Samuel_Tow

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I was thinking when a hero or villain draws out his/her sword or gun where does it come from??? I was wondering why dont they have a holster or something to put there weapons into and so its visible. there can be different holster costume parts and ect. if you don't like the holster idea please think about making weapons visible on either the characters back or waist (should have choice based on player).

Think about this!!

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Hammer space.

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I think this "hammer space" is the biggest cop-out ever... not showing ur weopon is retarded lol.

First post after redname...nd if its so hard to get a weapon holster or whatever y not just make a sheath or a quiver as a costume piece for the waist?

[/ QUOTE ]calling something retarded while demonstrating, at best, a cursory grasp of the English language...ah succulent irony.

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What's more, it also ensures that BABs will never actually read anything that guy ever posts again. Generally speaking, accusing people of retarded cop-out is not a very good way to reason with them.

At least height ought to be available at the regular tailors, yes. It's something that should be a basic function of the editor, not a paid-for perk.

There isn't any "bleed-through," it's just really aggressive shading. Here's a thought experiment - pick a trenchcoat and make it pure white. Now watch how it looks as though it's dirty or dusty. That's because it's very heavily shaded, as people were I guess expected to want them all black. Skin is shaded in many places with a brownish tinge, and when you apply lighter colours over it, they get shaded with the same brownish tinge. Darker colours generally hide the shading because their base is darker and their shading ends up just being black and melding with the colour itself, but white and other bright materials are shaded with an odd tinge.

Personally, I'm convinced we need a better technology than "bare torso with pattern" for tights with skin and even tights, a technology that allows for the blending of two textures over the same mesh, rather than just a uni-colour pattern over a base texture. It may even allow for tights with skin and tattoos, or non-human skin textures and tights and so on. After all, notice how masks over faces still show your eyebrows and ear canals? They shouldn't.

I took close to two hours to download for me, as I was getting speeds of 15KB/s in Eastern Europe. I usually get 100-150KB/s (out of a ~1.2MB/s connection), but I figured it was a busy time. I tried playing Mirror's Edge, but I suspect my video card overheated or something of the sort. "Hardware device or its driver."

That said, I'm not a fan of distributing this over bit torrent. Half the PCs I have access to block ports and refuse incoming connections, limiting my speed to a crawl, and most of those limitations I have no control over (not the sys admin), and some even connect to the 'net via proxy. WoW distributes its patches via proxy, so when a friend of mine was updating through my router, it took him literally all day.

Bit torrent, as well, depends on other people participating for speed. Outside of patch day, how many people do you think are going to be downloading at the same time? Who's going to stay looking at the updater and seed? Or do you expect the client will seed for you, stealing from your connection while you play? After all, my upload speed is a tenth of my download speed, and even limiting my upload to 80% of it, it STILL impacts my game.

I have to agree with the Scientist on just about all points stated, which is a load off my mind. This level-headed, largely objective post is something I wanted to write, but it's stated quite well, which saves me some time and effort

I want to touch on the instinctive hatered for anime that I've seen displayed here and elsewhere, though, because it's largely displayed by people who apparently don't have a very good idea what "anime" actually constitutes. Statements like "Oh, sure! Crazy hair and giant eyes and lots of belts!" just reaffirm this belief. I don't know what people get as a mental image when they think "anime," but the genre is INCREDIBLY wide and diverse, and it has plagiarised so many other genres so deeply, it doesn't really have a good, monolithic definition on what it actually is.

Yes, there are crazy things and wild costumes and weird and strange characters. In SOME shows and comics. Others take a much more realistic, much more subtle approach. You have the truly weird on one hand, like Soul Eater and much of Naruto, but on the other hand you have largely realistic designs in shows like Ghost in the Shell, Armitage III or Akira. It's a lot like the distinction between high fantasy, with its outlandish outfits and improbable armour, and borderline medieval simulations like Hard to Be a God, with its largely authentic armour and weapons (minus the rare future weapons)

This game hasn't been based on tights socks and hairless masks pretty much since it was released. It's a mistake to think it's based JUST on American comic books when it's just as based on science fiction movies and even popular cartoons, and it's also a mistake to think that American comic books are based on tights-wearing, caped crusaders for justice, dressed in red, white and blue. The comic books genre is a lot wider than that, and the game is a lot wider than the comic books genre in turn.

