Stormfront_NA

Hi:

Finally getting more experienced in developing MA stories, and have got o the point I am tinkering with Allies.

In the MA Editor, when I call for an ally, I get a choice for Ally behavior, that is do nothing, pacifist, defensive, aggreesive, etc.

Can someone tell me or point me out to a place, where it define what these settings means?

Thank you

Stormy

Hi:

Instead of having hunts being a fixed number, such as hunt 65 Carnies in PI (even though they may be a grand total of 8 in the entire island at that time).

Why not make the hunt be scaled to the number of players in the team, that is make it 10 mobs to a player. So if you are soloing, you get hunts that do not exceed 10, if you are in a full team of 8, the hunt would be for 80 mobs.

Perhaps a more player friendly, is instead of the number of mobs you have to mug to get the information needed, and being fixed so it "happens" that the very last one happens to know, why not make it a random occurrance, with guaranteed success if the whole ten of them (if solo) were defeated. So this way, you may get lucky and the very first one you beat up, spills the beans, or you could be unlucky like me and it will be the very last one of the bunch who tells you. But it would be nice, that we would not have to be perfectly unlucky all the time.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: If there is going to be hunts in PI for carnies, malta, nemesis. It would be polite to have fixed zones with these, as opposed to shared zones, where you find yourself having to kill droves of Malta to get the eventual Carnie spawn, maybe after you wasted tons of Ricti, and Nemesis too. Frankly I don't find hunts challenging, I find them "annoying" and having to kill stupidly to maybe, just maybe, what I need gets spawned, is just frankly indecent.

There i smuch truth in hoping to roll gold, silver, bronze to sell recipes for the influence. I have struck good recipe drops from time to time, kinda like one good one for 35 pathetic ones, so the jury is still out, for me, if the ticket farming is really worth my time. My last gold roll gave me a pacing of the turtle, go figure...

Hugs

Stormy

I totally support!

It would be nice to know what you have unlocked specifically. let me explain, say we purchased the magic pack. Would be nice to know what pieces were specifically acquired and what grouping they are (skirts, tights, pants, etc)

hugs

Stormy

Hi:

This is a quality of life suggestion...

In order to bring a new alt into test, one has to go to our own account and access the copy tool.

Why not when we start the test CoX software, and after we have entered our account's name and password; and when we get the screen giving us the choice of which test server we want to go; why not at that page have a choice to copy an alt from any main server to the test server as well? In other words, have the copy tool accessable from there.

This way we can copy as many characters we want, go play an existing copy, and later return to the front page and play some of the new copied alts.

Hugs

Stormy

Interesting post...

For myself, I refuse to do MAs all together. There are two reasons for this:

1. No way to earn purple recipies as you can "on the real world".

2. You can't select IO receipes as you can with merits. I normally are unlucky with my rolls, I know there are those braggarts that will post saying, I random roll and get Numinas all the time, thus you have no problem. When merits were introduced and I could choose what I wanted to buy, it was like heaven to me, independence day from my terrible luck. I could finallty work for and earn what I needed. Tickets, well, I get to work, but never get what I worked for.

3. In MAs you can't even buy purples, not even a random roll to get a crappy status effect purple.

So this suggestion, at least commences to address the purple issues I have, it may ot be the best solution, but a solution never the less, and it beats not having one at all.

Stormy

Hi:

Farming is an expression of a troubled economy, where the items of interest are way too expensive for normal play to acquire. Because the prices of the market are so stupid, players who really want a capability, for whatever reason, are basically forced into farming.

As a whole, I don't have a problem with farmers, they are doing "Their" thing, and really its not of my business if they are doing it or not; it does not consistntly impact my enjoyment of the game. I chose the word consistent, because famers make the money to pay the stupid market prices and thus continuing to support the moron prices, thus they do impact me, but minimally, for the high prices would remain anyway; regardless of supply and demand. If you think, that supply and demand is really driving this prices, you are saddly mistaken. Supply and Demand while having an "influence" is not the telling factor.

Hugs

Stormy

The problem with the market prices is from people using ebay, gregora, etc purchased influence. Because people have so much easy money, the don't mind paying way too much for a recipe, etc. Thus they inflate prices of items, if there was no external money, i wonder how long before the 120M recipe drops to a reasonable price, say 20M.

Because of the in-balance created by external money, i do believe the devs have to do something to control the ceiling of costs. Supply and demand at this time is not purely working, because of an un-intended source of income.

I think devs can control this run-away high price costs by making everything available at the vendors, that is inspirations, salvage and recipes. We already have a minimum price for these at the vendor, so why not have them sell the stuff as well but at a regulated price, say ten times the price the would pay to buy them from you.

