Redlynne

Just started up a new Praetorian Storm/Dual Pistols Defender on Virtue this past week.

Her name? Sidhe Bang

I've always been Redlynne around these forums. That's because back in Issue 2(!) ... the name Redline had already been taken (along with Red Line and all the other "promising" variations on Virtue). So I settled on Redlynne as a compromise alternative spelling that I could live with, which didn't involve l33tsp34k weirdness.

In my own mind, I've always pronounced my forum handle (and the name of my original character, who I still have) as Red Line. I know that Zwillinger has pronounced my name as Red Lynn(e) more than once during the UStream chats when asking/answering some of my questions I've posted in the live chat.

*IF* Light Form is being given -3 Mag Protection vs All Mez, I would (strongly) recommend to Arbiter Hawk (et al.) that instead of doing that the Three Shield Powers for Peacebringers should be given -1 Mag Protection vs All Mez *each* and Light Form grant no Mez Protection.

Now ... what would be really interesting is if Light Form were synergized with Cosmic Balance such that a Peacebringer, with Light Form up, gains an additional -0.5 Mag Protection vs All Mez for each Teammate, regardless of AT, within Cosmic Balance's radius of effect, from Cosmic Balance, while Light Form is in effect. This would require the addition of only a single additional "buff line" to Cosmic Balance with a conditional of (when in Light Form) in order to achieve substantially the same effect in Teams as the -3 Mag Protection vs All Mez that has been coded into Light Form for Beta. The major difference is that if the Mez Protect of Light Form is "keyed" through Cosmic Balance (and thus, Teaming), it won't overshadow the Mez Protection aspect of White Dwarf to the same extent in Solo Play, and thus Light Form will be "less" of an obsoleting factor for Dwarf Form than as currently proposed for Issue 21.

I've been playing a new Praetorian Storm/DP Defender (made Level 11 during double XP weekend!) and I've actually been using Cryo Ammo ever since reaching Level 10 simply for the Slow stacking with Snow Storm (which debuffs speed and recharge). Also, at low levels the difference between Incendiary and other damage types is really minimal (because the numbers are all small).

I figure that the "need" for Cryo Ammo will change once I start getting more powers into the mix as I level up, but for now, Cryo has been "good to me" as a survival tool when fighting Resistance, PPD and Ghouls at low levels. So I for one am glad the option is there.

Far more depressing than a bit of conversation from the Rednames about Peacebringer issues is the lack of a dedicated Feedback Thread to Kheldian Power Changes. That right there is rather indicative.

Arbiter Hawk needs to lay off the Cole-Aid. Seriously.

I would like my In-game Email window to show me how many email messages I have stored in my In tray. Right now, there is no UI element to tell me how many messages I currently have, nor how close I am to reaching the 20 messages concurrently maximum.

I just wish the UI would show me an Alignment Roundel when I click on another Player, so I could see what THEIR Alignment is. Right now, that functionality is not a part of the $Target UI.

I'm going to PM Avatea to create a Kheldian Powers thread in the Beta Feedback Forum. Methinks that matters such as this should not be confined to a "Discussion" forum.

Oh ... so you mean Street Justice isn't "pre-crippled" by the port to Stalkers? How the heck did that happen?!

TRICK QUESTION:

Would World of Confusion become a "better" or more "useful" power selection if the PBAoE radius were increased (to 10 ft? 12 ft? 15 ft? 20 ft?) ... or if it were reconfigured as a "Grant Power" styled effect that piggybacked onto all of your other powers?

Heck, I can even think of a way to code World of Confusion as a "self buff" which then "enables" (or "triggers" if you prefer) Confusion effects in all of your other powers ... so that you can have Mag 1.5 Confuse in all your Single Target Primary and Secondary attack powers, and have a Mag 1 Confuse in all your AoE Primary and Secondary attack powers. Would it be a lot of work to code (into the database) this way? Sure. But it's also something that would be substantially a Copy/Paste operation, where you pre-build a module of database coding which then gets added to every power on Archetypes which have access to World of Confusion.



Is it possible to change World of Confusion from a "garbage power" into something that would be "sought after" and considered useful? Sure it's possible! Is there a will to do so on the part of the Devs? Ah ... different question ...

I'm going to *TRY* and be charitable at this point (yes, it's hard ... I know) and start from the assumption that Arbiter Hawk (and friends) had a specific set of adjustments to Peacebringers in mind, which they are going to be pushing through ... and that increasing the usefulness/utility of Pulsar (by defaulting it to a Mag 3 Stun) and Solar Flare (by defaulting it to KnockDOWN or KnockUP performance, instead of KnockBACK) simply wasn't in the "Changes Set" programmed for this round.

The *REAL* Flaw with Pulsar and Solar Flare is NOT a matter of problems aligned on the "WORKING as Intended" axis. That's because Pulsar and Solar Flare both "work" just fine game mechanically.

No ... that's not the problem.

The *REAL* problem is with with "Working as INTENDED" axis (note the different stress of ALL CAPS). That's because the *INTENT* for Pulsar and Solar Flare is POORLY DESIGNED (from pre-Issue 3!). It's not the "working" part that needs fixing ... it's the "INTENT" behind what makes them work.

The Kheldian Community, and those who play Peacebringers specifically, have essentially agreed that both Pulsar and Solar Flare are Underperforming Powers which are essentially crippled by the *INTENT* of their design from Issues 3 through 20. This is an issue that impinges upon Game Balance (as the Devs see it), and they are necessarily being cautious about making too many changes at once since that can cause Game Balance to "drift" out of alignment in unforeseen ways. My guess is that the Powers Balance Team wants to proceed cautiously with their analysis of the currently scheduled changes before tacking on any additional ones, which could potentially "muddy" their datamining analysis of the changes they're already making.



