Luminara

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Would they work in this game?

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Five years ago, before there was a market, before the MA was added, before players had years to grind out up to two billion inf* per character, before there was base storage which could be used to stockpile more inf* in the form of enhancements, yes, it would've worked.

Now, no. Too much already stashed away and too easy to get more.

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My mission has only one objective - a glowie that must be clicked. What I am trying to do is make the bosses spawn singly through the map instead of in groups of two, and without lieuts or minions. I though one way to do that was to have a Custom boss in a custom group, and in the custom group also have an underling - like a rikti monkey (maybe that's the boss's pet.)

However when I do that I get NO bosses spawning on the entire map, and only Rikti Monkeys. Weird.

Anyone have any ideas?

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Fight a Boss, easy or medium difficulty. Set one for each allowed spawn point front, middle and back.

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My mission objective is a clicky - can I still cause spawn groups with 1 Boss in it by using underlings?

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As an ambush on the objective, or as a spawn guarding the objective? I haven't tried setting bosses in ambushes, so I don't know if or how that works, but spawning bosses as objective guardians should work (but i haven't tested it yet).

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Testing this now for my Secret Project. Elite Bosses do not work with underlings or minions. With a custom group containing only the EB, I found that it spawned three EBs at easy, medium and hard, making it impossible to use EBs as guards in this manner. If I added a single underling or minion to the custom group, no EBs spawned at any of the difficulty settings. I get the same behavior with Ambush, either multiple EBs or no EBs, no solo spawn.

And trying Single simply gave me the objective alone, unguarded.

I've recreated the EB as a boss, going to see how this works for objective guard purposes.

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No, doesn't work for boss class critters, either. I've got the objective guard difficulty set to Hard and I'm staring at four underlings and no boss.

I think I know what's going on. The destructible must be classified as a boss. If that is the case, it's not going to be possible to set a lone boss or EB as a guard for an object. The engine sees one boss already present, so it'll either never spawn one if it has any other option available (meaning, any other critter you give it permission to use), or it will disregard the difficulty setting and spawn multiple bosses if it has no other critter options (meaning, nothing but the boss in the custom group).

Going to test ambushes now...

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And no on ambushes. With the underling in the custom group, no bosses or EBs spawned for the ambush at any of the three difficulty settings. Removed the underling from the custom group, EB manually changed to boss, nothing spawned at Easy. At Medium, four bosses spawned. Not going to bother with Hard. *twitch*

Oh, well. I did need to test several things for Secret Project 2, some of which I covered with these tests, so even if the outcome wasn't positive, I'm satisfied.

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Since I am going to add one last boss fight to the final mission of my Secret Project, I'm going to go ahead and see if a boss fight triggered by an objective will spawn one boss/EB with an underling in its custom group. That would be better than an ambush, not quite as good as a guard, and useful and workable either way. Going in now, back in a few...

And it works. I set the destructible to trigger an EB to spawn at 50% HP, the EB spawned "alone", no multiples, just it and two underlings. I think it'd be better if I set it to trigger the fight when the objective is completed, though, and I need a waypoint (if i can set one) so the player doesn't go wandering all over the map in search of the new nav objective. Regardless, at least this option for spawning a lone boss in conjunction with an objective does work.

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Now Protector is missing! Anyone notice anything else new missing since the boards came back up?

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Liberty is missing, too.

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We are still working to recover Protector and Liberty. Please be advised that these may not be back up until tomorrow.

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While you're at it, Controller comes before Corruptor, alphabetically.

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Add one underling to the boss' custom group, then set the Surrounding Enemy Group option to the boss' custom group (not "same as boss", click the Custom tab and specify the boss' group). That's the only option that I've come across to spawn a boss "alone". The underling can be explained as a toy, a pet, multiple toys/pets (when it spawns more than one), a minor summoning spell, a spirit of some kind, whatever you like.

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I tried this, it didn't seem to work - all I got were spawns of underlings with no boss - why?

Unless you were talking about a Mission Objective Boss?

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Anything that allows setting a specific boss as the "only" thing to spawn. If what you're trying to do is set a mission to use a custom group containing one boss and one underling, then only underlings will spawn unless you're set to high difficulty or are on a large team.

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My mission objective is a clicky - can I still cause spawn groups with 1 Boss in it by using underlings?

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As an ambush on the objective, or as a spawn guarding the objective? I haven't tried setting bosses in ambushes, so I don't know if or how that works, but spawning bosses as objective guardians should work (but i haven't tested it yet).