Ironically, exactly because not all anime is wild hair and improbable clothes, a LOT of it can be rendered in City of Heroes already. A lot of anime characters have cool costumes that are cool not because of some wild disregard for the laws of physics or fancy-looking shoulderless sleeve, but simply because they're regular clothes, but designed to be really, really cool.

There are a few anime pieces we can certainly use, mostly in the legs department where I feel this game is lacking the most, but a few others, as well. I wouldn't mind oversized options for our current weapons, as well. Sometimes you want something that makes sense, sometimes you want something that's just BIG, and it would be nice if I could use something OTHER than the Legacy Broadsword for that effect. Beyond that, though, "anime" is too loose a term to really be a meaningful suggestion. You may as well say "add more costume options" and you won't be any less specific.

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The title is a complete lie, just now I saw a group of Outcasts trying to break into a bus stop. They are still doing things that make absolutely no sense.

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I'm getting weary of reading this after five years of people missing the point. They're not trying to break into bus stops, public phones or light posts, they're VANDALISING them. Read their dialogue and it should become clear. They say things like "Yeah, I'm gonna' leave my mark on this!" Why do people always assume that if someone takes a hammer and chisel to a bus stop, they're trying to "break in?"

Cool! Now I should go and re-edit my old characters' bios. This REALLY infuriated me, and I'm glad to see it's gone. The symbol count above the text field is a nice touch, too.

Footsteps are cool. Sand and loose soil now actually sound like sand and loose soil (and a little like snow) and the sound of footsteps on metal is no longer borrowed from Ufo: Enemy Unknown.

By far the biggest thing, though, is hostages, escorts and I believe even pets show up on the map. I've been dreaming about this ever since I first made a Mastermind

I don't care what anyone says. Escorts and pets showing up on the map ALONE makes this issue worth it for me. Ironically, I didn't see that in the patch notes.

Now I'm reminded why I took a break from the forums.

Many Archery attacks have arrow or arrows being fired cross THROUGH the bow and come out on the left side, often clipping through the shooter's left arm. This is hard to catch on most Archery attacks as they tend to come out fast, but is very evident when using Rain of Arrows due to the long animation and upward angle.

Take this example. This is a top-down view of Rain of Arrows, and you can clearly see the arrows making contact with the LEFT side of the bow, where in fact they should be making contact with the RIGHT side of it. Unless I'm way off, an archer drawing the bow with the right hand will position the arrow to be fired on the right side of the bow at about the point where the tips of the fingers on the left hand are. On Archery, this is reversed, making for some awkward shots.

Also, when held idle, the string of the bow crosses through the centre of the character's forearm, as can be seen here. I'm not sure what the proper way for holding a bow is (string on the inside or outside of the arm), but in either case it shouldn't be clipping as it is.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Character model: Female
Bow used: Mongolian
All bugs mentioned are true both when flying and when standing on the ground.
These bugs are true even when no power are active.

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Thanks, BABs! You just saved me the trouble of trying to figure out the best way to catch your attention with a PM I figured you'd want to be in on an emote-boosting movement!

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Wow, Z, good show! Give Aenigma a pat on the back for complaining at the right time

As for actual implementation, I have to agree with people wanting to keep the old ways working as well. I'd say that /e, /em and /emote should retain their current functionality, and new slash commands should be added to handle both text-only and animation-only emotes. I wouldn't want to guesstimate as to their actual names, but going by /cc vs. /cce, I'd say /et and /ea, for "emote text" and "emote animation," respectively, with probably /emt and /ema as aliases.

Also, why doesn't all the cool stuff never happen in my presence? I'd really like to be the recipient of an invisible BABs mistyped emote some time

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Let me reinstate my premise. I would like to see more powers in the pool powers.

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Those restrictions that you're chafing against are there for your own protection...

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No they aren't. Because if you screwed up your character, you could simply respec him. Or even REROLL him.
Has a developer ever made that statement?

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Yes. The original pre-beta game system was a framework which allowed people to pick from a variety of small pools with no AT or powerset restrictions. The end result was that a handful of crafty people made badly overpowered characters who found nothing even remotely difficult, and a lot of people made completely gimped characters and couldn't accomplish pretty much anything at all, making the game impossible to balance. The restrictions that came out of this - the AT and powerset vs. power pool structure - was a direct response to this problem and a means to lock people into specific powers and FORCE them to build at least somewhat logically, while at the same time limiting the raw net performance achievable via the "proper" build.

