AmazingMOO

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No my cat just stares at me and occassionally licks his crotch. I'm hoping no one does that when reading my posts.

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Oh god! How does everbody know?!?!?!?


Ahem.

Integrity of the game has to apply to the entire spectrum of players-- even those who think that school girls in minskirts and sailor suits are heroic and those who think that the tooth fairy is evil.

Tutus would *not* be an unwelcomed addition to any costume set in CoH *or* CoV

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To be clear: the code for sharing costume pieces between City of Heroes and City of Villains is NOT yet in...heck, it isn't even written yet. BUT we'll do it after release - hopefully very soon after release. Then heroes can have access to the new options.

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Ack! No, sooner than *soon*! We know how long *soon* can be.

*cry*

Hehhe... all my characters will be getting at least one CoV piece. One will even be getting a new face from CoV.

A lot of the costume pieces certainly lend themselves to 'evil' characters, but I can't think of one that couldn't be used for heroic purposes. There are lots of 'dark' heroes. Dark Heroes are fun to play, and fun to roleplay.

MOST of the costume pieces, however, are really very neutral, and should be brought over no matter what the circumstances.

After seeing the costume options in CoV, let me say very firmly...

I want them ALL for CoH

Zombie parts, monstrous parts, evil faces, scarred faces, supernatural faces, spikes, skulls, all of them.

Frankly, I think that a lot of the 'evil' faces are more attractive than the faces in CoH, for both male and female characters. I am *sooo* going to Icon if we get these lovely faces.

One of my favorites so far is the 50/50 mask. MUST HAVE for heroes!

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PLEASE add some or all of the great new options that Villains are receiving to Heroes' costume creator, at least for those players who own both CoV and CoH.

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Noted. We'll see what we can do...

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Thank you!

I've heard in a few places that the decision to add some or many of the new costume pieces offered in CoV to CoH has not been finalized.

My plea is very simple.


PLEASE add some or all of the great new options that Villains are receiving to Heroes' costume creator, at least for those players who own both CoV and CoH.

I will pay for this variety. I'll buy CoV in order to have the new costume elements for my heroes. I've already bought the pre-order. In fact, I can say that new costume pieces will be my primary reason for buying CoV.

Please, please don't leave me dissapointed. The excellent costume creator is originally what brought me to CoH. I've grown to love the rest of the game, but please don't let that feature stagnate or grow segregated.

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Did Statesman get with his Quasi-Step-Sister and then Marry her, Betraying his best friend in the process ?

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Now, I come from the South, so y'all'd better take this how you will, but quasi-step-sibilings are fair targets the last time I checked. Certainly not ideal, but fair.

And if Statesman is an incarnation of Zeus, do I need remind everyone how jiggy the big 'Z' got with his sister Hera, or various descendants?

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If the above is true, shouldnt we as Heroes be supporting Lord Recluse in his quest to destroy Statesman ?

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Statesman's only playing golf in the backyard. Recluse detonated the back nine with c4.

Not just an in-law but really more of a step-brother since Rudy (Mr. Recluse) raised the Cole kids too.

I apologize in advance for all the threads that will seem funny at the time to me, but you will have to delete nonetheless.

Heheh... One of the things I really enjoyed about the story was that Weiberg managed to establish each super-powered character's archetype and origin without saying 'This guy is a storm controller'. He did call Stefan Richter/Lord Recluse a 'Brute' in places, but he did work it into the prose in a comfotable manner. He even managed to give Recluse and Statesman different origin-types from the same source. Statesman revels in the magic of the 'Fountain of Zeus' and displays magical abilities, while Recluse concludes that it contains radioactive substances, and displays mutations.

Statesman: Magic Invulnerability/Super Strength Tank/Incarnate w/ Flight pool
Lord Recluse: Science Invulnerabililty/Super Strength Brute/Incarnate
Dark Watcher: Magic Mind Control/Force Field Controller w/ Stealth and Teleport pools
Maiden Justice: Natural Martial Arts/Super Reflex Scrapper w/ Leaping pool
Elementar: Science Storm/Electric Defender w/ Flight Pool
Vambrace: Technology Electric/Energy Blaster w/ Flight Pool

Hmmm... Vambrace is a two-man team. James John-Smythe would probably count as a Technology Illusion/Kinetics Controller.

