Samuel_Tow

Here's a question I've always wanted to ask:

By the 45-50 level range, the Nemesis has obviously gained the ability to spread his mind across multiple bodies, but how does that work? Is it one conscience controlling multiple suits of armour like he had a hundred hands, or is it multiple "people" all existing as copies of the same mind? At one point, the former appears to be the case, where two Fake Nemesis will finish each other's sentences. At another point, the latter seems true, as "Nemesis?" asks "Have we met? Or was this another Nemesis?" suggesting that the one I'm fighting now may not be the same despite sharing the same mind.

How does that work?

Mr. Brawler, Sir., I have missed your posts on this forum so very much

Don't remember what I was running on the mission in question, but I keep wanting to say a Fire/Fire Blaster. For some reason, I remember them scattering a lot and draining me to nothing in a little over a single volley. That's Electric/Electric minions and lieutenants, by the way. Think they ran the gamut of available Electrical powersets, too. Electrical Blast/Electrical Manipulation, Electrical Assault/Electrical Armour, Electrical Melee/Electrical Armour and so on. Quit mid-way through the same mission because it wasn't worth the slog.

Well, it was just a concept. I doubt it would help all that much, though with so many enemies having 50% lethal resistance in the upper levels, it might help. But we were talking about something unique, and I thought that would be unique not just as a mechanic, but as an approach to set balance, as well.

Enemies are designed with strengths and weaknesses, and our powers are generally strong enough to beat enemies when we don't face either, and to have a harder time but still beat them when we faced their strength. Fighting robots with swords comes to mind, as does fighting Titans with energy damage. It works, it's just an uphill battle. Suppose, however, that a set could always pick and choose its damage type and always hit enemies where they are weak? Not only is it not facing the resistances most other sets face, but it's actually able to target enemy weaknesses, which tend to be not insignificant. Like, in the -20-30% resistance range, which is a lot.

Granted, not all enemies are going to have a weakness to ice or fire - Freakshow are weak to Energy, for instance, and have neither a strength or a weakness to Fire. We can't really clone a bullet for every damage type (and it would be pretty stupid to even try) but I wouldn't be as quick to dismiss choosing your damage type on the fly.

As for conventions, there are always sets that break the mould. Look at Scrapper sets, for instance - small attack, bigger attack, even bigger attack or cone, utility, confront, build up, bigger attack, even bigger attack. Yet look at Dark Melee. It's a lot closer now, with the changes to Midnight Grasp and Syphon Life, but once upon a time it had small attack, big attack, combo bigger attack/cone, then utility, utility, sorta-Build Up, Confront, then combo utility/relatively big attack. There is precedent, however small, for oddball sets out there.

Granted, balancing a set that relies on switching damage types would be difficult and VERY dependent on what you fight and what weaknesses it has. But practically speaking, it's a lot like having Survaillance on EVERY enemy you fight. 'Course, it would suck to use if you didn't know who is weak to what, further complicating things, and we're probably going to want to add some secondary effects to toggles and so on and so forth.

The point, though, is that what was asked a unique idea and, given the limitations of the system, that does fit. Someone had an Excel Spreadsheet of enemy resistances somewhere, so we'll probably have to look at that to determine even potential viability, but I'd be interested to try, anyway.

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I could probably take you up on that, Sam... if you want hair-pullingly difficult for Melee ATs, while only being marginally more difficult for Ranged ATs... pop out a heavily Dark-oriented set of baddies. Get a bunch of 'em running Chill of the Night or whatever, and watch Scrappers whiff until their arms fall off while the Blasters sit back and plink away to their heart's content.

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Been there, done that Yeah, it sucks, I will admit, but the stuff that usually has this - Spectral Demon Lords, tends to also have Midnight Grasp and be able to fly. Let me just say that I've lost more Blasters to Ghost Slaps than I have to Malta, though largely by virtue of fighting CoT that much more often.

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Another fun one is Electric Blast/Energy Armour baddies. Run up and watch your blue bar go bye-bye! *evilgrin*

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Don't those suck for everybody? I mean, sure, the melee endurance drain aura sucks extra hard, but their hideously draining blasts aren't really all that much more forgiving. I actually abandoned an arc with half the minions being Electrical Blast or Electrical assault because it plain wasn't worth the pain.