This is in the old Rick Dakan diaries, has been stated by many developers over the years and is what pushed the game back to a 2004 launch date.

For what it's worth, it's useful to remember that power POOLS are not power SETS. As such, they don't have the same width and breadth of powers and the same scope of functions. A power pool is a generic, typically low-key power that is common between many heroes and not specifically specific to any specific origin or power source. Common things like flight and teleportation, obviously, but also the simpler things like stealth, general fitness and even basic leadership. Things not inherent in, say, the ability to shoot fire from your hands. These aren't meant to full, character-defining sets of powers, and if you feel that they should be, you're better off lobbying for a change in basic policy in redefining what pools are supposed to mean.

Swelling power pools to 9 powers is a mistake in my eyes, especially since it then further entails the swelling of all Epic pools to 9 powers, which ends up giving you access to a grand total of 7 powersets, each with 9 powers, for a total of 63 possible picks out of 24 power picks to level 50. This returns us to the age-old problem of a game that makes it easy to gimp yourself if you're not well-versed in its intricacies, and at the same time makes it easy to make overpowered characters if you are. This blows not only contemporary power balance out of the water, but ANY shot at a balance point that applies to all players, which to my eyes is unacceptable.

I could see adding an extra power to existing power pools. Precedent for this now exists in some 5-power Epics. Precident also exists that this isn't a "better" power put in as the next big step, but rather as an alternate mid-tier power there to complement the pool's utility. Munitions Mastery didn't get Long Range Missile Rocket Barrage, after all, they got another mid-tier power in the face of Survaillance. If/when we see other pools expanded, expect them to follow the same framework.

As for what the sets could use as a fifth power, I'll have to agree with what the others have said - thinking up powers that are both useful and not overpowered, yet still make sense within the context of the pool isn't trivial. The fact that a lot of pools are punctuated by silly stuff like Group Teleport or Whirlwind speaks to the difficulty of coming up with reasonable stuff.

About the only thing I can think of off-hand is adding a sort of "Combat Teleport" option for Teleportation, which would have no activation animation (unlike Teleport, which has a good 2-second activation time) but would only have a range of about 20 feet, as well as a few seconds' worth of recharge. This should give a teleporter the ability to actually teleport in combat without it feeling like driving an articulated lorry up a 30 degree hill.

Beyond that, I'm stumped.

Is it just me, or do most of the people who complain 1-22 is a slog have a reg date of 2005 or earlier? Not really trying to dismiss, but a lot of what I'm seeing tells me people have done the low-level game a thousand times and gotten used to the high-level game. I'm not sure I could say this is specifically BAD - things get boring eventually - but I still think the game ought to be designed to be friendly to new people, not give veterans an easy out of everything.

I'm a 57 month veteran. I signed up for this game in May of 2004, and though I skipped a couple of months when my game time cards expired, I've been here pretty much the whole way through. I don't find the low game boring. Not in the slightest. Not hero-side, not villain-side. In fact, the 1-10 game is perhaps the most fun time of a hero's career, where enemies are easy, levelling is fast and a character is still strange and unfamiliar. Up until about 20 or 30, even underperforming characters can do reasonably well. It isn't until the upper 30s and the 40s when levelling slows down a CRAWL, enemies become unfair and unreasonable peer pressure criticises your performance at every turn that the game truly becomes a boring grind. I suppose 47-50 might be considered good times again, because you have pretty much everything you're going to have and there isn't much incentive to look at levelling up as a priority.

I happen to enjoy the entire levelling process, from beginning to end. How a character changes and grows in that time is half the fun of the game, and most of the point to having progress to begin with. I can never agree with or support a change that gives people an "out" of any part of it, not unless it's a game-wide change that alters the underlying structure. I'm sorry, I just can't go with that.

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Now personally I never really liked the idea of having costume pieces as vet rewards, but thats what the devs chose and changing it now wouldn't be fair to the people that patiently earned them. I can't claim to have waited for my wings because when Vet Rewards started I already had 24 months on my account.

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I don't think it's fair to have made a number of things that should be standard into vet rewards. I had to wait quite awhile for something as simple as boxing gloves. If they made those available to everyone tomorrow, I wouldn't think it was unfair I'd think "well, that's the way it should've been to begin with."

