MadScientist

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... We'd totally do that for an exploit fix, but for this issue we felt, that while painful for those interested in it, is something we'll have to leave as is.

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LH,
Do you realize how high-profile this event is?

I wonder what the "gossip" is around the internet about a game that has such a flaw in a big-time event.

To put a specific annecdote on it, I know 2 friends who re-upped their subscriptions when the event was coming up. They did so partly for the event itself, partly to catch the general surge of population on the server during any event, and just "about time for another go 'round" since they seem to lapse and renew often. They're rather disappointed.

You've created this content. Don't you want to fix it so people can enjoy it?

I dunno, maybe that just came off like trying to guilt trip you into fixing the bugs. That's not quite what I was going for, but I'll leave it since it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of honesty. I'm just suggesting that a lot of people outside your company may not consider it quite so unimportant.


Edit: to possibly be more constructive, any chance of a patch on Test01 without interrupting normal Beta?

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Snow_Globe isn't completely off his rocker here. There is an intrinsic value to the badge system that actual badge collectors provide. Unless it is required for an accolade or other unlockable, only completists really go after, or even care about things like explore badges, or many of the defeat badges. The devs have sent mixed messages about the badge system by statement and action for as long as the badge system has been in place. It is not unambiguously a given that players just aren't supposed to be able to get all the badges as Venture claims. In an absolute sense, that's technically true, but the devs have always hoped that the players would pursue everything else.

You can't tell people "be a collector, of some stuff." That's incompatible with the collector mindset, and a good game designer should acknowledge the target audience they are targetting. If the devs are targetting people who care enough to pursue some of the badges with no meaning beyond collection, and will happily ignore all the ones that are designed to be out of reach, they are targetting a phone booth: there aren't bound to be lots of people like that.

*If* the devs push the collector mindset too far, they could devalue badge collecting past a tipping point, and simply eliminate collectors from the system. The only people left would be the ones who would only pursue badges if there was something else in it for them. And in that case, badges cease to be a meaningful reward item in the game. They would only be a game mechanical contrivance to act as a placeholder to unlock the *true* rewards.

That is a gameplay loss of some value. Why its not a higher priority to address is something that I'm honestly not sure about. It almost seems like the Powers That Be think its something they can fix whenever they want, so its a low priority. I'm not sure I agree. I don't think there's any danger *now* to the badge system, but I also believe that the first sign I detect that it is in danger will be when its dead. We're not going to have swimming polar bears giving us a hint.

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That is a great response, Arcanaville.
Mind if run with that from a slightly different angle?

The fun of badges is in the earning not in the chasing. 30 days on offline badges pushing the earnings so far apart as to be unnoticable, thus they're not a very fun badge concept.

The design goal of badges is to promote content. (Which is why Empath sucks, it doesn't promote healing as content, it instead begs for farming.) Yeah, these promote more abstract content, since you're not online to see it, but the idea applies rather well. The badges should be an added way to encourage people to experience multiple day jobs. Instead, 30 days would seem to stick someone into one job for such an incredibly long time to get a reward that it outwieghs the incentive to try the other jobs.



From the question of "should we have all the badges" let's simplify to "should we have all the day jobs?" Is there a real harm in making that so much easier? With the inherant limit that you can only log out in 1 spot to gain the log-in benefit later, would it matter if one person quickly unlocked all potential benefits on a single character? They're still only going to be able to *use* one at a time, even if they have more of the badges.
Consider that for every day job badge you chase simply *as a badge* you're passing up on logging out in some other area where you may get an offline benefit of more use. ie: you have to gimp yourself to chase a day job badge for the badge's sake. That's not good for the badge system, either, and its effect should be minimized.

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Not sure whether there is any point in keep adding to this thread.

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Seeing as this thread is merely an updating of the other thread, which existed because Ex Libris asked us to gather issues at the devs' request... I have to be equally mystified.


to quote from myself in the first Big List in that previous thread,[ QUOTE ]
Would it be possible to have more Developer presence in this forum? We could provide better feedback if we knew your design goals. And sometimes a short explanation from a Dev can clear up debates quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]I think that applies here.

