walmart stays in business if they adopted that sales strategy.

PLEASE start actually stocking the appropriate level enhancements in all zones: What the heck does she mean by that? Okay .. at level 20 you head off to Talos to continue your quest for levels since none of your contacts in Steel or Skyway will chat with you anymore and by 21 even the police radio goes dead. Then you make 21 level and want to slot a few DO enhancements to help out .. where do you buy those? NOT IN TALOS! No you get to hop the tram and run back to Steel Canyon or Skyway because they are the only places that sells them. Just so you know this same thing occurs if you leave Kings Row and head off to Steel at level 10 and then make 11... Not as many people care because many, myself included, often skip even bothering to slot Training Origin Enhancements but the lowest level you can buy in Steel is 15... even though you start dealing with contacts and running missions there at level TEN. Oh and this occurs Red side as well .. FIX IT ALL

Establish the same standard for buying inspiration from contacts on both Red and Blue sides: I have contacts on the RED side that I have never done a single mission for and yet if I stop by to chat I can buy any type on inspiartion from them. On the blue side even at higher levels until I have done a few missions for this contact the most I can purchase or Reds, Blues, and I think Yellows. thats 3 of the 8 types (37.5%). NO I am not suggestion that villains need to wait longer I want the hero contacts to stop acting like stuck up divas that I have to prove myself to before they will actually HELP me HELP them. Let's keep in mind that on both sides these contacts are usually asking us to do them a favor and deal with some potentially dangerous/deadly situation.. The Villain contacts happily sell you reds, yellow, purples, oranges. etc "Anything you need bro just get the job done!" but on the hero side until you have helped a few times its.. "Yeah well you go take care of that situation and MAYBE, MAYBE we can talk about you buying an awake if you come back a success." Oh this is another one that gets silly when you hit 35 + since ONCE again the contacts in Cimerora and the RWZ will sell any inspiration to anyone.. and in the RWZ they can be ANY level!

Small edit: I was in Cimerora last night and sadly the double standard exists. Daedalus the hero contact there does not offer all types of inspirations until you do some missions for him. Sister Airlia the villain contact will sell you whatever you want. So the ONLY reason Heroes get a break in the RWZ is because Villians use the same exact contacts.

1. Time stamp - as an option, yeah.

2. Badges needed - They're adding this for a few (well, praetorians, and a few others,) but I wouldn't argue with being able to check it in the list.

3. Incarnate powers to profile - ehhh... I'm not sure if the issue with it is going to be the fact they're swappable (without a respec) or not. That's the only thing I can think of as for why they *aren't.* A "second best" would be showing if the slot is unlocked, perhaps. That doesn't change, after all, so it's another option. (Yes, it's viewable in badges, but given the impact to powers, might as well have it there, too.)

4. ... or, instead (or in addition) to profiles, show them in the team list.

5. Ehhhh... the 30 science mission is, if (for some reason) you don't have the Ouro portal, a good (and fast) way to get it. But make them optional, sure.

6. enhancements - Sure. *shrug*

7. Insps - Pretty sure that's more of a "legacy contact" issue, really. So, more of a "make it consistent." Sure.

One to add:

Allow me to dismiss "helper" NPCs that I don't *need* to escort somewhere. And give those I do enough health to realistically make it wherever they're going.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Make the bought/sold auction information visible at the character select screen. I know it could encourage people to use alts as auction mules, but auction slots are already limited based on level and badges so it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

I don't mean to open a can of worms but I'd also like to see fewer perma-able clickies and more toggles or long-recharge clickies. The later two ways just make for smoother gameplay IMHO, YMMV, etc.

just sort of adding things as they occur to me.

This one will probably draw some reactions...

Allow players to break down Incarnate powers and revert them back to threads>>>> Why you say? With the 20.5 issue drawing nearer and many new choices for Lore pets soon available currently on Beta the only means to switch your choice of pets is to start all over and build a tier 1, then a tier 2 and finally a tier 3 (to maintain your level shift). So what that means is after a player spend ??? hours grinding through ??? trials to obtain all he/she needed to slot the pets they have now they get to all but throw away all the threads and components they used to get that level shift if they want one of the new pet types. Now I realize its very possible to keep the old pets slotted until a suitable replacement has been crafted.. but the POINT is if those other choices had been avaialbale to begin with most players would have picked the one they wanted and wouldn't NEED to start again and then set aside hundreds of threads worth of effort when the unslot the old pets never to use them again.

