Castle

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We want everything, Castle.

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Currently listening to Heavy Metal, music from the motion picture [/i]Heavy Metal[/i]

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It's good to want. Let's you know you're still alive.

Good CD, btw.

Jonyu, poz and Positron are working on an 'Invention' system, which branched off of the Skill System work. The 'Salvage' system used in bases is an offshoot of the skills system design as well.

Unfortunately, I don't think anything more in depth than that is scheduled at this time.

FYI, we've got a LOT more folks here at Cryptic working on things. the vast majority of people here don't post, though. I was here for almost a year before I got 'Red Named.'

As for why I use _Castle_ instead of Castle, someone else has Castle has a board posting name.

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Ahh, it seems only like Issue Three when all the good little Heroes gathered around their web browsers chatting about what might be. Now, as we gear up for Issue Seven, I wonder what has become of the off-again, on-again Skill system. Is it still on the 'Short List' of game improvements? Will it be something that Heroes and Villains both get? Or has it been completely scrapped due to lack of gaming ideas?

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Yes, we remember it. Getting it 'right' has proven difficult, though, which is why you folks haven't seen it. It's still something we are working on, though.

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Now, and this is purely my experience, it seems that longbow would wipe the floor w/ Arachnos. The reason - wardens. These guys are like PvP-ing with a hero that has unlimited end and 8 dmg SOs (unaffected by ED) in their attacks.

I realize that it won't ever be a difinitive battle so as to keep the game going, but who'd you would win in an all out fight?

Personally, I think Malta should just swarm the whole of Paragon city and the Rogue isles and sap everyone into oblivion, but that's just me

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At level 25, they are pretty much equal. I ran a couple hundred test battles with random spawns to make it so....

Higher levels, well, no guarantee's.

I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.

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7.) Also, will this niffty new one-shot code introduce lag?


Any new serverside check will introduce a small amount of 'lag.' However, since we are constantly working on ways to improve the servers, this really shouldn't not be a noticable factor.

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Double negatives make me a sad panda. Should I assume it was merely a typo, or that it's a veiled threat to my latency?

DOOOOOOOOOOM!

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Typo. 'Should Not,' not 'Shouldn't Not.' (Parse that!)

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1.) If PlayerA gets hit by PlayerB for 1001 points of damage, PlayerA will end up with 10 hit points and still be alive, right?

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Right.

[quiote]2.) If PlayerA gets hit by the Psychic Clockwork King for 2600 points of damage, PlayerA will end up with 10 hit points and still be alive, right?


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Right.

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3.) If PlayerA is damaged & has 800 hit points left, then something (PlayerB or a mob) does 1001 points of damage, will the player be at 10 hit points & still be alive?

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Wrong. Player A would be dead.

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4.) If PlayerA is damaged & has 800 hit points left, then something (PlayerB or a mob) does 801 points of damage, will the player be at 10 hit points?

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No, Player A would be dead.

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5.) If PlayerA is in a damage field (multiple Caltrops for example) and something does 1000 points of damage, will it even waste the time to do the calculation? Having 10 hit points in a persistant damage field is meaningless.

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Yes, it would do the calculation. Yes, at the end of that server tick, PlayerA would be left at 10 HP. At the next activation period of the Caltrops, however, if he has not been healed, he will be killed.

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6.) Does this mean that people will survive exploding buildings in Steel Canyon?

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In theory, yes.

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7.) Also, will this niffty new one-shot code introduce lag?

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Any new serverside check will introduce a small amount of 'lag.' However, since we are constantly working on ways to improve the servers, this really shouldn't not be a noticable factor.

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8.) What is being done to compensate (if anything) the Stalkers that could one-shot? How about the Brutes that can one-shot?

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No compensation is being given, nor is it warranted.

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In my opinion, the one-shot code should apply to pve only (unless someone can come up with a good reason to have it impact pvp).

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It is PvE and PvP for a variety of reasons.

It's not that we didn't listen, in regards to the End drain changes -- it's that I've not had time to implement fixes yet.

I'm going to be making a first pass on it in the next day or two. My 'fix' is a huge amount of data changes, though, so please bear with me.

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I was wondering what exactly happened to assault bots. The patch notes said assault bots no longer smash but I dont see any difference in them. What exactly got changed and why? It seems random to have changed it. Were people complaing about whatever they changed?

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Sorry, folks. I was being a bit too flippant when I checked that particular bug fix in.

Placate (the power) has a couple of effects.

First, it applies Placate (the effect) to a single target. Any target that has the Placate effect on it cannot target the person who used the Placate.

Second, it applies a 'Hide Like' state, which is neither Hide, nor Stealth. It does allow for Stalker powers critical's, however.

It does not give any Defense bonus at all.

Other powers which can Placate (Smoke Flash) only apply the First part. The Hide like stat is not granted at all -- in other words, it is 100% defensive, not a Set Up power.

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This is based on one mission the other night, haven't had a chance to recreate it yet.

This is not about the Spec-Ops EMP grenades, though it is still BS that they drain more end and more reliably than a Malta Sapper and are also AoE.

This is about Longbow Wardens dealing double or more damage than the combat long reports. It's about Wardens holding people right through their status shields as if they were not turned on.

In one mission, the team is 38-39, three of us are Brutes, the rest MMs and Corruptors.

One several occasions the Brutes were one-shotted, at full health, right through their shields. This by bosses only 1 to 2 levels above us. We went through the combat logs to see some odd things.