This way players can still sell their drops and make a good profit (reasonable) from 2 times the sell value at a vendor to say 9 times the value and stillb e cheaper than a vendor.

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
The only difference is that Oro TF have no player requirements

Posi requires 3 people to start
ITF requires 6

anything in Oro can be started by 1 person

what's more is the actual Oro TFs: Lazarus,Tesseract,Twilight's and Silos are actually story arcs that use the TF mechanic so they're balanced on the Story arc numbers not the TF ones.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent point, but because you can possibly do it solo or by 1 person, is that a good enough excuse to penalize the merit gain by 60%? I certainly do not think so, while we may agree it may not get a multiplier to make it even larger, a deduction is simply not right.

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Oro TFs have the same restrictions as normal TFs do,

[/ QUOTE ]

Other than the fact that people have to be there for the entire thing, they have almost none of the same restrictions as true TFs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh really, can you elaborate? As far as I can tell in Oro TFs, i can't invite other players mid ways, I can't auto complete, I can't go to my contacts and get inspirations or sell, so please illuminate me, on how Oro TFs do ot experience the same restrictions as normal TFs, I am looking forward to see your long list of things...

I must challenge all you to be a bit more even about this. (make up your mind, is merits based on time or challenge?). As is the main metric for determining merits is not challenge it is instead time sunk doing it. So being able to solo it or not has nothing to do with time sunk. In fact, if it is easy, for you, then you would spend less time doing it; and in time the data collection on that particular thread would adjust the value of that thread based on time.

If you all pay attention to the more challenge, it merely adds a few insulting merits to the over all value of the TF. Its not a percentage improvement, so frankly if you are going to be fair about it, if the thread/tf is easier then reduce a few insulting points of it, not major percentages, lets be a bit even about this!
If we don't add major percentages, then we don't deduce major percentages, lets have some fairness and balance, shall we?
Frankly other modifiers to reduce the worth of your effort, are at best arbitrary and usually redundant.

I still believe the penalty of 60% to value of Oro Tfs to be a bogus penalty. Especially when developers make such a big fuzz that time spent is the driver, as much as I disagree with it.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

Oro TFs have the same restrictions as normal TFs do, so why apply the 0.4 modifier factor as Synapse described in his post?

I can see the 60% penalty (still too high) for normal threads, since they can have players drop and new ones rejoin during the progress of the thread, and also the owning player can choose to auto-complete, and new players may be too high for the specific mission; so in a way it makes sense to penalize the merits a thread should provide.

On the other hand, and Oro mission, recreating such a thread, behaves identically as the standard TF such as Positron, and have all the restrictions as in level, can't see vendors, etc. So why punish players from receiving the Merits they really have earned, this truly strikes me as arbitrary and really should be honestly re-looked at.

Let me give you an example, of how bad the merits are given for Oro TFs:

The Psychic Plane: 20 Activities

7 Kill Alls, 7 Missions, 4 Talks, 2 EB/AVs, 2 Large hunts.

Merits given: 8 (really ridiculous, thought it was 27, but when I finished it, all I got was 8)


Positron: 17 Activities

6 Kill Alls, 5 Missions, 5 Talks, 1 Patrol

Merits: 64

I think the horrid injustice is rather obvious, I would say the good ole Psychic Plane Oro TF mission should be worth 20/16 * 64 = 80 Merits

Do note that the 80 merits is based in the very same metric used to judge a regular TF worth in merits, so far instead of getting 80, I got 8 that is a very hefty and unfair penalty, for a reason I can't fathom.

Any red names out there care to explain, why the low awards?

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
Bad idea, especially with TFs which can already take too long if you're playing the older ones.

[/ QUOTE ]

I fail to understand your objection, the old TFs have been re-tooled to take advantage (abuse) of the new maps, to include the new mega rooms, which often leaves players wondering where the room ends, since it is really composed of many rooms.

The effect of my proposal, is for small groups or folks soloing to not getting slapped on the face with gigantic maps, leave those for the full groups of 8 set and the highest level of difficulty.

Stormy

i see your point in largeteam you will always get the same annoying huge maps, but aren't we already always getting the same annoying large maps any ways?

Stormy

Hi:

I have noticed that when doing missions, TFs or what not the map size is fixed, regardless of group size; what does changes are of course the number of spawns, and nature of spawns (difficulty drives level of the spawn primarely).