By allowing players to break down the power into threads, even with a penalty, at least it gives them one of two things

1. a head start on the threads they need for the new pets OR

2. After the new pets have been slotted they can break down the old pets and use them to enhance some other power.. that way all their effort won't go to waste.


Now I am sure someone will start a rant, when or if anyone even reads this, and say well those players didn't HAVE to take new pets. If they want new ones why shouldn't they have to work for them?

Good point but at the same time if someone on the DEV team had a bit more insight and realizes not everyone was going to be crazy about running around with some form or Praetorian pet in tow and had given us these "OTHER" options to begin with none of this would have been necessary. Heck I was on Beta and when people saw the new choices some still are not happy and wish we had more.

Fact is they made LORE one of the two powers that grants a level shift so, even after we all heard that more pet options were coming, very few people were ready, willing and able to put off slotting Lore to at least tier 3. THEY created a situation where players HAD to make do with what was available if they eventually wanted that extra level shift and then come out with a whole new batch of pets and say.. If you want these go GRIND for them some more. I think a little cooperation in making it a little easier would be good customer service.

Adding a few new ideas here after 20.5 has gone live...


OMG please find a way to increase the speed transactions can be conducted when we are converting Atral and Empyrean merits. I converted a bunch of both into thread vouchers to help some of my "slower" incarnates and if you have a lot, which i did, it can take quite a while to finish. I understand it taking time to convert etc but surely we can speed that up a bit.

How about a way people that DON"T like the trials can cash in? I noticed that I can convert an astral into a reward merit so why can't I do the same thing going the other way. Say 5 reward merits = 1 Astral. It would give players that dislike doing the trials at least SOME method to actually earn some threads and obtain the new powers.

Figured it was high time for an edit here. The situation concerning the Astral and Empyrean stores being slow only lasted the first day they went live... once the huge crowd all trying to cash in colected merits was gone transactions were much quicker. No fix is necessary .. not much you can do about 40 or more people all trying to use the same store at the same time. I suppose an additional set of stores or even a few couold be established in the future so the same doesn't occur but honestly I have not seen a need for it since day one.

On Time Stamps for chat:
I'd like an option to have that available, yes, and for the same reasons mentioned. I usually put a "Mark." line in my chat tab just so I can tell at a glance if anything about it has changed when the "Mark." scrolls up, but even then I just end up missing people's tells and ending up not knowing how relevant their offers are.

What time the stamp displays shouldn't be a problem. The /localtime command already prints the time of your system clock in chat, so there's no reason they couldn't be able to use that. In fact, we can kind of ape that already with binding our chat button to append chat messages with "say [$$localtime$$say ]"

If all else fails, there's always /servertime that's the same for everbody, and is the time on the system clock of the server, though this doesn't seem to be aligned to American time zones, I don't think.

When it comes to inspirations:
All the crap of who DOESN'T sell what is just legacy nonsense. All of this became meaningless the day they allowed us to convert inspirations. It doesn't matter if a contact only ever sells Insights. You can still have a tray full of everything. And while converting this way does cost you three times the Inspiration cost, but when that cost is 50 Inf, who cares? I can go into the Tailor and change NOTHING and I'll still get taxed, like, 16 000. How many inspirations can I buy for that?

All contacts need to sell all inspirations at all relationship levels. Furthermore, the Architect inspirations vendor needs to sell Awakens. Why she doesn't, I do not know, but fix it, please.

Also, on selling enhancements:
Can we PLEASE get rid of the ripoff, lower-than-normal sell prices of enhancements to the "wrong" stores? Example: If you sell a Tech SO to the Tech store, you'll get about twice as much INF as if you sell it to the Mutation store. If you sell any enhancement to one of those "buy only" vendors in Croatoa or the Shadow Shard, you'll get only ONE TENTH of the price.

Why? Why is this necessary? What was this EVER necessary? In ANY game? All it does is add one more hoop to what is already an annoying process of selling your vendor trash, and you're not told who buys what at a good price, or that a price difference even exists. If I sell a piece of salvage or a recipe, it scores the same place everywhere. Can we do the same with enhancements, please?