A Martial Arts warden killed me and another Brute with one hit of Dragons Tail. I was at full health, Fire Shield and Tough turned one with three green resist SOs each. The combat log says she hit me for 560 damage, yet I was taken from 1300 hp to 0 in an instant and I can see that no one else was hitting me at the moment.

That's the first WTH moment of the mission.

Then later a Gravity Warden holds me through Plasma Shield as if it was not even turned on, which it was. Then I go from full health to zero in a instant. The combat log says Crush dealt 500 damage to me. No one was attacked me and that Crush sure as hell did more than 500 damage.

I've filed bug reports but I wanted to see if another others were seeing level 40 Longbow Wardens doing things they should not be doing.

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Looked at it very quickly. It seems soem Warden's attacks are not reporting battle spam for certain attacks. I'll add it to my list of things to fix.

Interestingly enough, the guy with Dragon's Tail doesn't have this problem. I'll look into it more when I actually get to the task.

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A buff for EM?

Did I log into the Praetorian dimension or something?

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LOL, my thoughts exactly. You KNOW that 100s of EM board reading tanks are just sitting there SHOUTING at their monitor for this topic to dry up and go away without getting nerf bat aggro.


And in other news Stalkers are complaining that AS doesn't do enough damage.

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If the things Blasters and Stalkers can do with EM haven't made us Nerf EM yet, absolutely nothing said here will. Carry on.

EDIT: Said Scrappers, meant Stalkers.

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If they nerfed Huricane, it would a direct response to something from PvP, which they've said previously that they won't do.

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Actually, the original quote was something along the lines or "we'll try not to."

Melee and Range are differentiated in terms of damage, and attack type, but the statements above that there is no 'melee range' is accurate.

Just to clarify, things guys.

The numbers I posted were the highest value of each armor. There is no stacking taken into consideration at all.

Any source of Energy/Fire damage can light it. Maybe the critters you were fighting hit it with an AoE?

Back during Arena testing:
Playing a level 50 Invul/Ice tanker. It was a 5 on 5 test. The rest of my team died very quickly...after about 10 minutes (3 cyclings og Unstoppable) and me killing 2 or 3 of the opposing team, the test was called...because I was essentially unkillable.

Using that same tanker, I later fought Pohsyb's Ill/Kin controller...and lost. He timed my crash...

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Since when? Unless I'm mistaken, AS is like any other attack - once the attack is begun, the target could be superspeeding away and will still get hit...

...as long as the target is in LOS. I have to be honest and add the conditional modifier.

There is enough total BS on the topic of stalkers - let's not add any, folks. A more accurate version of your statement would be that never staying in an area long enough for anyone to queue an attack on you is a good defense against AS. This is true.

It is also not particularly useful advice.

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Whenever I hear "Build Up" go off, I immediately start running BACKWARDS. It's pavlovian, at this point. It's been a long time since anyone AS'd me successfully.

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Castle challanged Chuck Norris to a duel - He WON!

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I met Chuck Norris once.

Once.

(Thanks, folks!)

Story in a nutshell:
Trick Arrow used to have 4 Targeted AoE powers. That made using the set incredibly difficult (although, it was pretty cool.) During the test period, we decided to change 2 powers to standard AoE attacks. Poison Gas Arrow was one of them.

Originally, Poison Gas Arrow would leave a large pool of gas that lasted almost a minute. Any critter entering the gas cloud would be debuffed and a small chance of being put to sleep every quarter of a second. When we changed it to a normal AoE, though, the chance to sleep was left at it's original level. While that was fine for a power activating 4 times a second, for a one shot chance, it was patheticly (sp?) low.

So, I increased the sleep chance to a 'better' value. It's still not 100% of the time, but you should get between 50% and 66% of minions when it lands.

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Which ones are worth it? The button-mashing damage dealers sure don't know, and I am beginning to become skeptical about their effectiveness. Flash arrow rocks, I know that, but other than that....someone please let me know if poison gas, acid, or disruption arrow is worth it.

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I recently fixed the Sleep portion of Poison Gas Arrow for all AT's, and fixed the fact that it was single target instead of AoE for Masterminds and Controllers. So, that one may be a bit better than folks are reporting in I7.

Those values are base for the specific toggles. I did not add in the stealth powers def bonus.

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I was that someone that sent the PM to Statesman. If I still had his reply, I'd post it here. He said it wasn't a bug, but a "feature." Either way. For those who don't know, Dull Pain prevents you from being knocked out of hide easily, during its time of activation. So, it's like click mez protection, but instead, knock-out-of-hide protection.

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Actually, Tenryuu, it was me you asked, and I apparently answered too quickly without actually understanding what you were asking.

I am sorry to say that my response was incorrect. This 'feature' as much as I personally like it, is really a fairly nasty systemic bug that we are fixing. Again, I'm sorry for giving you incorrect information. By the way, this bug can cause issues with Badges failing to be granted.

*cough*

Well, considering there is a decimal error in their AoE Defense (250% instead of 25%), I'm not surprised the Rain of Arrows missed a ton. I'll fix it today.

Night Widows are probably my favorite creations, with the possible exception of Jack in Irons. geko designed them, and I built their powers. (Jack was a big team effort, I just love the way he looks.)

The majority of their defense come from their Precognitive abilities. The Stealth doesn't add anymore than three slotted Stealth would for a player. The Smoke Grenade, on the other hand, is brutal if you are lower level than they are.