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SECTION 3: obtain the Level 15 to 19 badges:
Contact Name: Operative Wellman
Arc Name: Breakout at the Zig
mission 1 is click glowie to win,
mission 2: escort at least 1 of 3 prisoners to exit to win, can get assist from them and Jenkins. (note this map doesn’t contain the jailbird badge if you missed it in the tutorial,
mission 3: kill all enemies.

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I think he other arc is better, Master of Destruction.

There's still a Kill All, but Wyvern are a bit easier than Longbow. The other 2 missions are 7+2 destroyable targets, which is a lot less headache than trying to keep those trigger-happy prisoners alive.

also, the 2nd mission in Breakout is in Mercy, which can be a pain with no travel powers.

Thank you for this. I've been slowly gathering these badges.

I ran Origin of Power with some challenge settings, and it awarded the level 1-14 badges for those, not the level 20-24 ones that you'd expect from a level 20 exemping.

making a record of this discussion http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post11654787

General idea: Provide a bonus prestige reward as an option on reward screens. This gives players a specific piece of content to pursue if they need to earn extra prestige.

Specific idea: This would work well for Oroboros TFs since are not necessarily skewed towards specific farming builds, and are both team- and solo-friendly. Those TFs are already in need of a buff, since they only give SOs. (reference here for more.)

10,000 Prestige with a timer of 24 hours would be rather conservative, comparing to other rates of Prestige-per-minute earnings. (number analysis here.)

(Yes, new content like SG Missions that generate bonus Prestige would be ideal. But why not use the excuse to buff existing content, and get this reward implemented without needing to design those additional pieces.)

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There is also a bug for bases not accessed for 60 days are deleted.

When you petition to get them back, you get a generic, barn red starter base with a rez ring and some empty storage.

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I've never heard of this bug you are speaking of.

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This is why I would like people to start new threads instead of declaring bugs here.
This is likely not an issue at all, and just a specific problem for one base.

from any minion:

Base Salvage
Invention Salvage
Recipe
Enhancement
Inspiration
Costume Recipe

so Rikti could be up to 7 with a Merit.

Making sure we get a record of the bottom line of the recent storage changes.

Currently, we have this item in the main post under Storage,[ QUOTE ][*]Lack of personal storage for Enhancers, Base Salvage and Inspirations causes trouble. Either people try to retask group storage, causing troubles such as wrong expectations about security or headaches with SG permissions. Also, it gives an advantage to a 1-man SG who can actulaly have that personal storage (not to mention easy movement of items between alts), thus actually being a barrier to joining a multi-player SG, which is backwards.

[/ QUOTE ]and that seems to cover the idea nicely. I won't bother rewriting it right now.

What needs to be added is a similar statement about item transfer, partly because of the recent loss of the unsupported drag+drop trick, and partly because in general it's causing the same "need for a private SG" issues mentioned above.

<ul type="square">[*]We need a means of transferring items directly to other characters. Similar to the personal storage issue, this is a problem because people attempt to retask storage for this function. The ability to freely trade to alts via storage is an advantage of personal SGs, which means that multiplayer SGs have a disadvantage because their members lose functionality. Transferring was also the driving reason behind utilizing the drag+drop trick into other group's storage bins, and though that had to be removed for many reasons, it should be noted just why it was popular. The ability to transfer items should be directly supported (ie: an email system for trading) to free up Storage for its intended uses.[/list]

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Content has never been available to everyone. Whether it's level difference to access the zone or contact, getting game time for veteran rewards or even an arc for Mightnight. Even epics require a lvl 50, even though it's added content.

So no, I really don't see new content suddenly becoming available for everyone.

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If there was an aspect of the game that was highly promoted (the way custom missions have been) and was limited in accessibility because of differening degrees of base quality, then that would certainly become a Base Issue, whether you personally support it or not.

That's the only thing that has to do with this base issues thread. So perhaps beyond that, the discussion of a system that doesn't even exist yet could be taken up in a thread of its own, instead of cluttering up this list that we're trying to use to get dev attention to *existing* issues. Thank you.

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What about people not in SGs? What about SGs that can't afford the mission computer (prestige, control, power, space)?

I expect the mission designer will be something separate altogether.