Custom Critters are always nasty, and people tend to have no concept of just what it is they are putting their players through.

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The big problem with using Aim's contribution over time is that it's not particularly accurate. Sam and I both brought up the fact that Aim isn't used at every recharge. It's better used by Blasters to achieve a larger alpha-strike in conjunction with Build Up, which, thanks to specific use that emphasizes heavily buffing specific long recharge powers rather than the overall attack string, skews the end DPS benefits of the short term buff powers by having that +dam act on a larger amount of damage.

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I think we agree here, for the most part. A while back I went around trying to judge the cost of different powers and found that, while continuous use of small powers actually cost MORE, actual practice saw larger powers put a bigger hit on your endurance bar bar because of how they tend to be used first and once or twice per battle, coming closer to their full cycle, while smaller powers spent a lot more time waiting than their recharge and animation would dictate if they were used continuously. Since powers are pretty much balanced on a damage scale per unit of endurance cost (0.192 scale damage per 1.0 unit of endurance cost for single-target attacks), their cost directly relates to their damage yield.

Simply put, the bigger the power, the bigger the buff and the longer the recharge, the closer their contribution comes to the theoretically-defined averages they're expected to achieve by virtue of alpha strikes being so potent in this game. And, inversely, the smaller the power, the smaller the buff and the shorter the recharge, the less likely it is to reach its potential predicted yield per second as bigger attacks tend to be favoured and battles end before things can even out. Of course, that's solo. On a team with huge spawns and many bosses per encounter, "over time" metrics become more pronounced and DPS and DPE start to matter more than alpha strike. Well, unless your team is heavy on damage dealers, which I've seen can level an 8-man spawn in a few seconds if they act together. Three Blasters, say, even when they don't nuke-rotate, can pretty much unleash hell on a full spawn and leave nothing but badly-damaged bosses if they coordinate well.

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If anything, I'd expect the Aim contribution over time to be a baseline and have the toggle value be significantly increased to make the toggle do more than simply add .68%, 1.32%, or 1.97% +dam. It would probably be closer to a 5-10% increase in base damage though have an endurance cost high enough to encourage slotting end redux.

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Agreed on the numbers. I was feeling adventurous and crunched some numbers, myself - specifically, those pertaining to me Three level 50 common recharge reducers in Aim produce an average damage buff over time of ~1.3648% per second, which would be far below the 5-10% suggested so far. Given how that metric doesn't always come to play exactly as given, however, I'm not sure we can do a direct comparison. Still, given the following:

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If I were to make the power however, I know what I'd do to the power cost: make the toggle cost .01 end/sec (re: nothing) but have a debuff attached to it that increases endurance consumption by however much the damage is increased. If the damage is an extra 10% (whether by chance for damage or simply extra damage), the toggle would have increase endurance consumption by 10%. It penalizes use of non-primary powers a bit, but I think that might be a suitable exchange for being able to increase the base damage of your primary powers as you need/want. If it's deemed inappropriate, it could always be reduced a bit (7% in the example above).

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I could kind of see that.

I should point out that making toggles cost nothing is already possible. Stalker Hide is a toggle that doesn't have a cost and never drops from loss of endurance. I'm not sure I'm a fan of a 10% increase in endurance cost, though. As a mechanic, it comes with a couple of pitfalls - if it's a global cost increase, that'll strike powers it should have no business affecting, things like Tough or Tactics or Jump Kick. If it's written into the specific powers, however, then that becomes slottable (though I suppose it could be tagged as not affected by enhancements, but why should it?) which could throw things off.

More than that, though, if we're really going for something unique, I'd put those toggles at NO cost in ANY way and have them simply alter damage type. Fighting Behemoths? Switch to Cryo Rounds. Fighting the Carnival of Shadows? Switch (off) to standard Lethal Rounds. Fighting the Devouring Earth? Switch to Incendiary Rounds. If we drop the Snipe and Utility power, we can still keep Aim and have a solid 6 attacks, including a mini-nuke like what the Thugs Enforcers have AND give the set a significant tactical advantage at the cost of some utility.