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I feel the same way. If all veteran rewards were opened to the public tomorrow, I wouldn't bat an eye. In fact, I'd celebrate. As a veteran of 57 (or is that 60 now?) months, you'd think my saying so would mean something, but apparently it doesn't. I have access to all these things, and I still feel it's stupid and unwarranted to limit them as they have. Oh, sure, I have all that stuff available to me, but if I were a new player, I would certainly be quite upset and lacking all the things a new player lacks, both in booster packs and veteran rewards. Booster Packs, at least, one can buy NOW, instead of waiting four years for a pair of boxing gloves.

When I was first told of this idea, it took me about 10 minutes before I could process what it actually meant. Then I slapped my forehead so hard it made a sonic boom, because it's so obvious I'm now wondering why it wasn't instituted like this to begin with. Or why it never occurred to me.

I will say one thing - there has never, EVER been an instance when I've wanted to do an animated emote where emoting text was an acceptable second best. In fact, it's a spectre that haunts me every time I try to use an emote in a public place, as I go back and make sure I typed it correctly so I don't emote something silly. Which makes using emotes I'm not sure of the spelling of, such as "was it sitchair or chairsit?" because I WILL get it wrong at least once.

I guess I can kind of see acting out SOME of your text emotes the same way as, say, only SOME characters had voice overs in Fallout or Baldur's Gate. I can't say this is a good enough reason to mix text and animated emotes in the same place, though, especially since the only way to animate is to write a specific emote code alone in its own string anyway and there isn't any way for the game to guess what your complicated full-sentence emote actually means and have you emote something based on its meaning.

So, yes - separate slash commands for text and animated emotes, please. It makes sense.

How I've always read BABs comments on customizing powers is that they're defined in external files called by the main executable. HE can change them via patch updates, but WE can't through lack of support for them being changed through the in-game systems. Furthermore, there is only one effect associated with each power, so even IF they could be changed, it would change ALL instances of this power in the game, regardless of whether it is used by you, by another player using different settings or by an NPC which should be using default settings. It's kind of like custom skins for UT - you can see them, but other people can't, and you can't see other people's custom skins if you don't have them installed.

Like his sig says - not necessarily difficult, just a lot of work someone has to do to implement this.

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Hand Clap in Super Strength: When this power is used while flying, the yellow shockwave is displaced quite a distance to the character's left, instead of where the hands (should) meet.

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This seems to be affecting Electrical Manipulation/Lightning Clap, as well.

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Shield Taunt: the sound doesn't play when my Axe Tanker uses it. He stands there banging his axe against his shield and it's all eerily silent.

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That was true for the Dark Melee Confront, as well. Dark/Dark Scrapper, Huge model, running only the Dark Armour toggles which shouldn't affect animations.

Two bugs to report:

Bug one: Running animation on the female model with a right-handed weapon starts too slowly.

Character: Broadsword/Invulnerability Scrapper running nothing but the Invulnerability passives and Swift. Broadsword out.

Description: Whenever the character starts her "running forward" animation, she plays one cycle too slow, at the animation speed which would have been appropriate if she didn't have the Swift run speed buff. Sprint on top of Swift makes it even more noticeable. This is only true for one cycle (e.i. left foot -> right foot -> end), and then running animation speed increases to match what it SHOULD be like with the current run speed buffs. This is true when transitioning into a forward run from ANY other state, such as standing still, landing from a jump, strafing side to side or activating an attack.

My hypothesis: The animation for transitioning into a forward run from any of the other states ignores running speed buffs, and it shouldn't.

Bug two: Some Broadsword family animations don't play their effects right with a Shield out, namely Slash from Broadsword.

Example

Character: Broadsword/Shield Defence Scrapper, running only one shield toggle and nothing else.

Description: Each Broadsword attack has a very feint "swing arc" when it animates, drawn in white. These appear designed to accentuate the weapon strike and follow the arc, like you would see in a comic book. However, when using Broadsword Slash, the arc doesn't follow the weapon at all, and is instead drawn above and behind the character, nowhere near where the weapon is. This is strictly a SHILEDS WITH WEAPON problem, as the bug is NOT present when the weapon is used without a shield out. Two attacks from War Mace do the same, one is the attack that uses the same animation as Slash, the other is the upward strike absent from Broadsword, but the one used by Fire Sword. I can't remember their names at this time.

My hypothesis: The shield-specific animations for this powers have an incorrect position for the "swing arc" attack effect, casing it to appear behind and above centre, rather than below and in front of centre where the actual swing is.

