Samuel_Tow

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When *I* think of super science stuff, I instantly think of Mr. Fantastic, Galactus, The Watcher, Elders of the Universe,

[/ QUOTE ]
Mr. Fantastic ok, but the others aren't science. They're Cosmic.

[/ QUOTE ]

More relevantly, they are "Natural." Whatever the Natural origin may have meant back in 2004, what it means now is characters whose powers come to them just for being who they are and aren't in any way special for them. Gulliver's size and strength would have been viewed as a natural super power in the land of little people, despite him being just an average man, say.

[ QUOTE ]
Yes but while the heroes are successful enough to have influence with saids stores, they don't ship out to the goverment because they only cater to those with super powers...the jerks!

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't they have supers on the government, too? Like, I'm pretty sure the president would be able to rip his suit jacket off and suplex enemies of the United States where they stand

I generally don't mind the maintenance, though I'm thankful for the heads up. However, what I DO mind is that my Server Status Page is trapped in a time warp back to June 24th and displays the stats from this day around 90% of the time, thus being completely useless for monitoring server status to me. Not that I mind all that much, but it'd be nice if I knew when I could log on. I have an item pack to test!

Silly me. I came in here expecting a discussion on what's in the Super Science costume pack since I can't get to it until I go home. What was I thinking?

Oh, well, I guess I'll have to cut my work day short and go check it out for myself. I'll have to deal with not discussing it with other people, I suppose.

The who of the what now?

[ QUOTE ]
and fire for stalkers.

[/ QUOTE ]

-Say, do you smell something burning?
*INFERNO STRIKE*
-Oh my god! I'm burning! Help! I'm brining!
*hand wave* You are not burning.
-Oh, OK. Man, it sure is hot in here. I hate summer weather.

[ QUOTE ]
agree, thats part of what i was saying, though heavily more technical, my primary dispute was calling those "robes", they aren't, they are heavily stylized versions of these pants. and thus really mean nothing to whether or not we will get long dresses.

[/ QUOTE ]

The point is that these are used for a lot of things, and not all of them fit the martial arts theme that the Tsoo may fit. Why that technology is problematic I can't say, but a variation of it with a sharper bottom edge can work just as well for a long skirt. Heck, even the same design with a better texture can look like a long skirt.

About the only real problem I can see is that they're animated as legs bound by a stretchy band at the ankles, and then everything else bases off that, which makes it look awkward when the "band" goes above one knee, such as in the Eagle's Claw animation. However, to say that they wouldn't work with all player animations seems a bit odd, considering that, between them, the Tsoo bosses have pretty much all Martial Arts kicks covered and they seem to at least WORK on them. And if a legs design can work with the game's most outlandish kicks, it ought to work with the rest of the game's largely upper-body-centric animations.

This technology COULD work for dresses, but they won't be flowing, and I highly suspect would be limited to only ever being ankle-length. I believe that what they may be looking at as a means of creating both better-looking AND more customizable skirts is either a closed-circuit cape system (which I seem to remember being claimed wasn't possible, though that may have been player supposition), or some kind of full-length rig that can have partial textures applied to it similar to how ripped sleeves and pants work. Either way, it's a new tech, and apparently not one that's very high priority.

Then again, given that we're getting power customization in I16, I can't even think of complaining about priorities

[ QUOTE ]
oy vey, you are wrong on quite a lot of things, so give me space here. first, while your picture could have been better centered, i knew which guy you were talking about, had you checked what i mentioned, hakama pants look nothing like the second tsoo in the pic, and you are still wrong. hit a tsoo sorcerer and make sure he ragdolls, now note how the legs seperate(or look at the pic the gentleman posted under my post of the tsoo using an axe kick) note that they are not wearing an open "dress" style robe, but a pair of extremely broad pants. this is different than a dress, dresses have only one "leg" that has to conform to the shape of both legs.

[/ QUOTE ]

While you could argue that these are very broad pants with their crotch at ground level, that's actually a requirement for making things convenient to animate. Tsoo don't HAVE legs under their skirts. All they have are ankle-length feet jabbed into the blob that is their skirt. You're not going to find an open-bottom long skirt in the game, especially in 5-year-old content, simply because it's inconvenient to animate things like that. So, their skirts are closed at the bottom.