My Web of Arachnos Review:

I decided I wanted to read Web of Arachnos today, so I hopped into the MOOMachine and teleported over to my local Barnes and Noble book seller shop.

(I also picked up 'Where is My Cow', a children's book by Terry Pratchett. It's worth the 16.95 just for the art.)

The book was nowhere to be be found on the shelves. I couldn't instantly remember Robert Weinberg's name, so I had the counter girl look up the book. She did indeed have the book, as well as a cardboard display tower for the book, but they were all in the back of the store.

"Excuse me? Miss? I'm looking for a book. I don't happen to know the author's name, but I know the title. Can you help me?"

"I can try to look it up for you."

"It's 'Web of Arachnos'"

"City of Heroes Web of Arachnos?"

She looked at me with a little fear, like she had suddenly discovered I was a gamer.

"That's right."

"By Robert Weinberg? Only, it says there's a Prima guide--"

"I'm certain that's the right one. I thought it would be in the Sci-Fi, but it may also be in with the video game books."

If you can keep a straight face while walking out of a book store carrying "Tokyo Mew Mew", "Magical Sensei Negi Magi", "Girls Bravo", and "Hot Gimmick" in one bag, you can do anything.

Anyway, on to the book. I've never read anything of Weinberg's before, so I wasn't certain what I was in for. If nothing else, I figured I'd get a little of the game back story, even if it was crouched in uncomfortable prose.

Since there is a fair chance Mr. Weinberg will be reading this, I'll be as honest and straightforward as I can manage about the book without being pointlessly critical and harsh. No author likes criticism, but most authors accept that they need it.

There will be some spoilers in the following. You've been warned.

First of all, Weinberg's style is easy to read. This was a great relief to me. It's often a toss up with commissioned fiction. Sometimes an author writing into someone else's story continuity will come off as forced and out of place. Weinberg avoids this. His prose is comfortable and has a sense of 'completion' to it. It doesn't leave you squinting at odd grammar or wondering what you're missing very often. There are a few grammar errors and typos in places, but they're sparse enough that it appears they're either editing artifacts or the inevitable first edition printing errors.

Weinberg's dialogue is easy and natural, although he does make the mistake of having his characters use language that's not reasonable for conversation. This gets especially noticeable when he's handling exposition with his dialogue. For example, when Monica is researching Nemesis' involvement in the Civil War, she speaks to an older librarian who goes from fairly folksey dialogue to very detailed discussion in one or two sentances. That's jarring. It made me reach for my blue copy pencil.

Characterization in the story is handled in a fairly comfortable fashion. We see Marcus Cole transform from a gentleman theif into a super-hero for believable, if somewhat fantastic reasons. By the same token, we see Stefan Richter descend into Lord Recluse's megolomania, if anything, more beleiveably than Marcus becomes Statesman. It's not presented as 'then he went insane' like so many villains have attached to their resumes. Instead, Stefan is established as a natural, quick-tempered brute who makes the emotional leap from good-natured ambition to betraying his friends and relatives as he gains power.

In all, the story is enjoyable and fun. I'd recommend it for most readers, even if they weren't gamers.

That's not to say that there aren't problems with the story. There are, and they are somewhat distracting.

Aside from the minor quibbles I have with dialogue, there are a few places where the story made me wince and wish that Weinberg had taken a different track.

First of all, Recluse's characterization comes at the cost of Statesman's. Like I mentioned, Marcus Cole begins the story as a fairly self-centered, self-absorbed character. He's a theif and somewhat of a thug. He makes the leap to justice and fairness-minded superhero with surprisingly little text. Worse, he has surprisingly little reflection. Rather than lament his past life as a theif, he passes it off as a 'wild youth' and lives comfortably by merit of his spoils. He only begins to realize the difference in his character once he meets members of his old gang later in the story. There was quite a bit of missed opportunity here. Weinberg could have done more with the character to more fully flesh him out and didn't.

