Leandro

Oh well, screwed again.

You assume wrong. It was known. People warned the devs about it in the Test forums. When the patch went live the next day anyway, people were posting as the patch applied, "noooooo, don't put this live, it's brooooookeeeeen!!!"

I'm not joking. That's exactly what it was like.

Splasher should be easy to modify to work for the new character screens, but I lost the source code for it last year (Windows 7 beta didn't play nice when I decided I hated it and tried to install Windows XP on top of it, and the filesystem ended in a bad state), together with a bunch of other projects, like the mission editor and the ragdoll poser.

I'm pretty sure the source is still be backed up in some DVD somewhere, but I wasn't able to find it in order to fix the character screen. As it currently stands, any update to Splasher involves starting the project again from scratch.

You're just jealous.

Funny story. One night I was really bored and someone asked me to emp their fire/kin while it farmed. So I said, what the heck, I'll join for a while. It was the Family farm.

I buffed the guy and proceeded to go to town myself. I jumped in with the guy in order to get his Fulcrum and then jumped into the next mob to fight them.

About halfway through the map, the fire/kin gets delayed in a double spawn, and I keep going on. Then I see in the Team chat: "OMG, Doctor Leo is my new favorite person to farm with. The EMPATH is killing faster than me!"

Apparently his wife was on the team getting farmed. She wasn't happy about the remark :P

As for soloing AVs, yes, I have done that. Envenomed Dagger is a beautiful thing.

Missing doors in the Grandville tower in i7. This was pre-ouroportal, base porter, or Pocket D porter. Since the hospital was inside the tower, if you died you were locked in the tower with no way out unless someone used Recall Friend to get you out.

That one took the prize. Small enhancement numbers are annoying, certainly, but we've had way worse bugs that made it live over the years.

Exactly how I feel about my main character. Illusion/Empathy can do almost everything effectively.

Mail it to @Leandro

I like the old style better. The new one looks like it was put together in 10 minutes in Photoshop.

Since we're reposting from the closed forums, here's what I had to say about it:

This is not the fault of the reward (Mo badge) itself. I run every single STF/ITF/KTF with the parameters set to Mo badge, and I say from the beginning to everybody, "I set it that way in case we actually do get the reward; if we don't, no big deal". A lot of times we get the badge on teams that are not "ideal" by any means; but usually, if there's a bubbler/sonic/cold in the team, the chances of success are quite high.

As team leader, I tell people in advance several things when going for a specifically Mo attempt:

1) We're not restarting if someone dies. Particularly in the STF, if someone dies in the early missions, they'll die anyway in the last mission, so restarting with the same team makeup just leads to more failure. Anyone who wants to retry the badge can join me again with a different team; I run those TFs a lot.

2) If someone dies, no matter the reason (be it an accident or because they did something stupid), everybody is allowed to say "$name, you suck" once. After that, carry on as usual and complete the TF. No arguing; it's just a game, not the end of the world.

3) Don't tell other people how to play their characters. I have booted people that are on a blaster but keep yelling at the tank what he should do (this is common in the STF). Play your character, do a great job at it; everybody else knows their characters better than you do.(*)

4) For the love of all the cake in the universe, don't split from the team. Stay together; work together.

With those four "rules" in place, nearly all my Mo attempts have been fun and non-stressful. They have also been quite successful. I don't look at IOs or purples when forming a team; I know that if I get two of bubbler/sonic/cold, our defense will be so high that few things can touch us; add a good debuffer to the mix, and the chances of failure drop a lot.

The idea that only characters that are full of IOs or purples succeed in Mo runs is incorrect. The Mo badges do not promote any of the things you posted; it's all up to the team to engage in those, and especially the team leader, who, in my view, is in charge of making sure not just that the TF is a success, but that playing through it is fun, and not a frustrating chore.

(*) In that other thread, this point was disagreed with, by a player saying that "someone playing their first 'whatever AT' doesn't know the character as well as someone who has played it many times before." While that's true, I stand by this point: if you are not playing that AT at the moment, stay out of the hair of the person who is. They're here to have fun, not to take a beating because they aren't as experienced as you.