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How can I get only 1 boss per spawn? I heard somewhere one trick is to find a underling that you can add to the custom group as some kind of toy or pet, but I tried that and didn't see to work?

Any ideas?

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Was the underling level *-54, or did it cap at 50 or lower, and was your boss spawning at level 51 or higher? If the boss spawns higher than the maximum level of the underling, you won't get any underlings, you'll just get multiple bosses.

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Can anyone tell me if it's possible to place a Boss (Elite Boss, Arch-Villain) in a MA mission so that he spawns by himself with no Minions with him? The boss I'm trying to place in a mission keeps spawning with Minions, and that goes against the whole point of the story.

Any help with this is appreciated.

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Add one underling to the boss' custom group, then set the Surrounding Enemy Group option to the boss' custom group (not "same as boss", click the Custom tab and specify the boss' group). That's the only option that I've come across to spawn a boss "alone". The underling can be explained as a toy, a pet, multiple toys/pets (when it spawns more than one), a minor summoning spell, a spirit of some kind, whatever you like.

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I think they're talking about Footsteps Initiative. Strangely, it seems like it's been removed. I can't find it using search.

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It was there a few hours ago. I remember seeing it when I forced myself to take a break and switch to my Dark/Traps corruptor. It was either on one of the first three pages with the default search settings, or I saw it when I did a search for short and medium arcs.

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Yeah, still there. Looking at it right now in the game.

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Email doesn't need to be efficient in CoH dump email processing for all servers into one system and have it process email filtering separate from the game. If it take 15 to 30 minutes for an email to pass hands so be it.

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I can't imagine it taking that long unless the server were a 286 with no math coprocessor. With anything reasonably modern, say Athlon XP/P3 onward, it shouldn't take more than a few seconds per e-mail, and that's including the routing time and expectation that it would be running several hundred e-mails through the filter at once.

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A filter based on keywords could be wiggled around by spaces inside the words, splitting them, or as they've been doing, by mispelling.

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Not if that filter is Bayesian. A Bayesian filter looks at words, words in proximity to other words, words in relation to other words, etc. It looks at the "language" of spam, not just the individual letters that compose it, and it uses that "language", the composition of advertisements designed to catch the eye and convince the reader to buy, to catch and remove the spam. It's highly effective when it's properly implemented, generally at or above 99% effectiveness, and with false positive counts below 1%.

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That sounds rather clever.

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The question is, do we want to pay the cost (processing wise, not to mention trying to fit that into the email system) of that while simultaneously doing all an MMO does?

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The filtering should be done on a separate system. It wouldn't impact the game at all. Person composes e-mail, clicks Send. e-mail is routed to a separate server where it's run through the filter, then flagged as safe or spam. Safe gets routed back to the game servers, spam gets held for manual review (at which point false positives could be forwarded to the game servers).

It's really just a database, a list of words and relative weightings, and a simple algorithm that sifts through e-mail text and checks those words against what's in the database. Not terribly complex, not even something which would require a state of the art server. There wouldn't be any overhead generated on the game servers. At least, if it were implemented correctly.

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I'm still more in favor of clientside filters in a situation like this.

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Which, on the other hand, would create additional load, and be vulnerable to direct manipulation via malware/viruses/worms/etc.

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A filter based on keywords could be wiggled around by spaces inside the words, splitting them, or as they've been doing, by mispelling.

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Not if that filter is Bayesian. A Bayesian filter looks at words, words in proximity to other words, words in relation to other words, etc. It looks at the "language" of spam, not just the individual letters that compose it, and it uses that "language", the composition of advertisements designed to catch the eye and convince the reader to buy, to catch and remove the spam. It's highly effective when it's properly implemented, generally at or above 99% effectiveness, and with false positive counts below 1%.

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Welcome to about two iterations of the spammer/antispam software wars ago.

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I know. I've been following Bayesian filtering for years, since this article was first posted. As soon as the spammers figure out it's in place, they start adding random garbage phrases and words to their e-mails in an attempt to poison the list, in hopes of either generating enough false positives to force the company to remove the filter, or to skew the weighting on the negatives enough to get more through.

But it's still better than no filter at all, which is what we (appear to) have now, and Bayesian is still a very, very good algorithm when it's implemented well (not naive).

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A filter based on keywords could be wiggled around by spaces inside the words, splitting them, or as they've been doing, by mispelling.