Further proof can be found in the Circle of Thorns. They wear what are quite clearly ROBES, both visually and because they're wizards, yet they use the same closed-bottom style of skirt as the Tsoo, only with different shoes. Furthermore, note how Illusionist frilly dresses end - in a flat cap textured with concentric circles of dress slip players. You're not going to find an open-bottom skirt, robe, kimono, tunic or whatever else may end up in a "skirt," therefore the mere fact that the Tsoo skirt is closed-bottom does not directly dictate that this is not a robe. I could be, sure! But that's an artefact of graphic design, not an artistic choice to define the garment.

[ QUOTE ]
Darrin Wade is an exception. He'll talk to you as soon as you arrive in Sharkhead, and will introduce you to another contact later on - no broker needed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Darryn and Ashley make the low-to-mid level game a little more bearable. Ashley will pop up soon after you come into Cap, and she'll introduce you to a contact who'll introduce you to a contact and so forth. Then when you move out into Sharkhead, you'll get Darryn, who'll get you started on your missions there.

I'm not really a fan of self-introducing contacts as an alternative to the repetitive paper and mayhem missions, but it's an admitted step up. I'd still like to see a conventional contact-to-contact introduction system like is present in CoH, though.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

The biggest problem with Time Bomb is that it's treated as nuke, which it isn't. It doesn't have Nuke damage, and controlling it is so crapshot it may as well be blind luck half the time.


[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, time bomb does slightly higher damage than thunderous blast, but slightly lower than nova. I think it's at nuke level.

[/ QUOTE ]

That depends on what you're counting. Time Bomb does 278.05 damage, while Nova does 375.36, all components considered and Thunderous Blast does 312.8. Thunderous Blast, however, is usable at range and has other serious components, like endurance drain to the targets and not a complete drain on the Blaster, from what I'm seeing in the numbers. I don't think I had it on mine.

Yes, Time Bomb is a power in a secondary, but the huge difficulty and, above that, huge delay to using it simply ensures that few people use it even for toe bombing. I use it and I like it, of course, but even I will admit it's a gigantic pain to do so.

Ice sounds like something Stalkers should get, too.

It's a misguided attempt to make the villain game seem proactive by making villains jump through hoops to get things done that heroes get talked into doing. It hinges on the idea that heroes are reactive - they respond to crime when it happens - whereas villains are reactive - they go out and initiate crime on their own initiative. It's an interesting concept, though not specifically true in any real sense. Heroes do go out patrolling the streets and hunting to bring down a specific villain, and many villains (say, the Power Rangers bad guys) sit around all day waiting for something to happen so that they can go out and use it to do evil.

But even if we assume the basic stance is true, even if we assume that heroes should be reactive and villains proactive, making villains work for what heroes get for free is NOT a good way to emulate that. Far as I'm concerned, the mere act of making them EARN their contacts doesn't change the fact that villains are even MORE reactive than heroes. Essentially, they find a contact and they're told where to go, what to do and how much favour they're getting with Arachnos. If they wanted a TRULY proactive game, they should have written the PLOT to be proactive, rather than making all villains cheap sellout mercenaries.

It's not that hard to write arcs as though you're the protagonist, and even write them without a contact at the helm. The one and only arc I ever made is exactly like this. If I - some random shmuck off the Internet - can pull it off well enough to get 4 stars, them I'm sure the professionals who get paid for this and have access to superior design tools can do it even better.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Personally I'd like to see AE shut down for.. ahem... Maintenance during double XP.. I'd get a laugh at all the "you mean I need to go OUTSIDE??" comments.

[/ QUOTE ]
While I was reading I was thinking, 'I really don't care whether it gets 2xp." But this would be hilarious.

[/ QUOTE ]
Pretty much this. Though it means that joining PUGs would practically be suicidal during that weekend.