I was thinking why not modify the map size based on the size of the group. If the group size is "8" throw in the mega-gigantic-map with several multi section "verizon" rooms (Pool, CoT Cake Room, factory Quad Room), but say if the group was say 4; throw large rooms with out the "Verizon" rooms. If the group is one, that means we are likely soloing a contact "Thread", make the maps small. Why I suggest small? I would think, my interest is in the thread itself, the story arc, the living the tale. Thus small maps to experience the tale would be appropriate, while huge maps would take so long, you would fail to enjoy the story, kinda a feeling of can't see the forest for trees effect.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

This is a quality of life suggestion. We do have a face target, but that is based on you targeting via the TAB key or click.

What I want is if you have no one targeted, and you are affected by an effect (debuff, etc) or damage, you could press a key and immediately turn and target the offending mob.

For example, I am running, happily, thru Peregrine island, and pow, I am struck by a sniper. Normally in real life, I have a sense of touch, thus giving me relative direction and angle from where the hit came, in the game, i don't have that sense of touch, thus a capability to press a button and face me and target my opponent would be appropriate.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I have argued on an on against kill alls because they usually wind up having some weird room with geometry issues, thus turning what would have been a fun time into a miserable search for the toe of the mob and hope we can affect him or wait for the gM to eventually show up as your team falls apart.

Last night I was doing an ITF, and noticed that perhaps this was the solution to the problem above, instead of having 100% as a kill all, replace them with a count, just as it is done in an ITF. We defeat Romulus, Generals and 300 Traitors. The key is 300 traitors. So why not a change a kill all say CoT in a cave to defeat 150 CoT, this way if one or more are geometry messed up, they do not impact the enjoyment of the game.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: Same could be done with the "Defeat Boss and Guards" which is a modified kill all in an unusual huge room. Change it to say Kill Boss and 20 Companions instead for instance.

Hi:

How often we do a mission and a mob calls forth "MoG" or what not, and simply slows down the progression of the mission with many a player wishing they could have a means to suppress it.

With this in mind, it occurred to me, why not build a power set with suppression of powers as a center concept.

Below is a suggestion on what the suppression power set should look like:

1. Suppress Primary Power: [Toggle]
This power randomly negates the target the use of a primary power, considering that players have 6 or more of these powers, the odds are 1 on 6 that a key power will be suppressed, and remain suppressed until suppressing player on-toggles.

2. Suppress secondary power: [Toggle]
Same as previous, but a secondary power set is affected.

3. Suppress travel power: [Toggle]
Same as previous, but a travel power set is affected. Do note that most travel power sets have multiple powers (hover, fly, etc) so there is a good chance that the main travel power will not be affected.

4. Resist Damage and Status Effect: [Toggle]
This power set while can stop an attack type, it does not stop or mitigate any of the other powers in the primary, secondary, or travel set; thus leaving the Defender relatively helpless. Thus the need to provide users of this power set some reasonable level of protection, I recommend the resistances and MAG status resistances be one half of what Tankers receive.

5. Transference: [Button]
Same as the Kinetics Transfer power, this is needed for this power set is toggle intensive.

6.Transfusion: [Button]
Same as the Kinetics Transfusion power, this gives this class a means to mend themselves some in combat, but also provide support to other ATs.

7. PBAOE Primary Power Set Suppression; [Toggle]
A 50 foot radius of suppression around the suppressor, same effect as the first power in this set, but potentially multiple objects may be affected.

8. PBAOE Secondary Power Set Suppression: [Toggle]
A 50 foot radius of suppression around the suppressor, same as the second power in this set, but multiple objects may be affected.

9. Suppression Nova: [Button]
The player produces an explosion of suppression energy, any enemy within 100 feet of the player has a random primary, secondary, and travel power suppressed for one minute. The player is left exhausted (same effect as a blaster going nova)


Basic Characteristics of Suppression powers:

1. Range same as a normal ranged attack, about 70 feet
2. They take Accuracy and Reduced Endurance Enhancements
3. They take any Debuff IO sets
4. When using suppression on Minions, LTs. Bosses, EBs, AVs, and Monsters; the power works regardless but the amount of timeit takes to take hold varies. A minion is instantaneously affected, a LT takes 2 pulses (rounds) to take, a Boss tales 3 pulses, and EB takes 4 pulses, an AV takes 5 pulses, a Monster takes 6 pulses. This means the toggle must remain on sufficiently long before effects are experienced by the target. For PvP purposes, I recommend effects be instantaneously.
5. Once the toggle is off, the victim remains suppressed for 10 seconds.

I can't think of any other details, perhaps if I missed any you all could suggest them.

So what you think? Is there a way to do this better, don't be afraid to suggest.