I disagree. It depends on several factors, but it all boils down to going in with the right mindset. The team leader is the one that has the most control over that. Put together a solid team, approach the task with the idea of having fun, and the experience will indeed be "rosy". Don't do the TF just for the badge, do it because you want to have a good team experience.

Comparison: a city gym starts a promotional program where those who can do 100 pushups get a "Master of Pushups" shirt. Two people decide to try it.

One goes because he wants to stay healthy, and knows that it takes time to build up strength and flexibility. He knows he can do the pushups if he follows the program; does proper warmup and core work. For the first couple of weeks it's hard, then suddenly he can do 50 in a row, then after a month, yay! He can do 100 pushups! "Master of Pushups" badge. Not only that, but because he knows what he's doing now, getting the "Master of Situps" and the "Master of Pullups" badges are easier. He's so proud of the achievement, he asks his friends and girlfriend to exercise together, because now that he's gone through it, he knows everybody can! He cheers them on, encourages them when they reach their point of failure over and over, makes no big deal if they tumble. His entire "team" will get the "Master" badges eventually, even those who never touched a gym before, and he's going to make sure they feel good about the whole process.

The other person goes to the gym because damn, it's only two weeks before summer starts! He doesn't want to look awful at the beach, but he doesn't really want to get in shape, so he just wants the shirt to look good. He "doesn't have time" for warming up, so he jumps straight into the pushups. They're hard, all his joints are complaining because they're not ready for this, so he curses and complains all the time. He takes longer rests between sets, which he uses to complain at how difficult pushups are. Other people in the gym (like our friend above) tells him that it's not so hard with the right technique and warm up, but he goes, "I shouldn't have to switch my technique or take time doing core work! All I want is the 100 pushups badge!" Fed up, he says, "screw Master of Pushups, I'll do Situps instead", and again without warming, they're even harder. He tries Pullups, and his entire body aches. So he quits the gym and goes around telling everybody that exercise is a waste of time and that the people telling him to warm up and work his core are elitist snobs.

The problem here is not that the gym created a "Master of Pushups" shirt. The second person had the wrong mindset: he put the reward before the journey. We see the same thing with the Master badges here; people want the badge now, and when their run fails, they get angry and rant at the universe. Of course an unexperienced character who's not done the TF enough times is probably going to have a hard time completing it; that's precisely why he needs encouragement! Just like warm up is vital to good exercise, a lot of failed runs pave the way to a good Masters run. You won't see a single coach in the world get angry at someone because they can't lift 200 pounds in their first week of exercise; if you get angry at someone because they died on a Masters run, you're a bad team leader, and need to leave the spot to someone who can motivate the team.

And I just know that someone is going to reply saying "What about someone who's lost an arm? Or is paralyzed? They can't ever get that shirt! Your entire comparison is flawed and you suck!" Well, none of the characters in City of Heroes have that problem. In this game, the character ("body") is perfectly capable to achieving the goal, it all depends on the player ("mind") to approach the task the right way.

Send yourself up to 20 mails with 999,999,999 influence attached in each.

From the formspring.me Q&A:

While I might do some more when I have the time, it feels a lot less useful now that there's redname word that new screens are coming.

Oops. It's not that they were untouched; hero heavies suffered from the exact same problem during closed beta. I reported it and it got fixed. I guess nobody was playing villains in CB to check their version.

Exemplar Effects on Enhancements

1. The Minor Bonus Threshold. The game doesn't scale down bonuses that are small to begin with. Any individual benefits of 20% or less are unaffected by Exemplaring down as far as level 21. Enhancement benefits of 10% or less are unaffected by Exemplaring to levels 11-20. Benefits of 5% or less are never reduced by Exemplaring. Ignore Steps 2 and 3 for each separate bonus you have that's at or below these minimums.
This step often comes into play with multi-aspect IOs, especially ones that boost three or four different attributes.