Monica Richter is *amazingly* accepting and forgiving. The members of Marcus post-WWI gang are *amazingly* loyal and devoted for professional theives and mercenaries. Nemesis is given great backstory and then absolutely *no* characterization as an atagonist. We're given a few cookies of his trademark scheming... like leaving an imposter behind for Maiden Justice to arrest after his plan fails... but ultimately, no real feel for him.

This is somewhat painful since the book devotes more time to Statesman's struggle against Nemesis than his conflict with Recluse. The climax of the conflict between Statesman and Recluse is almost anti-climatic compared to the battle between the Freedom Phalanx and Nemesis' forces.

Weinberg does a relatively good job of establishing characterization for the members of the Freedom Phalanx, but the story dealing with the feels very rushed. Yes, we know that Dark Watcher's parents are fairly used to the abnormal. Why word it so mundanely when his Tibetan monk teacher appears in a spectral image to them? It could have been handled better. There many places where the secondary characters fit uncomfortably in the story... such as when Monica suggests that the FPh members all introduce themselves. The FPh members also deal amazingly well with 1930's era problems such as racial differences, handicaps, and legal issues. For example, many of the 'good' characters openly flaunt Prohibition. Yes we know Prohibition was an amazingly bad idea, but imagining Statesman staggering around Indepance Port, drunk off his [censored] with illegal tequila, is just a little hard to deal with.

Also, a MAJOR problem in the story is the 'Elephant in the Corner'. Everything in the story is very carefully dated as occuring between 1929 and 1932... conveniently before Adolph Hitler's rise to power as Chancellor of Germany 1933. Of course Hitler was a major player in German and world politics well before that. Despite numerous references to and discussion of Italian Fascism and Mousolini's fascist government, neither Hitler, the Nazi party, nor the Fifth Column are ever mentioned. They are as absent from the book as the Fifth Column is from the game. Despite the fact that much is made in the story about Arachnos drawing its power from the fascist government in Italy immediately before WWII, the politics and turmoil in the rest of Europe are blithely ignored. Even Imperial Japan is mentioned in passing.

(The Council, as an extension of Italian Fascism, is not directly mentioned)

Was this on purpose? Is Mr. Weinberg perhaps having a jab at Cryptic? The omission is so jarring as to be distracting.

All in all, Mr. Weinberg manages to create a very enjoyable, and very comic-book-like story. While it has it's flaws, I don't regret the few hours I spent devouring it, nor the 6.99 I spent on the paperback. I dunno if I would have bought it in hardback had it been offered that way, but it was still a fun read. It made me look forward to the next novel, and has interested me in finding more of Weinberg's work.

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Ahh, this will be good with ED coming.. we CAN diversify our enhancements, at least . Or will we not be able to slot this?

It still won't provide "one" shot protection, but 2-3 shot protection will be good

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This would be really cool, assuming you can enhance it. Scrappers would have to make the choice between slotting for endurance usage, or a little more resistance that only helps them when things have already gone south.

My SO played a katana/reflex scrapper into the 20s. While damage taken was certainly starting to be a real issue, their primary complaint about Super Reflexes was not that it let them take damage, but that the defense bonuses died so quickly once the powers shut down due to OOE situations.

When good Endurance Management practice was feasible, it was not so big an issue, but it really came to bear when my SO was trying to make choices about burning down an opponent, or trying to DPS agro an enemy off of a squishy. The DPS was there, of course, but burning the endurance necessary to do so meant that the powers were likely to shut off while the character was in the yellow or red.

To counter this, perhaps the damage resistance could have a short expiry timer so that it lasts just a few seconds after the defense powers shut down?

Just a thought.

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Erm. No. PvP will be an optional part of gameplay. Always.

The changes in I5 had very little to do with PvP and a lot to do with boring PvE. It's that simple. No conspiracy there - I think I've stated this several times.