Also please, only post constructive criticism, please!

Hugs

Stormfront

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hi:

The reason for these so call adjustments, is mostly due to lack of planning, professional testing, and perhaps poor coding practices.

My husband who manages a software development team, tells me that many of the "old" code or poorly configuration managed software are usually regarded as "Spaguetti Code". When you have "spaguetti" Code" you are in a situation when you do a change in the code, it may have totally unexpected side effects. For example, look at the changes done in I13, how come the Blackwand got bugged? Look at the changes on I12, how come the chat color instructions got bugged? One would be lead to believe that historically CoX developers are not practicing professional software development practices, and over the time, their spaguetti code has gotten increasingly more tangled.

So how does this impact the vision of a power? It should be obvious, when the code is poorly managed and integrated, and changes yields many surprises, some good, some bad; then powers would suddenly work much better or worse than intended and as a result they will need to be retuned.

Frankly, if CoX has spaguetti code issues, its impossible for a developer to tell us in advance what his vision of what is going to happen to our powers or what not.

I would suggest, that CoX maybe stop after I14 making new upgrades, and simply look back at their code and clean their act. The reward of this will be a more stable game, better satified costumers (no more jerking around of power effects), and future upgrades can actually be developed faster and easier.

Hugs

Stormy

[/ QUOTE ]

Just an FYI: powers definitions are not code: they are data. There is no "code" that tells the game how power burst works. The game code implements mechanics that the powers data obeys to generate powers effects.

Although sometimes the game code is very clearly borked, in the case of the pet recharge issues there was no sudden odd or unexpected change in behavior. Rather, there was undesirable behavior that reached a point where the devs decided to take action. No amount of "good coding practices" in that sense would have avoided this particular issue.


Also, the term "spaghetti code" is usually reserved for code that is bordering on the incomprehensible because its structure makes it almost impossible to trace its logical execution. The canonical example is code with large numbers of conditional branches ("GOTOs"). If I had to bet real money, I'd bet CoX is full of the stuff, just because I *always* win that bet on any software project, even ones supposedly run by "good coding practices." But in this case, that isn't a factor in these issues.

[/ QUOTE ]

I beg to differ, using your sample. There is code, albeit generic, that reads the data from power blast; this code could be tangled with other code.

I also would point out, that evidence tends to speak out for itelf. Look at the bizarre malfunctions when the game gets an upgrade. For instance, remember the trade function was borked when I13 was introduced? If you think about it, what did the tray window functionality had to directly do with crafting, once more using your example of power blast; should it not be some standard code that provides the trade functionality and then look up tables for the items traded? So while I could see errors in the database due to inception of more things that can be traded, I can not really see why the main trade functionality code would be impacted. The chat issue where colored chat went away during I12, what did that had to do with what was done with I12? Once you look at the body of observables, its hard to not believe CoX is suffering from spaguetti code at some level of borkness. Considering that the errors are not by the droves but in limited quantities, the code can not be too borked and a couple of months of clean-up should remedy this situation.

In general if we were to compare CoX with other games, its performance with regards to game quality is at par with other game companies. Would be great, if we could get coX to be a leader in this area.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

The reason for these so call adjustments, is mostly due to lack of planning, professional testing, and perhaps poor coding practices.

My husband who manages a software development team, tells me that many of the "old" code or poorly configuration managed software are usually regarded as "Spaguetti Code". When you have "spaguetti" Code" you are in a situation when you do a change in the code, it may have totally unexpected side effects. For example, look at the changes done in I13, how come the Blackwand got bugged? Look at the changes on I12, how come the chat color instructions got bugged? One would be lead to believe that historically CoX developers are not practicing professional software development practices, and over the time, their spaguetti code has gotten increasingly more tangled.

So how does this impact the vision of a power? It should be obvious, when the code is poorly managed and integrated, and changes yields many surprises, some good, some bad; then powers would suddenly work much better or worse than intended and as a result they will need to be retuned.

Frankly, if CoX has spaguetti code issues, its impossible for a developer to tell us in advance what his vision of what is going to happen to our powers or what not.

I would suggest, that CoX maybe stop after I14 making new upgrades, and simply look back at their code and clean their act. The reward of this will be a more stable game, better satified costumers (no more jerking around of power effects), and future upgrades can actually be developed faster and easier.

Hugs

Stormy

Some good points, but

Despite that you get "sk" leveled to the highest in group, you still get experience, for instance in Positron yuo stop receiving experience till you reach 16. The situation is you receive less experience at 15 in a Positron than you would have as a 10 in Positron, but you still get reasonably good experience. There is an upside to ths too; the enhancement drop you get will be level 15, so if you are level 10 and upped to 15, whn you do reach 12 proper, you are gonna have a sweet stock of level 15 enhancements to use.