[/ QUOTE ]
Suicidal? Maybe, but entertaining for certain, with a chance at education.
Just the thing for the masochistic thrill-seeking pedagogue.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, maybe it will get Excession to stop complaining about maintenance and start complaining about pick-up groups again. It will be a vast improvement.

[ QUOTE ]
I feel as though we just wasted $50 (between my reactivation fee, her box purchase, and her first months play) coming back to a broken game. The simplicity of the original T/DO/SO enhancement system, the rich roleplay and character customization is what drew me to CoH over all of the available MMOs. Only the character customization seems to have survived from the CoH I remember. I feel robbed that this is going to be her first MMO memory.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with, and am saddened by most of what you say, but this in particular I need to comment on. Please, take this as the most sincere form of suggestion:

You do NOT need to get into Inventions.

Sure, they make you more powerful and provide a "second game" for people who are into that sort of thing, but they are by no means critical to your success, especially not at the level of DOs and SOs. In fact, with people paying ridiculous amounts for simple things, it's easier than ever to garner enough money to kit yourself out in DOs and SOs for almost no effort. Yes, they're not as power and yes, they do age, but you can get well into the 30s before you even consider Inventions and you won't miss out on much.

And if you want something more but don't feel like engaging in the rat race of Inventions, you can actually stick to Common Inventions. They are almost identical to SOs, only they do more (from about level 30 onward), they don't age, and they get stronger with each level bracket. The recipes to make them are sold at the university for reasonably fair prices, the salvage to make them is available on the market, though it may be expensive to buy, and they don't cost too much to make. Moreover, people make them for badges, so if you don't feel like going through the hassle of Inventing, you can buy ready-made enhancements right off the market for a relatively stable price.

Inventions are pricey, though. Where a SO goes for between 30 and 50 thousand, a Common bought off the market will set you back anywhere between 150 and 400 thousand, though if you make your won, the price is somewhere in the middle. They're pricey, but they don't go for 50 million a piece, and just selling the stuff you get off drops is going to net you about enough to outfit yourself with a set of 'em every 5 levels.

I honestly don't know what people are talking about when they beat their chest, grab their crotch and proclaim "Bah! I can make 500 million a day!" because on no character ever have I had more than around 80 million at any one point, and 50 million of that came from a single respec recipe.

It all depends on how strong you want to be and how high you want to push your difficulty and how fast you want to kill and so forth. If you want to play on the highest difficulty, never stop, never rest, never be in danger, etc., you're going to need to get into inventions. If you're like me, though, and you just want to kill stuff your level as well as you can, then stick to SOs and Commons.

[ QUOTE ]
me, I just want the CC emotes to be able to be worked successfully in a bind so that I don't have to pull that screen up every time I want to use a costume change emote...

[/ QUOTE ]

Why not just use the /cce command? For instance:

/cce 1 ccspin

This will cause you to switch to your costume in slot 2 (if you have one, and slots are numbered from 0) while doing the spin costume change emote. From what I've seen, costume change emotes system names are the same as their names in the dropdown with spaces taken out and CC at the start. Bind that to a key and you're set.

[ QUOTE ]
You're not trying to hold everyone forever. You use your AOE control (in the case of gravity, wormhole), to buy you enough time to whittle down your enemies' numbers to the point where you can casually hold what's left with your single target hold.

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but as I'm not familiar with other control sets, I wasn't aware there WERE ways to slow them down more than you're taxing yourself doing it. Typically, if I focus too much on control, my enemies wake up from the AoE control I had on them and become difficult to handle with single-target control if there are enough of them, thus my approach has been to kill as many as I can while they're still group-held and then focus on incapacitating the most dangerous threats only.

I do use Wormhole. I use it a lot. At 90 seconds, though, it's not up every spawn, and even when it is, I can't always pull the whole spawn with it. Even on indoor maps, they're often very scattered, so it's not rare I'll only pull three out of six people or so. This is actually where Dimension Shift helps, as if I don't manage to pull the whole spawn, then at least I can shift the ones I didn't pull and buy myself some time. I... Haven't done that nearly as much as I should have, come to think of it. I'll experiment.