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I also suspect that, like the Personal Salvage Vault, Inventions, and the Aspect of the Pillar, we'll get an in-base way to access that system. (I'm hoping the lack of such a system for Auctions was the exception and not the norm.)
Now if they wanted to recycle the effect of the Mission Computer to serve that purpose, it would be very convenient. But they key difference is that's not going to be driving the new system from the Mission Computers. So yeah, I also expect it to be separate, but maybe *also* not separate.

You make a good point about going in 2 directions at once, but I think the term "sink" is a little too harsh here.
This isn't really a way to drain Base Salvage out of the system (the way something like the market sales tax drains out Inf). It's more of a way to let everyone use Base Salvage since crafting opportunities are few and far between.
Maybe "outlet" is more appropriate.

and I do think it's a good idea to have something that puts that Base Salvage to use. We all have it, we don't use it, it might follow that we're dying to spend it. We just need something worth spending it on.




I wonder if there's some datamining they can do with IOs and Set Bonuses to see what types of buffs people want. Empowerment overlaps a lot of set bonuses, like +Move, +Res, +Recovery. Which bonuses do people go after the most?
What bonuses that are missing from the Station are people using? For example, is +HoldDuration popular as a set bonus? If so, would it be popular on a Station?

How would the timing of an inspiration help?
I'm considering something like a buff to one type of Resistance. For a 15 minute duration, you're looking at a benefit to a significant part of a mission, not just a single mob that starts to beat you down and you need 30 seconds of help. At that point, does a few seconds here or there affect the way this is used?

Besides, I'd rather carry 6 Ruggeds to buff any type of Res than to fill 6 slots with effects that each only work on one type.

It's unknown if inspirations could be recoded so the buff lasts through death, which is a key piece of the usefulness of the current powers on the station.

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Or, what if they were all turned into clicky temporary powers like the Safeguard/Mayhem jetpack? You click it on when you enter a mission and click it off when you exit and travel to the next mission. If you die, you can click it back on after you rez. The one hour duration of actual use time could then be plenty of time.

Endurance cost would be an issue though. Could it be set to zero endurance cost?

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I'll take the easy question first: Hide is a toggle power with zero end cost.

But there's also things like animation and activation times, which means a lot of coding time on these which may nix that idea.

Also, it creates a rather unfair balance that people with mez protection get a better benefit from these powers than people without. Consider how Empowerment KB Protection is actually better as an auto than Acrobatics. (Heck, I know people who respec'd out of Reflexes because of the need to keep clicking Practiced Brawler back on.)

*adding* click/toggle temp powers in the station may be very nice. Such as Heal-Other. or a temp version of Recall Friend. but changing over the nature of the buffs we alread have just doesn't seem like the heart of what makes those buffs weak. Would anyone suggest Fortitude should become a Toggle created by an Empath? It's just a whole different feel for a "buff".

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I run on PUG Task Forces and Strike Forces quite often, and I feel it's poor etiquette to tell a team, as soon as it's built, to hang on while I take 10 minutes to buff up.

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you could craft the components ahead of time, and just need to click on a couple of buffs to get going. I've got a character with no Acrobatics at level 20 and I have a stash of Elements ready to go for KB protection before every Cap dash. but I digress.



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If the buff could be made to last the duration of a task force, whether it be a 20 minute Katie Hannon with knockback protection, or a Shadow Shard psi resist that lasts for the two weeks you take to complete, that would be awesome and well worth any time and expense.
...
I’m not a programmer so anything I offer there would be conjecture, but, if it was a Task Force buff, it’d probably have to be crafted after the Task Force is started?

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I bet it would be possible to have the system know if you're in TF Mode. After all, it knows you're in TF Mode when someone tries to invite you to a team, or a few other actions. So a recipe you can only craft while on a TF doesn't seem surprising.

What I was pondering with the "is it worth it" would really be the question of comparing to the other recipes.
Is it worth having a 2nd type of Lethal Resist recipe that's only usable on a TF and has an indefinite TF duration? How do you distinguish the two? Do you give them different costs?
Or would it be OK to just scrap the whole Empowerment 1 hour setup and change the whole station over to only work on a TF for the duration of a TF? Is the benefit of a TF-based buff system really worth losing the little time people do use an Empowerment station now? How does this compare to simply fixing the ability to hit your base on those 2 co-op TFs?