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I would like to point out that I tried, and I seem to no longer be able to bypass animation and rooting while hovering with the method I had. I don't know when that happened, but I'm glad it did. Thank you

If you click the chat line, can you type then? If so, chances are your Enter key got bound to something else. If not, then I don't know.

Erm... Nemesis is, or at least WAS a man, so his creator would either be his mother, or God, depending on how you look at it. There are a lot of interesting things about Lord Nemesis, I just don't see his past as one of them.

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Some people don't have a problem spending money to make their charachter better,or STRONGER,or different.What about them?

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They can go to hell. It's a pretty simple concept.

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People are paying for more charachter slots.
People are paying to rename their charachters,naming them differently.
They are already doing this stuff to their charachters,as I have,and it all costs money.
Wouldnt all of this be unbalancing,using your logic?

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No. None of that makes your character stronger. You're misusing the term "balanced" quite severely. Characters are balanced by power, not by how many costumes they have or the colour they display when they run. They are balanced by power. That means level, powers, slots and the enhancements put in them. Temporary powers don't come into that balance, because they run out, but replenishable ones have already been altered. The Vial of Bees can only be obtained from Ouroboros once, after which the mission will grant you a version that disappears when the mission ends.

What you are suggesting is unbalanced because it allows one person to pay money and become objectively and quantifiable stronger than someone who didn't pay. I am not interested in a game where the only way to be strong is to fork over and pay up. Out of the question.

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Wow, you've been playing an MMO for a VERY long time for someone who just stated that they essentially hate the MMORPG model.

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This is the only MMO I've ever been able to play for more than a week exactly BECAUSE it doesn't follow the "MMORPG model" to the letter. I like this game IN SPITE OF it being an MMO, not BECAUSE of it. If I wanted the hardcore Korean grindfest MMO experience, I'd go play WoW or Lineage II or 9Dragons or any of the other games to that effect. I picked City of Heroes because it WASN'T any of these things.

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Sure, it isn't as grindy as some other MMO's, but it still is an example of what you said you hated. You don't start as powerful as you're going to be. It's a time consuming process to get stronger and stronger until you hit that peak level.

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Well, unlike other MMOs, it's also an entertainment process. I don't start out as strong as I'm going to be, but I start out as strong as I need to be, and for the most part, stay as strong as I need to be the game over. I don't mind progress itself, I mind NEEDING progress and having to grind for it. Any time I feel like I'm not enjoying what I'm doing but I have to do it anyway because I need to move forward, I'm no longer having fun.

And that's not unique to MMOs or RPGs. Recently released game Prototype is just as grindy as this. Rather than follow the actual story, you're forced to indulge in mindless "Kill Frenzy!" style events for "evolution points" so you can unlock the powers you need.

The argument, though, was more about not having combat decided before it ever starts. I don't want my battles to take place in the spreadsheet and on the stopwatch, with the ACTUAL encounter being only a foregone conclusion.

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This game is somewhat unbalanced.Some people have a ton of things.Others have very little.If it were balanced,everyone would have everything.My slots idea would just be another thing to unbalance the game,but with balance,and with things such as the booster packs,with some people having both of them,and others not having them at all?

Somehow,the game carries on,and my idea would just be another addition to the balanced unbalance if it is implemented as I suggested it to you.If you want to put it into a TF or an SF,that is cool too,but the Dev's may see this as a way to make money is all im saying,and it would probably wind up being for sale.I am open to any way this idea of mine could be activated.

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How does that not strike you as completely unfounded? What you're asking for is no different from buying levels or buying buffs or buying stats with real money. There's a reason RMT pushers are banned from the game, and it's not so that NCsoft can cash in on it, instead. Everything you've mentioned is not "unbalancing" in any way, shape or form because it's fluff. It doesn't matter. A cooler costume doesn't make you hit any harder or take more damage. What's unbalancing is paying money to make your character STRONGER, and that is completely and utterly unacceptable.

There is no argument to be made here. Buying enhancement slots is a bad idea.

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It's prolifiration...just not the "easy" part.

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How do you figure? Proliferation is the act of taking one powerset and adapting it for an AT that didn't have it. There IS no Pulse Rifle powerset any more than there is a Zombie Vomit powerset. There are three powers that aren't even all that good. Making six more and actually creating a set that has internal balance in it is... Creating a new powerset.

"Proliferating" Pulse Rifle would be akin to proliferating Electrical Melee. Which is to say, it wasn't proliferation, but rather a brand new set.