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Not if that filter is Bayesian. A Bayesian filter looks at words, words in proximity to other words, words in relation to other words, etc. It looks at the "language" of spam, not just the individual letters that compose it, and it uses that "language", the composition of advertisements designed to catch the eye and convince the reader to buy, to catch and remove the spam. It's highly effective when it's properly implemented, generally at or above 99% effectiveness, and with false positive counts below 1%.

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you might want to name your "base" custom boss with a generic-type name, in case multiples do spawn. It still won't make sense for Candyfloss Joe to spawn with two more Candy Kings, since he's supposed to be the only Candy King there is, but it will still look better than three Candyfloss Joes. See what I mean?

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Can't do that. I PMed you, you'll understand when you read it.

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Another idea is to load generic enemies into your custom group to discourage multiboss spawns.

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That's exactly how I've got it set up now. I use underlings, specific underlings which fit the concept for each boss and can be explained within the context of the boss' powers. I'm trying to avoid making each boss seem like a controller/mastermind with multiple pets, if at all possible. Something small and weak which acts more like a temp power or toy, fine. A boss with his own personal army, that doesn't work for this.

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(I'm at work right now and probably won't be online again at least until late tonight - maybe 8 hours from the time of this post ... so I'll talk to you in-game later.)

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I'll be awake. Yay for insomnia.

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I only skimmed the thread so I hope I'm not being unhelpful, but have you checked the villain group boss three is set to spawn alongside? By default it should set itself to 'same as boss' but more often than not it doesn't and won't let you forward without selecting a villain group directly. At least in my experience.

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I manually set all of the enemy groups for boss spawns to Custom, and selected the custom groups containing the specific boss for each spawn. That forces them to spawn with whatever's in their custom groups, instead of the "general" critters you select for the map (which is what happens when i leave it at "same as boss"). Solo or in a Heroic duo, or even a duo at the second difficulty level, this works fine, the bosses spawn just one boss and one to four of the underlings I've assigned to their custom groups.

Some of the spawns are working for duos above the second difficulty level. I suspect that might be a result of the level ranges of the underlings. Meaning, if they don't go above 50, they won't spawn when the team starts encountering level 51+ bosses. If that's correct, then I should only see this problem on that Boss #3 spawn, because the underling I assigned to his custom group only goes up to 50. If that is the case, I can work around it, I've got a couple of other options for things I can spawn with him (i have a little flexibility with this particular boss, due to the powers i selected for him. there is one minion i can use, if i have to, but i also located the same underling with a level range up to 54, so i may be able to swap that in and fix this completely... still don't know if it'll work on large teams, though).

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Just let me make sure I understand: you have custom bosses that are non-unique but don't travel in pairs?

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The custom bosses are unique. Let's call them Boss #1, Boss #2, Boss #3 and Boss #4. All of the bosses are added as separate Fight a Boss objectives. All of the bosses are in separate custom groups (Boss Group #1, Boss Group #2, etc.).

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For unique custom bosses, I put mine in a separate group so they wouldn't show up unless I hand-placed them. But I can't imagine that you didn't think of that already.

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I did. The problem I have is that higher difficulty settings or larger teams appear to spawn two or more of a custom boss.

For example, last night I got a friend to help me test and critique the arc. We ran through the entire thing, beginning to end. In the first mission, Boss #1 spawned properly, one copy of the boss. In the second mission, Boss #2 and Boss #4 spawned properly, one copy of each boss. However, Boss #3 spawned improperly, there were three copies of that one boss. Each of these boss fights is separate, unique Fight a Boss objectives, all spawned at different points on the map.

The source of the problem is... partially the way I need to get the boss fights to work in order for the story to work, and partially the limitations imposed by the current tools available.

What I mean by that is, on the first two maps, the bosses have to be "rogues". They have to be unaffiliated with either the player or the "general" enemies I have populating the maps. The only way to do that is to set them to Rogue and specify at least one other critter to spawn with them. The story doesn't involve any of these bosses traveling with friends, allies or support troops, but the architect tools don't support spawning anything without additional critters. If a boss group doesn't have anything but the boss in it, it spawns multiple copies of the boss when the difficulty increases (higher diff. settings, larger teams).

Something I've tried to work around that problem is adding one underling to each of the custom groups. That's where it gets flaky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Last night, it worked for two custom boss spawns on the second map, but it failed for the third custom boss spawn. Instead of spawning some underlings, the boss spawned with two more copies of himself. The other two bosses spawned with underlings, exactly what I wanted.