I feel like the TF-buff idea is the type of thing they should have thought of originally and it may be of little benefit for the effort to redesign into it now.

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To answer the original question, I do not use them because the duration is too short for whatever task I might actually need the buff for.

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Are you saying this about the actual 1 hour buff? or the 15 minutes it claims?


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... then travel to Cimerora and get on a team ...

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The inability to use any base resource on a mixed team is certainly a drawback. (if we ever get Market interfaces in the base, then this will become an even bigger issue.)

BUT... have you ever tried "we have all 8? can I take a moment to teleport to my base and buff up first?" If you porter (or rez) there and use the base portal to exit, you'll return to Cimerora without having to go thru the other zones. Doesn't help that it's only an hour, though, and the TF is longer, bringing me to...

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If the duration was increased to four hours, it would cover your time to build your task force and travel where you need to go, plus the majority of the task forces in the game.

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What if the duration could be made dynamic? What if Empowerment buffs were keyed to "as long as you're on the Task Force team", would that be good? Would it be too tough to balance with non-TF durations? (ie: would we need a whole different list of TF-based buffs?)

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You missed several of my points (referring to tech, but meaning both):
The supercomputer being more powerful than the main frame should support more items.

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I did not miss that. I questioned your conclusion. It's more powerful because it gives more control and better auxes.

Something with this amount of analysis should have a whole thread for this debate, with a link in this thread.



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Also why have control aux items that don't provide control?

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THAT is a whole different issue than main's count of auxes.
Didn't I have a huge post somewhere about why the Pillar, Mission Computer and some potential items (Wentworths Terminals) should be a whole new type?

Floor Wall patterns apply their style around any floor section set to the highest level. Low Floor Wall patterns only apply their style when you have a transition from low floor to mid-level floor.

For example. This has the Arcane Short Floor Wall pattern, and the Technology Floor Wall pattern. Notice that gives a piece of Tech on the lower level behind where I'm standing.

What the system should do is allow choosing the upper and lower walls as if they are separate layers.
It should set the lower wall to Arcane all the way around, and then just the upper wall to Tech. The same way you get a floor style based on the floor's position, not its connection to neighboring squares. This builds one level of floor on top of the other, not treating each square of floor as a pillar up from the ground.



However the bottom half of the (full) Floor Walls patterns do not match the Low Floor Walls patterns. For example, here I set the Low Floor Walls to Tech, as seen on the left. Tech (full) Floor Walls on the middle piece don't match. There's different artwork for the 2-level walls, and it's on the lower portion. In fixing the first problem, it'd be a shame to see those other patterns disappear. Perhaps they can be separated and give both Upper and Lower a few new options?

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This has probably been posted a billion times on a billion threads but I want to make my say too lol

It would be really great if we, as supergroups, could just be given an option to not participate in raids and get rid of the whole pathing stuff.

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yes, it has been said.
The reason we have this thread is to try to study some of the specific situations that seem unfair, under the premise that pathing can't simply be discarded because there are plenty of non-raid situations that require it.
(unless you to find you rez inside a wall of desks...)


You mention screenshots. Those are important. Show the devs the layout that should not be blocking pathing.

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The Supercomputer/Orbits of Control can attach 9 aux items. &lt;-Flaw #1 it should be greater than the previous.

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Why? The items it can take produce 10 times the Control of the Mainframe-only items. *That* is the advantage.

Besides, does anyone really attach 9 items to either? 9 on the Mainframe in a room that can hold them is way more expensive than getting the same control fom the Supercomputer. 9 on the Supercomputer is such overkill I don't know of anyone who's done it. I have a suspicion they gave each Main a number pretty high (assuming code required some number and wouldn't just take "Unlimited") figuring the real limit is by the room you're using. With Lord Recluse gone from the dev team we may never know.


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Is it me or did someone severely miscalculate something? Do the developers think that people will put 17 Pillars of Ice &amp; Flame in the largest control room?