Which is a long winded way of saying that any changes to Pulsar and Solar Flare (the way that Players are clamoring for here) almost certainly weren't "scheduled" for the launch of Issue 21 ... meaning that there has been no resources/time allocated and budgeted to proofing/testing/QA-ing/etc. any changes to Pulsar and Solar Flare. If I want to be *charitable* to the Powers Team Devs, I have to suspect that any pushback on updating Pulsar and Solar Flare from the Devs is caused more by a matter of "scheduling" than by a matter of "there's nothing wrong here, no fix needed."



That said ... I think it would profit EVERYONE (Powers Team, VIPs and future Players) if someone like Arbiter Hawk, or Synapse, or *someone* on the Powers Team, were to come here to the Discussion Forum and lay out the reasons-and-rationale for why keeping Pulsar and Solar Flare "as is" for Peacebringers is a Wise Move. I say that because if the problem for these powers is a mistake of INTENT, then it would be very helpful to have an Audit And Analysis of that INTENT where Players (and Beta Testers) can see it, participate in it, and come away with a better appreciation and understanding of where the Devs are coming from, rather than just assuming that We The Players always know what's best for the game.

So I invite Synapse, or Arbiter Hawk, or whoever is willing to DISCUSS this with the Peacebringer Community, the Design INTENT behind Pulsar and Solar Flare, as presently configured in Issue 20 ... and how (and why!) that INTENT may be inadequate/flawed in the game going forward into Issue 21, and beyond. If you can't *DO* anything about Pulsar and Solar Flare in time for Issue 21 Launch ... what about "during" Issue 21? What about Issue 22 ... or Issue 23? If it's a "scheduling issue" preventing changing these powers ... what can *WE* the Players do to convince Second Measure (or whoever controls the scheduling for you) to get these Powers put "into the schedule" for review?



In short ... Help Us Help You.

That *is* what Beta Testing (and feedback) is for ... or so I'm led to believe ...

I've (in this past week) had a brand new 27" iMac delivered to my door from the Apple Store with "top o' the line" specs for its CPUs and AMD graphics cards. It has the built in solid state harddrive and the 2 TB spin drive. It has OS X 10.7 natively installed (not upgraded). It's a brand new machine.

So the first thing I did was turn on /showfps 1 and dialed up the ultra mode graphics settings to where I could reliably maintain a 20-30 FPS in Pocket D. The hardware is perfectly capable of handling the load.

The memory management for the CoH Client is completely incapable of handling the flooded memory leak that results from these graphics settings.

I found myself playing for all of 5-10 minutes at a stretch before crashing, without warning(!), to the desktop. The really annoying thing was crashing out in the middle of a door mission in Nova Praetoria. Apparently, those new warehouse maps chow down on graphics memory like nobody's business with the Ultra Mode graphics dialed up high.

Paragon Studios Programmers ... this is, quite frankly, unacceptable. I finally acquire hardware that can play the game on "beautiful" Ultra Mode settings at a useful frame rate ... and can only do so for a FEW MINUTES before all the memory leaks out of the Client and I am forced to crash to Desktop.

Clean up your memory management coding ... or you're going to have a very UNWANTED Reputation once Freedom launches.

And just in case it needs to be said ... this is NOT a Mac Client Specific issue. It's happening to Windows users too.

Request update to CoH Beta Installation Instructions which is compatible with Mac Client. If they're currently compatible ... great. If not ... please update for clarity.

I've been playing CoH long enough to remember the days of Issues 3-5 when doing the Respec Trial was a TRIAL! The failure rate in the Reactor Room was approximately 50% on the PuGs I played in, back in the day ... which made people RESPECT the difficulty of the Trial(s). The 34-43 Respec against the Freakshow though was ROUGH, with Bosses self-rezzing ... and that was before the new Super Stunners got added to the Freakshow!

Today ... uh ... the Reactor Room is more of an exercise in PATIENCE than it is in Prowess (or Patharce, defined as a way to prepare someone for later traumatic experiences). The timing delay between spawn groups is absolutely RIDONKULOUS! It's something like 5 minutes! I can have my Warshade summon a pet using Extract Essence at the end of one wave of attackers, and the pet's duration (of 4 minutes!) will expire before the next wave of attackers spawns. LOL-WHUT?! The looooooooooong wait between spawns in the Reactor Room gives rise to some pretty extreme BOREDOM while *WAITING* for something to happen. We're talking wandering attention span, lack of Combat Focus, draining of battle tension sorts of "why are we doing this again?" boredom while waiting for the timer to run out to ALLOW the next group of hostiles to spawn.

It's gotten to the point where it feels like the only way to FAIL the Reactor Room anymore is if EVERYONE on the team goes AFK (and maybe not even then!). There's just no real "pressure" on the team to *perform* during the Reactor Room phase of the Trial ... and the long respawn timer just makes the whole thing take WAY LONGER than it should. You can spend almost an HOUR in the Reactor Room, waiting for something to happen ...

It doesn't have to be this way ... and most importantly, it most certainly didn't start out this way!

I'm thinking that tightening up/shortening the delay timer between waves of attackers would go a LONG way towards addressing the problems of the Reactor Trial in the Reactor Room. There really shouldn't be lengthy periods of No Combat happening in there. Fortunately, this is something which can be datamined (I presume) to find out a representative "Beat Down" cycle time for how long it is taking teams (on average) to handle the spawn groups in the Reactor Room as presently constituted. That should then give a reasonable target time length for the delay between spawn groups attacking the Reactor in the final room.

And that's assuming that the Programming Team hasn't come up with a far better way to manage/control the timing of the spawn groups in the Reactor Room than was available back in the pre-CoV days of 2005 ...