I'm getting to 31 soon, so I'll have a lot of slots to go around, though if I have to be honest, I'm looking to slot up Total Focus first. Something tells me this will give me a lot more of an out, both because it has strong control on it and because it allows me to quick-kill lieutenants instead of having to keep them held. Still needs at least a couple more slots.

[ QUOTE ]
Honestly, just get off your high horse with sets. Melee sets are overpriced, but there are perfectly reasonable ranged damage sets available by level 30-35, when you should be looking at giving up SOs and buying inventions anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you for telling me to get off my high horse, but as I mentioned, I'm immune to being convinced, so you will not convince me. It's as simple as that. I specifically did NOT want to discuss that because I know where it goes every time. From here on out, I'm not going to discuss them at all.

I agree with the notion that Devices needs something more. I'm just not sure I agree with you on what needs more and what doesn't.

[ QUOTE ]
Web grenade: I'm not sure the tradeoff of no damage for some recharge speed debuff is worth it (especially since chillblain gets both). I'd like to see this turned into a mag 4 immobilize to help even it out with the other tier 1's.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ice Manipulation's whole shtick is control and slow, so its immobilize gets that. Beyond that, though, Web Grenade trades damage for slow, and in my opinion it's good enough.

[ QUOTE ]
Taser: A mag 3 stun is nice, but the long recharge and lack of anything to stack it with makes it hard to stun bosses, which are often the things you need to stun the most. I'm not sure exactly what should be done for this. I think what I'd like to see most is for it to be increased to a mag 4 stun, with a short duration and about the same recharge. Maybe a base of 7.5 seconds mag 4 stun with a 20 sec recharge. So if you wanted to put the slots into it, you could perma-stun bosses, but it wouldn't be all that easy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stun-stacking with the same powerset isn't something you should so much as suspect, let alone expect. The only secondary that can do that is Energy Manipulation, and that degree of control was cited as one reason for concern. The set, in fact, had a mag 4 stun in Total Focus, but that was reduced to mag 3 at one point. I would seriously not expect a boss-level stun in a manipulation set. Besides that, Taser is pretty good, its limited range and fast animation make it a superior power to Stun.

[ QUOTE ]
Smoke Grenade: Fine just the way it is.
Cloaking Device: Fine just the way it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Smoke Grenade is completely worthless and easily inferior to a whole range of powers for anything other than protecting your team-mates from perception, which isn't terribly useful given its not full protection. Its to-hit debuff is pathetic, and unless you're stacking it on top of lots of inventions set bonuses for defence, isn't worth even considering.

Cloaking Device is only marginally above useless, being functionally identical to Stealth minus the negligible run speed debuff. It provide defence, but two thirds of that suppresses as soon as you attack. Aside from stacking it with Smoke Grenade, which can be done just as well by stacking Stealth over Supoer Speed.

You may as well marry the two powers into a full-on invisibility toggle with unsuppressed defence and give the set something worth taking in place of either.

[ QUOTE ]
Trip Mine: Lower the cast time and the recharge time so it's a little more friendly to use on teams, and it'd be great. Maybe lower the duration as well so you can't stack any more due to the lower recharge.

[/ QUOTE ]

Trip Mine's very design assumes a playstyle that the game actively dissuades - laying traps and pulling enemies in them. It works, but it's HORRENDOUSLY slow. Take it from someone who got to 50 doing that - it AIN'T worth it. If you're asking that the mine be easier to use on teams, then you may as well argue for a reimagining of the power, with which I'd actually be in agreement. I don't use it as a trap, anyway, I just use it to mine my own feet as a buffer for any pushy melee-centric enemies. Thank God friendly fire is off.

[ QUOTE ]
Time Bomb: The biggest problem with this is that you can't control when it goes off. Find a way so that you could set it off when you wanted, and it would be great.

[/ QUOTE ]

The biggest problem with Time Bomb is that it's treated as nuke, which it isn't. It doesn't have Nuke damage, and controlling it is so crapshot it may as well be blind luck half the time. About the only good way to use it is to toebomb with, and that takes 23 seconds just for the bomb. It doesn't sound like a lot, but no team is ever going to stand back and watch you go in, plant a bomb, go back out and wait.