2. The Maximum Bonus Cap. If your Exemplar level is 45 or less, each individual benefit is first capped at 41.5%. This is an extra step done before the normal reduction. If your Exemplar level is 46+, skip this step.
This step rarely has a big impact. It only has a significant effect on Knockback Distance and Interrupt Time Reduction bonuses from SOs, HOs, and mid- to high-level one-aspect IOs. It will also reduce the benefits of Schedule A one-aspect IOs of levels 48+, but only by a small amount — less than 1%, even in the worst case.

3. The Actual Scaling. Look up the factors for both your Exemplar level and your true level in the following table, and divide the first value by the second. This gives you your universal scaling factor. Multiply all your affected Enhancement benefits by it.

4. Apply Enhancement Diversification to your grand totals at the very end.

Example 1: You are level 40 and elect to help a friend with the first Respec Trial. You are auto-Exemplared to 33. The value for level 33 is 1.0, and the value for 40 is 1.0, so your Enhancement benefits won't change (1.0 ÷ 1.0 = 1.0).

Example 2: You are level 30 and enter Bloody Bay. Bloody Bay adjusts all characters to a Combat Level of 25. The value for level 25 is 0.733, and the value for level 30 is 0.935, so your Enhancement benefits will scale to 0.784 times normal (0.733 ÷ 0.935).

Example 3: You call your level 50 Scrapper out of retirement to help a team in Steel Canyon. You get Exemplared to a level 13 Controller. Your Enhancements will provide roughly one-third their normal benefit (0.331 ÷ 1.0 = 0.331).

Preliminary reports say that BM murdered WW and ran away with all the loot after faking its own death.

We are gathered here to pay our last tributes and respects in memory of our departed friend, the old Wentworths interface. From the moment he walked into our servers in May 1st 2007, ol' Wenty was an endless source of (evil) laughter for nearly all marketers, and with his generosity made many a flipper rich beyond the wildest dreams. Of course he was a little slow at times, and he seemed to take special pleasure in mocking those with 3-year old computers, but what is some good-natured joking between friends? In the end, he served everybody with honesty and honor, from the compulsive min-maxer with an addiction to PVP sets, to the poor casual player who couldn’t afford to fully purple their Warshades. His hard hearing often caused him to forget the last few things we asked from him, and he would often trip and fall when asked to bring too many items at once, and we’d have to patiently wait for him to get back on his feet. Just like a child born with a birth defect, we learned to appreciate him even with his faults and frustrations. Tonight his spirit will journey to the great beyond, to meet with his intellectual equals, such as Microsoft Bob and Clippy the Office Assistant, in the great decompiler of the afterlife. Bits to bits, and queries to queries.

Well, here I'm assuming that you are currenly slotting grant cover with, what, endurance reduction? In that case, good news! You do have a multi-aspect enhancement that will work there. Two, in fact:

Cytoskeleton Exposure: 20% Defense / 33% Endredux
Enzyme Exposure: 33% Defense / 33% Endredux

Of course, I'd go with the Enzyme... then two slots give you more enhancement than 3 slots of regular SOs would

It makes sense when you think of enhancements are buffs. You have a power that deals damage (+damage) and a power that resists damage (-damage). It's the same attribute, damage, that's being enhanced. I believe that damage resistance debuff powers would be enhanced by this as well, but all the damage resistance powers I looked at aren't affected by buffs or enhancements, probably because of this very reason.

This will sound pessimistic, but if modifying the system to prevent this problem were possible, you'd think something would have been done about it already, seeing how HOs have been exploiting this flaw for six years now. As they came up with a completely different way to limit slotting (sets), it might be that the system just isn't modifiable that way without some deep changes.

Well, you already have that, in the form of sets. Why reinvent the wheel? I think what you really want is set enhancements without the bonuses and without the "only one of a kind" limitation, so you can slot as many dam/acc or acc/rech as you wanted in a single power. That might be easier to work in. But again, I'm forced to ask: which powers are you seeing that need this freeform enhancement system, because they can't benefit from "traditional" frankenslotting?

I have no clue, but I'd go with what real numbers say.

Can't say until i17 goes live :P