I think I might be able to fix it using minions instead of underlings, or stronger underlings, but I'm still concerned that a team of 8 will run the map at Invincible and end up spawning three copies of every boss. I have no way to explain that in the story, or the powers of the bosses, it's just going completely shatter immersion. And honestly, the story is the only reason I have for doing this. I didn't create the arc to provide a challenge, I created the arc to tell a story. If players are running the arc and the story falls apart because there are three copies of Boss #1 spawning for them, it's just pointless.

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I'm sure that once I see the characters it'll make sense, but I'm having a hard time envisioning non-unique bosses that are never in the same room together.

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It's a bit of a departure from the standard CoH mission fare. Which is also giving me a bit of a problem, because the action climaxes in mission #4, but the story isn't complete until the end of mission #5. I published the mission for last night's test, then forgot to unpublish it before going to bed, and woke up today to find that someone had run it and 1-starred it because he didn't want to read the story and wasn't paying attention in the final mission (missed the two glowies set as mission objectives). I'm still trying to think of a reasonable way to spice up the last mission and make it easier for players like that to follow and complete, without throwing the story out the window.

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My schedule is unpredictable but I'd be delighted to volunteer as a tester if we can get it together. PM me or look for @Zombra in game.

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Logging in now to see if I can catch you.

I'm putting the polishing touch on my Secret Project. Picking out misspelled words, clarifying a bit of dialog here and there, cleaning up nav text or shortening objective names, little things of that nature to get it to shine. I'm on my last run-through and I think it's ready to go gold, but there's one thing I haven't done yet...

I haven't tested it with a team larger than two. And I don't know if I can. My only real concern is whether certain custom boss spawns will pop up twins or triplets for larger teams (which would be inexplicable in light of the story, thus something i would need to prevent).

Set it loose in the wilds of published arcs, or hold on to it until I can scrape together some volunteers?

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Okay, so I know that this comes up pretty regularly, but usually in the form of "GIEV ME STAMINA NAO 4 FREE!!!" threads. I'd like to stay away from that, and instead look at the possibility of making the 1-19 game a little easier on the blue bar.

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We just got that not very long ago. Beginner's Luck. Less missing, less endurance wasted on missed attacks, more endurance available to attack more frequently or with heavier hitters, and since it scales down slowly, it gives the player time to acquire DOs or IOs to enhance accuracy, thus compensating for the gradual falloff of BL and continuing the endurance preservation when it's needed most.

Since BL was implemented, I've only had low level endurance problems with one character, a dominator, and that AT has its own endurance supplementary option.

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I have a question that sort of goes with this – say you want to place several “found nothing” objects (like in normal missions), and only one that completes/triggers your objective (found what you needed)? I’m having a hard time doing this atm, without having to add several collections (1 safe, 1 safe, 1 safe, 1 safe…) in the navigational screen…

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Continuing with safes as the example, go to the menu to set your collection object, then click Settings (just under the Collection Type/Object menus) and set the number you want spawned in the Quantity box. In the Text section just below that, enter text in the Navigation (Plural) area, like "safes to search", and it'll spawn all of the safes under one nav title, "5 safes to search".

Now set a separate collection object, of the same type, with the spawn number left at the default 1. Enter the same "safes to search" text in the Navigation (Plural) field. It should now list "6 safes to search" in the nav window, and count down to the last one properly.

Remember to set the clue object to Back or Middle (and test to verify that it spawns in the back or middle), or set the clue text on the unnecessary objects to something like "You don't find anything important in this safe."

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An underling? I'll have to look at that next time I'm in-game. I thought there were only boss, lieutenant, and minion options for custom groups. Let me know if it's hidden in there somewhere or if I'm just blind.

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Underlings are grouped with minions, on the Minion tab.

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Ugh, I even tried adding a minion in to the ambushing group, and all that does is make the ambush group full of minions (at any difficulty), rather than just the boss and a minion or two.

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Did you try an underling?

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Hm... now, on a completely different tangent, how the heck do I use the Devouring Earth Monster Pack? It's for a different Secret Project. I purchased the pack, but I can't find the monsters anywhere (looking at the DE list right now, trying to add them to a large outdoor map as a test but they aren't on the list). >.<

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They're not available to put into a group and then show up multiple times in a generic spawn.

They're available as individuals to become Contacts or Fight a Boss critters.

The list of available critters changes depending on what you're doing.