As for the supposed "emphasis" on PvP - I think you'll see that it's just ONE part of City of Villains. It has PvE content levels 1 to 50.

We'll continue to add new PvE content (which I5 did exclusively, I might add) in the future.

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Thank you for that assurance, Statesman! Honestly, it makes me feel a lot better about the future of the game I've come to love so much in the last few months.

More PvE content is always good!

PvP seems like such a good idea... on paper. Every game developer-- every application designer of any kind-- has had the idea pop through their head, "What if I could get the players to provide content for me?"

PvP must seem like the golden goose, especially when every game developer on the planet knows how insanely popular multiplayer shooters are. Not only do the players provide themselves with endless hours of entertainment, they'll provide their own maps and resources.

So far as I know, every MMO published in North America has had some form of PvP to greater or lesser extent... even such niche titles as 'A Tale in the Desert', where players compete against each other in a completely non-combat setting.

The problem with PvP in MMOs, however, is that it's not really possible to balance MMO classes for PvP. I do not beleive it can be done, especially with level-based calculations. Even if you manage to make MMO PvP fair, then you do so by taking the spontenaiety and excitement out of it. It may still be a test of skill, but it's not, by any stretch, a test of reflex.

Ah, but if we get it right, PVP will make our game last forever.

For a select few players, that's true. There are certainly games that cater to it. 'Power-Gankers' aren't hard to find. By the same token, those who will stick with the PvP elements in your game typically aren't the kind of players who will drag through content and are happy to group with others in cooperative play.

In games that do feature RvR play such as DAOC or WoW, those interested in PvP power-level through PvE content so that they can get to a certain battleground. They're not interested in grouping or playing through the story content. They're interested in putting the smack down.

I work with an office full of people like this. It's grating.

That said, is this the future for CoH? It doesn't sound like a happy future, and it doesn't really sound like City of Heroes, either.

36.

I do quite a bit of writing professionally (non-fiction) and for personal reasons. My college professors (and TAs) always hated me because I made them *read* my papers.

Oh, I guess I better hand out some eyedrops after all that.

If I *wanted* your eyes to bleed, I would have done it with a razor blade.

One Month of I5

Issue Five went live a little more than four weeks ago. Bug fixes continue to flow slowly but steadily out of Cryptic. Players have either adjusted to the game-play changes introduced in the content patch, or have quit.

For the most part, reaction to the changes has been positive, although there is a lot of kvetching in game chat and on message boards about 'how the I5 changes have ruined the game'. The increased randomness of the game-- rather the increased chaos in all encounters-- seems to have had an overall positive effect. Players in general seem to pay a lot more attention to strategy and communication.

The biggest problems with the game right now are not game-play balance issues, but serious quality of life issues.


Costume Creator Issues:

A new thread is posted almost daily to either the Training Room, Technical Discussion, or main General Discussion boards to the effect that several options seem to be missing from the costume creator applet that is one of the game's biggest selling points. Specifically, options for jackets, skirts, and pants were moved into new costume categories. Newer costume geometry has replaced the older geometry, despite that geometry still being available in game. Characters with costumes created using the old geometry can still use those costumes. They just cannot update them or make a new costume with the same geometry.

This is a serious issue because the newer geometry for costumes has serious clipping issues that have not been resolved yet. Socks, belts, shirts, and collars all seem to pass through the new costumes.

The newer costume geometry all handles textures vastly differently than before. It is now impossible for characters to make a 'seamless' costume as they could before the changes. Perhaps the most bemoaned loss is the seamless minidress option that female characters could use with a tight top and classic skirt models. This is simply unavailable to newer characters.

Another serious issue is with costume visibility at a distance. While this can be seen on any character that uses the new jacket or pants options, the best place to go for the most obvious example is Independence Port. You can move back and forth and watch Family thugs with their amazing disappearing costumes. Jackets, pants legs, and sleeves all disappear at a little more than a third of default visibility. When a character wears a light shirt and a dark jacket, this becomes painfully obvious and immersion breaking.