I'm not sure Time Bomb requires a re-imagining, as it really does work well when used well, but its 6 minute recharge and 8!!! second animation time are simply too high for a power of such situational usefulness, not to mention that cost! I suppose being able to remote-detonate it would be cool, and indeed Mastermind Detonator on thinking henchmen is, functionally, an instant-detonation Time Bomb. I would be very much for that. I'd still be mighty pissed off at the ridiculous cast time, though.

[ QUOTE ]
Gun Drone: Another easy fix. Just make the duration longer or make it permanent, and lower the cast time slightly, and it's a great power.

[/ QUOTE ]

Gun Drone is nothing more than an endurance sink. Its cost is plain and simple not worth the limited use it has in the minute it's alive. I wouldn't support making it permanently permanent, but increasing its lifespan to at least 4-5 minutes is something I would DEFINITELY want to see. Either that, or slashing its cost SIGNIFICANTLY. That turret is NOT worth as much as it costs, so it either needs to cost less, do more or last longer.

[ QUOTE ]
Targeting Drone: To help make up for the burst damage that devices lacks due to not having buildup, I'd add a small damage buff to targeting drone. Perhaps a 15-20 % buff.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's been suggested, but apparently dismissed by the developers, who compromised only partially, allowing Targeting Drone to give more damage to Sniper Rifle and Sniper Rifle alone. I'd like to see that, but a constant damage buff seems scary.

I DO wish they'd go forward with the planned Stealth Strike from Cloaking Device, though. That might serve to helps some.

Generally, I do agree with your general premise. Devices can do with a bit of a sprucing up.

[ QUOTE ]
In other MMOs, when I replace earned in-game items with ones of higher quality, I can generally sell the originals or use them on alts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whereas in the "other" MMO, powerful items become soulbound to your character as soon as you equip them and cannot be traded even among your characters, while more powerful items still become soulbound as soon as you pick them up, ensuring they can never be bought from other players. Retaining any enhancements at all IS being generous, because the alternative is retaining nothing at all.

[ QUOTE ]
MY HERO DOES NOT FEEL HEROIC ANYMORE!

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you tried saving a kitten trapped in a tree? That always works for me.

[ QUOTE ]
Why shouldn't it get 2xp if the devs think AE xp is fine?

[/ QUOTE ]

Same reason it doesn't get to use Patrol Experience.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
3) It made me giggle like a schoolgirl for a solid couple of hours.

[/ QUOTE ]
You folks have no idea how scared the rest of us were. We thought he'd snapped! I mean, BABs has WEAPONS at his desk, you know.

[/ QUOTE ]
So that wasn't just a figure of speech? He really was giggling like a school girl that entire time? That's awesome, and yes maybe a bit creepy if he has weapons at his desk.
Also now that I know BaBs is a fan... BaBs can we get a school girl giggle emote?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm... Now I can't decide between this and this.

Ah, I get it. This is through the use of more reliable control balanced by other means (confuse being balanced by experience loss, sleep being balance by breakability, etc.) and fire-and-forget patches. OK, that makes sense.

It kind of goes with what I wanted to say, though not necessarily what I ended up saying. I've been looking at this as an effort to control things via direct, conventional control. AoE control doesn't cut it because it can't self-overlap (by design) and though single-target control MAY be able to do it, the cost associated is such that you're going to run out of endurance before you kill anything. That's probably Gravity Control talking, but I sort of ignored the other means of control just because they never crossed my mind.

CoT jails are particularly nasty, as the cages are lumped together in the same room as the bulk of the jail room's spawns, who often aggro in twos and threes (spawns, not single enemies) as soon as you break down the door. I've always felt their design was a mistake, and would have preferred one where the jail cells were off in a little corner out of sight of the bulk of the enemies, like every other jail room in the game is, be it Longbow, Council, Arachnos or PPD.

I would be very mad if the Architect doesn't get double experience. In fact, it should get double experience, and patrol experience should also take effect in there, too.

They should also post a speed trap on the corner of 45.