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Ah. I understand. Thank you.

Now let's see how I can utilize this... /e plot

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How to make ANY objective bunch up:

1. Make sure the (Plural) navbar description of every objective is the same. Example: "Things to do".
2. Make sure the (Singular) description of every objective is the same. Example "Do the last thing!"

Presto! Now it shows up as "X things to do" and when there's only one left, it shows "Do the last thing!".

Add 4 different hostage rescue objectives, make sure they all have the same singular/plural navbar description text, and they'll collapse as the same objective in the navbar: 4 hostages to rescue.

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Wonderful, thank you.

Hm... now, on a completely different tangent, how the heck do I use the Devouring Earth Monster Pack? It's for a different Secret Project. I purchased the pack, but I can't find the monsters anywhere (looking at the DE list right now, trying to add them to a large outdoor map as a test but they aren't on the list). >.<

Not escorts. Please, don't tell me escorts. *twitch*

I've been working on a Secret Project, something that I think others will enjoy playing (and hopefully reading) as much as I'm enjoying writing. I've hit a snag, though. At least one of the missions in this Secret Project requires a few hostage rescues, and the only way I've been able to find to add hostages in need of rescue (but NOT escort back to the door) is to create custom Person critters... which, in and of itself is workable, but it leads to a different problem (or two).

If I use custom Person critters, I only have two options - create a different Person for each hostage, but that leads to having multiple "Rescue X" entries in the nav window; or create one Person and tell the interface to spawn multiples as hostages, but that results in a bunch of exact duplicates of that single Person, which really isn't acceptable for, say, a bunch of office or warehouse employees.

What I want to do is simply have a few random hostages spawn and the nav window to say "Rescue X hostages". Heck, they don't even necessarily need to be mission objectives, I just need them as a method of conveying urgency and emphasis. I'd be delighted if I could pick existing NPCs to do this, but I can throw together some bland and unexciting NPC costumes for a handful of Person critters if necessary. And if at all possible, I'd really rather not force players to escort NPCs back to the mission door. That's my least favorite mission aspect and it's something I'd prefer not to add to my Secret Project.

>.>

Pretty please?

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Ok, here is a thread for everyone to discuss which animations attached to power they would change, and how. Try to keep it simple, yet detailed. As in, make it so that someone can understand it fully. Give reasons why /you/ think it should be changed.

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Multiple jump animations, each of which would blend with others.

I would leave the current jump animation (YMCA) as the default and Sprint jump animation, meaning this is how you would jump without Hurdle, SJ, CJ or any other +Jump Height/Speed power.

If the player adds Hurdle to the character, the jump animation would modify into the streamlined "leaning forward" animation used for the upward swing of Super Jump. This animation would apply to almost the full arc of the jump, altering to extend the feet right at the end of the arc, but leaving the arms tucked in close to the body.

Combat Jumping would add an animation which would adjust to match the incline of whichever plane the character was in contact with when jumping. Hitting a wall and leaping off of it, for example, would display a "hands and feet coming into contact with wall, spring off with body extended and tuck into a roll mid-air" animation, to give a more acrobatic feel. Landing on the ground would end with both knees and one fist down, the character looking straight ahead. Hitting a ceiling would result in the character doing a flip, kicking off of the ceiling with his/her feet, then flipping back to land on his/her feet on the next surface.

I would give Super Jump a choice of animations, which could be "locked" as the default. A Hulk-like leap of massive power and sudden slam to the ground (both feet, arms at sides, chest heaving and character leaning slightly forward, as if to say, "Come get some"), leaving cracks radiating out from the center; a "cannonball"-like animation in which the character tucks into a tight ball and spins wildly, then springs back into landing form at the last second; an animation almost exactly like the one proposed for Combat Jumping, except landing on walls would always be with the feet (no hands) and immediately slide or leap off again in a pose which conveys the sense that the character just launched off of that surface.

Oh, the things I would do with jump animations, if I could. *sigh*

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Err... what's "happening now"? I haven't had any powers-related issues.

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All buffs, including buffs from auto powers, are disabled for 10s after zoning. Zoning into any zone, into missions, out of missions, logging in, any kind of zoning. Click buffs are removed completely upon zoning in some cases, or give a "Cannot affect this target" message and aren't applied in others (Hasten, Practiced Brawler), and the player can't activate the power again until it's recharged (thus forcing some to wait for anywhere from a couple to several minutes to proceed when they enter a mission).