City of Heroes' impressive costume creator and all the variety of costumes that can be created with the tool is one of Cryptic's bill selling points for the game. In terms of finance and market share, problems with the costume creator should have a very high priority assigned to them rather than the fairly low priority they seem to have. Other costume issues exist, such as missing costume options depending on gender, and the lack of a 'huge' female model. Despite that, the problems introduced with Issue 5 are being more widely noticed by the player base and word of them has been spreading for some time. These issues *need* to be addressed before they cause harm to server population or subscription revenue.


Sonic Power Issues:

With Issue 5, the Sonic and Archery powersets were added to the game, bringing more vibrancy and variety to the character concepts available to players. Aside from minor balancing issues, there is almost nothing negative to say about the addition of these powersets... With One Big Exception.

Sonic powers have, more so than any other power in the game, the loudest, most jarring, and most dissonant sound effects. This causes a great deal of discomfort for the players, many of whom prefer to play with the sound off rather than endure these effects.

Unlike their speakers, players can't really turn off their monitors to get rid of the visual effects related to sonic powers. Most of these are different variations of expanding concentric rings. The flash, frequency, and animation of these visual effects has proved to be extremely uncomfortable to players, especially those who suffer from motion sickness, migraines, or seizure disorders. Flashing visual displays have always caused problems for epileptics, up to inducing seizures. While it's not a common problem, it is a well known and well documented. If nothing else, most everyone knows about the infamous 'Pokemon Effect'. While any video game has the potential to cause this kind of adverse reaction, the graphics and animations for the sonic set seem to be custom designed to trigger nausea and seizures.

This issue is beginning to get attention from Cryptic's customer service and developer staff, but so far, the changes made to this power set have not been adequate to eliminate either the auditory or visual discomfort.

The Sonic power sets are fun and entertaining to play. They don't seem to have serious balance issues. People who do play the sonic powersets are being refused groups or asked not to use their powers in groups for the listed reasons. This is not acceptable.

First and foremost, players need a way to disable certain sounds and graphics. This has been a common request since the game's release. Now it's a dire necessity. This is an emergency change that needs to be pushed through Cryptic's quality assurance process post haste. It was direly needed four weeks ago.

In the long run, all the effects for the Sonic powersets need a complete reworking to avoid the use of dissonant sounds, rapid flashes, and rapidly expanding concentric rings.


Repetitive Content:

While the above issues are certainly serious, the problem that has perhaps the largest harmful potential to the long-term health of City of Heroes is the lack of content options for all levels. There are a total of 5 story arcs for players between levels 1 and 5 depending on origin or epic archetype. Assuming that players level primarily with their own missions, they can easily exhaust the rest of the in-game content in terms of mission type, enemies, mission decor, and storyline. Between levels 10 and 40, players face a hauntingly similar story progression, often encountering exactly the same contacts, exactly the same missions, exactly the same story line, and mission decor and layout that is repeated ad-nauseam.

Expansion zones, such as the Hollows, Striga Island, and Croatoa alleviate this problem to a degree, but only marginally. For the most part, the story progression in these zones does not alleviate the repetition. In fact, because the story is much more linear in these expansion zones, they become more repetitive more quickly.

What should be done to alleviate this problem?

The obvious and most labor-intensive solution is to simply create more story options for characters between levels 1 and 40. This requires Cryptic's writers and map designers to spend a lot of effort plugging new content and new missions into the 'old' part of the game. From the interviews we've seen, it's obvious that Cryptic's developers would much rather work on expansion content because it offers a lot more versatility and customization. Unfortunately, that leaves players in the lurch.

"Frostfire again, huh? That's the third time today. I think I'm gonna log instead."

A more reasonable and gradual approach to fixing the problem is to add content slowly and steadily, perhaps at the rate of one or two new story-lines per week. These need not be souvenir storylines, although more mission badges and souvenirs certainly wouldn't hurt. New stand alone missions would be adequate in most cases. Elite bosses should see more use, as should the newer game-play mechanics such as protecting items from destruction, or facing waves of attacking enemies.