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Generally speaking, I think the miscalculation was about the distribution of SGs. Looking just at public SGs (ie: those freely recruiting, so not considering soloists or small SGs limited to friends) I think the devs expected to see people banding together into large, uber-powerful SGs and competing head-to-head with one another, and instead we got a lot more moderate-size SGs all competing with each other for recruits.
I think the devs actually expected people to have upwards of 75 player in a SG, thus easily getting the larger amounts of prestige and having a very active raid system using those rooms (even if only a fraction of the 75 per SG actually did the raiding).

So the question is really: do the devs ever intend to follow thru on that by giving us some of the tools needed to manage dozens of players in a single group (such as communication tools, security logs, features to enable more than a few base architects, tools to manage 100+ players' alts on the roster, etc) and some actual reason to gather like that (such as a competative and rewarding raid system geared to those larger groups), or should we be discussing rebalancing certain things knowing that in practice SGs seem to level out at around a fraction of that initial design?

It's really the type of thing that a Dev needs to speak on.
Take a giant control room for example, is the system ever going to be balanced to make that usable? How would we know? Is it like altering some power sets so more people are capable of contributing to the LRSF, while the content itself stays the same? or is it like Hammi where the whole mechanics won't work as intended and they need to redo the encounter itself?
We can certainly give our opinions here in the forum till we all turn blue. I think from your post it's clear you favor altering the content. I personally think there's some advantage to there being fewer, larger SGs at the top end of the scale and would love to see those develop. But I wish the Devs would speak more on their intention of what SGs should be so we don't have to guess at what needs to be addressed.


(Incidentally, the short version of all I just said was something like "A lot of costs were designed for 75 *players* in a SG and not the more typical 75 *characters* using many alts. This creates cost imbalances on the larger items." I think somewhere along the line of these issues lists, that all got simplified to be a roster problem and not a general costing problem. Which is odd, cause it really applies to the more recent Fusion Generator Badge change, too.)

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[u]TECH GRID = TECH CIRCLES in HIGH CEILINGS[u]

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In short, two different high cieling tiles look like Tech Circles. The Tech Grid one needs to be fixed to look like the low/mid Tech Grid.

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[u]Soulbound Allegiance: Chance for Build up. [u]

Does not work with Fire Imps on Fire Control.

I slotted this and tested on the same mobs with no buffs to damage on imps and their damage never was effected over the course of fighting for over 30 minutes straight.

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on the other hand, I have one in Singularity, and I see the "your attack strength has increased" sometimes when I *summon* it.

so yeah, completely messed up.

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Viable workaround? Not a chance. I was just bitten again with this on the test server. I've had to petition this base several times since Issue 8 (I think I'm up to the 10th one at this point for this base).

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so the rebuying the plot thing isn't working for that base?

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As to automatically triggering the repair function, it wastes game cycles (server side) that could be spent elsewhere. With a repair option it targets a specific base, and only when needed.

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well, that depends how it's coded. if "pay rent" is simply smart enough to clear the rent due message if you owe 0 rent, then it's not much of a routine compared to actually running whatever you want to run in Repair.

look, for the sake of this list, we don't care how it gets fixed. the point is the "can't pay no rent" bug.

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The SG Registrars need an option like the folllowing:
Send repairman
...
So I went to the SG Registrar. When I asked to pay the upkeep, he told me it wasn't due.

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Why not just trigger the repair function there instead of adding a whole new menu option that will be very rarely needed?

(and I thought we had a viable workaround to fix this bug. and that the bug only ever happened once, if at all. are those no longer right?)

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I have a chat channel set up for our SG members that lists available recipes\IOs from our stash SG (which is in our coalition) using the MoTD for the channel.

Maintaining this list becomes very tiresome and takes a lot of time. If I could export a list of IOs from the storage bins, I would be able to update the channel MoTD in minutes rather then hours.

As for exporting the base logs, that would be awesome because it would allow us to better decide who should get access to the stash base. Access to our stash base is based on contributions to the stash.

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Sounds to me like your actual QOL request should be fixing whatever it is about your main SG storage that makes you want to use such a roundabout means of creating a stash coalition.

This may be a good time to direct the conversation into the official storage thread as the details of that may be quite complex for this summary thread.