While my last bad thing had a sarcastic portion to it, some people do derive pleasure from trying to defeat mobs and keep the lowbies alive during the effort; this effect would be lost when the lowbies are upgraded to highest level.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: In a way as Bill said, my suggestion would be an Exemplar in reverse.

Hi:

Question:

How often a TF organizer gets stuck trying to match high levels to sk low levels?

Answer:

More often than we would like it to be


So what can be done to mitigate this situation:


Recommendation:

Get rid of the standard notion Sk as we have all together. Instead replace it with an auto "Side Kick" in game feature. So all players will be automatically "Side Kicked" to the highest level character in the group, regardless of the number of high leveled players.

Example, we have a level 50, 3x level 45s, 2 level 25s and 2 level 10 players. They all gatherr to do a Positron TF (level 10-15) Thus after the leader clicks start TF, they all are level 15.

Using same composition, say they go to do an ITF, when the leader press go! They all beome level 50.

Notice under this process, the minimum level requirement for the TF can be removed all together, and make the TF portion of the game more accessable for all players. Or one can still observe the minum level requirements, and thus all those below 35 could not enter the zone, and thus not participate in the TF, but say the lowbies are replaced with 35s; the principle would still hold where the 35s would become 50s for purposes of the TF.

Advantages of this proposal:

1. Players do not loose mentor's influence when mentors are too far away because afk or what not.

2. Organizers no longer has to match high levels with low levels.

3. Players do not loose "mentor's sk" when mentor is disconencted or leave game.


Disadvantages:

1. Power Leveling comes to an end, since lowest guy is same level as highest guy.

2. People making influence for renting perma 46s for bridging purposes loose this benefit.

3. variety is lost, since we don't have low levels with spurious results, such as a 45 trying to do something to a 52 (ha ha ha), now the 45 will be a 50 and become truly capable of contributing to team in a fair manner.


Other thoughts?

Hugs

Stormy

I like the caves, hate the cake cave room.

Why I hate the cake room, you ask?

Well for one it is very defective with regards to boundaries, with mobs often getting stuck in walls when knock back is employed; often mobs fly all over the place in a 3D dispersion method, and more often than not some will endup phased inside a wall. Of course we don't see that happen, and of course it has to be a kill in this room by hook or crook. So when the group thinks we cleared the darn place, we get no mission completion. So then all of us ae trying to figure what gives, looking for the one mob who is actually hiding and has aggroe range of zero, or the worst the mob is inside a wall and maybe a toe is sticking out. Spending time as such, is extremely boring and annoying, and it should not be. This is mostly why I am against kill all missions in the first place! or the sucker kill all in the mega room mission which has a very similar flavor as kill all and has all the player susceptible to defects as the kill all.

So from my perspective either get rid of kill all missions (be entire map or room) or get rid of all the rooms where these defects are known to happen, like the cake room. I guess another option is to fix these rooms, but 13 improvements later, they are still defective...

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
I... like the layer cake room. >_> And the rest of the blue cave network, really. It's like pretty much anywhere else, once you figure out where the ramps/paths are, you're set.

Apart from that, even if I disliked it I don't think anything should be done away with. For variety, for one thing.

You can get from the bottom to the top in that room with no travel power, no nothing. Just, you know, look for the incline. I do think it's a little silly to imply that whoever designed it may have gotten fired... so it's a slight challenge... better (to me anyway) than having to trek through 5 more connected rooms. Why? As I said, variety. ^_^

[/ QUOTE ]

You may have a point to keep the 5 layer room for variety, but lately it seems to be the norm, that is not variety at all. I hate the room more from the perspective that abuses players when the are doing a defeat the boss and guards, and it turns out to defeat the boss, his guards, the friends of the guards, the relative of the guards who all live in the same mega cave. That is make work, tedium. If you could defeat the boss and the immdiate spawn associated with the boss, and then mission ends, that would be fine and the nature of the room would not matter.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: I like the blue rooms, its different, they could be a bit wider though.

I just feel the trials at different levels should be different, not carbon copies with a change of mobs to fake difference.

Stormy

Hi:

I would like to see different respec trials at the different ranges. Instead on hero side have the same boring reactor adventure, with only changing the enemy mobs attacking it, why not have fresh different scenarios for the mid and high level; same with the villains, why all 3 have to deal with the tree? Can we have some real variety, please?

Hugs

Stormy