Most importantly, the decor inside missions needs to have more variation. Expansion content sees some new tile sets, but the base game has virtually no variability between levels 10-40. While we have seen a few new room layouts with Issue 5, most COH players are still heartbreakingly familiar with the sameness of Sewer, Warehouse, Warehouse (abandoned), Office, Office (Abandoned), Military Base, Crystalline Cave, Laboratory, and Orenbega.

Outdoor missions are vastly more rare than they need to be. What very few new tilesets there are, such as the gulch caves from the Hollows, cargo ship interior from Striga, and 'combo' missions and the spirit world outdoor tiles in Croatoa tend to be targeted almost solely at expansion content.

On cursory inspection, adding new tile sets would seem to be an order of magnitude more difficult than adding new missions, especially if existing missions were retrofitted to use the new art assets. However, it does not seem unreasonable to expect at least one new 'generic' tileset per issue release or content patch. Again, if missions are added gradually to new tilesets, the long-term effect would be to create more diversity and uniqueness.

Croatoa's release offered a seeming wealth of new content. Unfortunately, this new content is not readily available to many players and is tailored to a decidedly more dedicated kind of play style. There are more sticking points and more 'locked options'. Many players view CoH's non-soloable content such as Archvillain encounters, trials, and taskforces with a certain amount of dread. Placing more non-soloable sticking points such as 'Maestro' or the dread 'Stop 30 Fir Bolg' mission early in a story causes consternation and frustration-- especially when the bulk of expansion content is hidden behind these events.


Waiting for City of Villains

The big focus at Cryptic right now, at least as far the players know, is not new content for I6, but the imminent City of Villains release. Cryptic is careful to bill City of Villains as a unique game that integrates with the existing City of Heroes game. Players with any experience with coding or debugging have long since realized that both games are using the same code base, if not the same binary resources. CoH players have seen glimpses of CoV features, such as costume creator options or textual messages. It has been confirmed that both games will use the same game servers, which indicates that the server code base will most likely be shared between the two games. Cryptic has also announced that some features will require players to own both games... more like the model of a typical MMO expansion.

City of Villains offers new archetypes, new powersets, new art, and new storylines-- apparently in approximately the same proportions as were released with the original CoH release. At this time, however, it is not immediately clear how much of this new content, if any, will cross-over to City of Heroes. CoH players have been promised a few new features such as base-building. They have not, as of yet, been given any reason to believe that there will be enough new content in CoH to prefer it over CoV. Further, it's becoming rapidly apparent that to get the 'goodies' of the new content-- costume options, for example-- one will have to become a villain.

This means more customization and uniqueness in total, but an overall limiting of just how customized and unique a character can be. While CoH players have been asking for costume features such as animalistic body parts or face masks for some time, it looks like these costume options are only going to be available to villains.

So much for roleplay. Satyrs and Minotaurs need not apply for a heroing license.

Perhaps the biggest feature touted for City of Villains is the highly-desired and usually highly-bungled art of PvP.

Most MMO games have attempted some form of in-game PvP to greater or lesser degrees of success. Some... dare I say most... implementations of MMO PvP are quite horrible. They usually either lack any kind of spontenaiety and excitement, or any implication of fairness and balance. The most successful form of MMO PvP is the so-called 'RvR', also known as 'Team PvP' or 'Realm vs. Realm'. Supposedly, City of Villains will bring RvR-style combat to Paragon City and its surrounds.

Will this be a good thing?

Cryptic spent an awful lot of time working on and perfecting the Arena PVP system for Issue 4 release. While there are a few dedicated PvPers, most CoH players seem to prefer to steer far clear. The Arena's various match options allows a great deal of fairness to be artificially imposed on PvP combat, but at the same time, it seems to fall into the problem of being horribly predictable and unexciting. Most players consider the arena to be 'empty'.

This a scary thing, especially since 'PvP' and 'End Game' seem to be used interchangeably by Cryptic devs and designers.