There are already stores which buy all types of enhancements at top price, usually in co-op zones. The Vanguard Quartermaster in the Rikti War Zone, for instance, buys SOs and DOs of all origins for the best price you can get... Yet the DO Clockwork Quartermasters in Praetoria buy ALL enhancements of the WORST price you're likely to get because they're the "wrong" store for all types. All that does is piss off new players, and the community gains nothing at all for this ripoff.

Non-Inventions enhancements aren't high-value items or a large-traffic commodity. They are not a good place for an Inf sink, so they end up just irritating to sell.

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.

To add to some of this, I would really like the option to turn off level-50+ SOs from the reward pool.

Okay I keep thinking about this one every time it occurs but always forget to add it here....

The new option to skip cut scenes is nice but can we PLEASE make it account wide. Look I realize the idea behind the.. if you have seen it once and so has everyone on the team you don't have to watch it again. But I now have 14 different incarnates and plans for more .. in case you haven't figured that out it means I have watched Mother Mayhem and company rattle on at least 14 times (actually I have long since lost track but at one point I estimated I had seen that thing like 200-250 times). By now I THINK I grasp the concept and really don't need it repeated again and again just because I log on a new character an it's HER first trial. Last night I was on with a friend working on getting his first incarnate to all tier 3s and 4s .. now he's seen the cut sceen as well but I think we were on around 9 or 10 BAFs and may have actually gotten to skip watching twice at most.

I realize new people hit 50 all the time and start running trial and I can accept that but like me there are countless players with multiple incarnates .. and having to sit through that scene again for no GOOD reason is silly. Just change the coding, make the exemption account wide and I am betting the amount of times we don't have to watch it goes from 10 to 20% up to 70 or 80%.

I used the BAF as an example but to date I have also run around 6 of my incarnates through the Keyes Island Trial and, of course, because it was a new character .. numbers 2-6 forced my teams to watch Anti-Matter rant on insanely. Like I said I understand you want to make sure every PLAYER gets the opportunity to see them but my characters all belong to ME... they are not the ones watching the cut scene I am.. PLEASE make the change.

/signed to Wendy's QoL's

Now please untie me and give me back my pants.

I'd like to add a couple to your list if you don't mind...

Give Null the Gull the ability to offer immunity to stealth effects

Like he already gives immunity to other things that are of some annoyance to some players, it would be nice to get protection from potentially undesired stealth effects (but still keep related buffs), for instance so that when somebody is running Shadow Fall or buffing the team with Group Invisibility, the tank can retain full visibility, and hostages don't lose tracking on you. (I know some don't, but some still do :/ )

Give us a /stuck power to use on NPC followers

I'd love to have everyone get a "perma-temp" power called [Snap Out Of It] or [Come With Me If You Want To Live] that when used on an NPC follower (hostage/pet/etc) within maybe 20 feet would act like Recall Ally, allowing us to fix those situations where the prisoner we're leading out has gotten himself stuck on a pipe or is unable to figure out stairs. I also believe it would be cool if the new "tutorial experience" specifically incorporated a situation where it was necessary to use this (maybe you find a stuck hostage in a mission, but before you can get them to follow you, you have to go find and click a glowie that gives you this power, which after using on them will have them follow you out.)

Okay a very small on but I'll explain why I am adding it after..

Expand the number of names a player can have on their global ignore. This hasn't been as big an issue since we were given the option to limit the emails we get to friends and SG mates but today I got spammed. I forget sometimes that will some of this stuff its necessary to physically go in and change the default settings on every new character you create. So when I logged on my new corruptor she had an advertisement from one of those paid PLing/ we sell Influnece sites.

Not a huge deal .. I reported the site to NC Soft through petition and then simply changed the setting. Now as soon as added the name to the list one popped off the other end. It was probably just some other advertiser from years ago but why do we need a LIMIT anyway.. now if maintaining the lists takes up I can understand.. the servers are churning as is without trying to store billions of global ignores but if its not a huge deal.. do away with the limit or at least up it. That is about the first person I have placed on Ignore in a while and I am sure most people are the same way.