Do either CoH or CoV have an end game outside of PvP? Right now, it seems like all of Cryptic's eggs are in the PvP basket. Even if its successful, that means a radical departure in playstyle from what most CoH players have come to love and expect.

Right now, Cryptic desperately needs to address its future. Where do they intend to go-- more in the direction of releasing new content while allowing the old to stagnate, or do they focus on new content for older areas?

Because this information doesn't seem to be forthcoming, many will look to the CoV release as a non-verbal statement of intent.

What does the future hold for Paragon City's heroes? If the only new thing for them to experience is to become a villain, it doesn't seem very bright at all.

The biggest complaint I have is that NPC escorts tend to get stuck in doors, trapping you inside. This yinks pretty bad.

I rather like the sonic powers. As some other players have stated, please do *something* about the sound effects. They're horrible! A power set about sound shouldn't be hard to listen too.

This would be a good time to add a

/suppresssound all
/suppresssound me
or
/suppresssound playername

commands.

Also, it would be nice if males and females had different vocal effects. Males and females shouldn't be shouting in the same range, even if that range is the particular one that bursts an enemy's eardrums.

I'm so angry I'm going to cancel my SWG... wait... wrong thread...

My wishes for Defiance:

Please use text popups for defiance damage, like Scrapper crits. I suggest the following format:

Defiance +5%!
Defiance +10%!

Please add an accuracy buff to defiance.

Please 'unsquish' the defiance bar from the existing status bars. Redesign the layout off all four bars hp, end, def, and exp.

Alternatively, give players a '/hidedefiancebar' command to restore the original UI.

At high levels, most players will die under fire even with a successful defiance check. I beleive that the 'kick in' for defiance is too late. My suggestions is that players should be getting +5% to damage with 70% health.

I'm perfectly willing to have the 500% damage buff be a 'dying shot' only type thing, but having it kick in earlier at lesser levels of damage would mean that it would be more useful and more likely to keep blasters from dying.

Please publish details of how defiance is calculated and what it means when the bar is brown, vs. black, vs. clear. Does it work with Build Up? Aim? IE, when I'm very low health, should I bother wasting seconds popping those?

Please remove the 'defiance' buff icon from the tray. It's not really that helpful (You're either a blaster or your not) and is easily confused with some other status effects, especially detrimental effects, such as 'Full Auto'.

I wouldn't mind seeing the stores go away at all, especially if they were replaced by something like the 'Mission Stores' in Brickstown and Founders.

Mutant-girl Penny, Time Travelling Mad Scientist guy, Robot Guy, Serafina the Genie, and Agent Six all want you to do missions for them before opening their stores.

EXTEND THIS! This is a wonderful concept! I enjoyed those missions so much! Go ahead and scrap the stores and replace them all with missions like this!

You've got to be a pretty cool guy, let alone a cool MMO dev to be able to take things like that with a sense of humour.

Kudos, Statesman!

I've seen some good ones here. Forgive me if I'm repeating any that I've missed:

/em pimpstick

/em pistolwhip

/em heil (Y'know. Like nazis. Seig heil. Heil Hitler. Can't have a villains game without it.)

/em ohhoho (Think of Naga the White Serpent or Kodachi Kuno doing a roaring b*tch laugh with one hand to her mouth and the other on her hip.)

/em kissmyring (Someone suggested a 'Kneel before Zod' emote. This might make a good variation.)

/em vader (Possible copyright issues. Darth Vader holding Captain Antillies in the air by his neck and then throwing him against the wall in rage.)

/em backhand or /em b*tchslap

/em coupdegrace (With a small handheld pistol, please.)

/em comehither (For the lady villains.)

/em gendou (Elbows on the table, hands folded in front of mouth.)

/em booty (Turning and slapping your backside.)

/em zoicite (As in Dark General Zoicite. This pose: <a href="http://bishounen.info/zoicite/zoicite3.jpg" target="_blank">http://bishounen.info/zoicite/zoicite3.jpg </a>

/em bullwhip