How can we have a power with no practical cost? If Tankers, Scrappers and Brutes can get Taunt/Confront for free and Stalkers can get Hide for free, then a Blaster set can get a couple of toggles for free. Their point wouldn't be EXTRA performance, so it shouldn't merit EXTRA cost.

I can easily see a lineup of Single Shot -> Double Shot -> Cryo Rounds -> Burst Shot -> Aim -> Kill Shot -> Incendiary Rounds -> Circle Shot -> Auto Fire. Just a concept that took all of two minutes to put together to give a reference

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What's the matter with half-naked chicks in high heels? But you know... if there was a decent shoe or boot for women that didn't look clunky... the stilleto without the insane, if pretty, heel would be great, or the cowboy boot shoe portion with the smooth top... then I wouldn't use the high heels as much as I do. The other boots just don't look... right. Maybe I'm one of those you hate ST. Like my father used to say "If I was stupid... would I know it?" A thought to make you go hmmm...

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I knew what Bad was referring to because I've seen her post about it in the past, so that comment may have been a bit out of context. There is this phenomenon with people making characters as naked as possible, like Bra/Eden top with Bikini/Thong bottom and those open Strappy shoes (because women in porn films always wear their shoes, I guess), giving them gigantic, backbreaking racks and calling them things like Dirty HO or Miss Breasts or Naked Female or some such nonsense. Then you can almost feel them snickering to themselves on the other side of the Internet. That's pretty much what the context of that was.

I maintain that there is no concept, look or theme that cannot be made well if the person making it actually TRIED. That's my beef with "half-naked women in high heels" - most people just slap them together to streak other people. That's also my problem with "people can't make legs" - to the best of my observation, it doesn't look like people even tried to match top to bottom or, in many cases, even tried to make a bottom that wasn't horrible.

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So... Because the challenging mobs aren't challenging, we may as well say nuts to those that want them as they are?

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How... The hell did you read that from what I wrote? No, they aren't "challenging," that's the point. Not to the people the developers were trying to challenge, anyway. Malta are like the I3 Boss Buffs that lingered around. Remember those? Back then Jack and company decided they'd had enough of people soloing bosses, so they buffed them to ludicrous levels. The problem? The people soloing bosses left and right were Scrappers and some Tankers. The change had little effect on them. I can only speak for Scrappers, but at the time, bosses became only trivially more difficult for my Scrapper.

The problem? The people who were ALREADY struggling with bosses - Blasters, to name the ones I had experience with at the time - were the ones that the changes hit the hardest, even though they weren't actually the ones targeted by them. And then Jack went around promising a system that would make these "unsoloable" bosses display warnings in contact briefings. That's why the changes were repealed - they didn't affect the people they were targeted at, but they DID screw just about everyone they WEREN'T targeted at over BIG TIME. That's why "just buff the enemies" never worked as a form of balance, and that's why Malta don't work as a challenge.

Malta are not a challenge. Not even in the slightest. They are merely a "Blasters need not apply" the same way the Fonts of Power in Mako's second arc ending are "Masterminds need not apply." When something is a challenge to a Scrapper AND not total PITA to a Blaster AT THE SAME TIME will I accept arguments about adding more challenge. Until then, I will maintain that there's no such thing as challenge, only enemies that certain ATs cannot fight. Strange that there hasn't been an enemy any Scrapper I've ever played hasn't been able to take on.

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And as someone else said, I've always wanted to see shoes given as an extra option in addition to feet. Knee-high boots are good and all, but they are VERY limiting. The one option we have for sneakers just isn't anywhere near enough.

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You can "cheat" and recolor work boots and wear them under pants, but that doesn't work for all kinds of shoes. The leather boots under pants works great for a more high class shoe. But yeah, beyond that, I've got nothing :P

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Under pants, yes. There are a few boot types that make excellent shoes like that. Last time I used the Cowboy Boots to simulate fancy pointed men's dress shoes

They're terrible at simulating shoes on a tights leg, though, and sometimes you just want your characters to wear shorts, skirts or, yes, even just briefs. I mean, if we could have REAL tattoos that didn't get disabled with any costume option that showed any skin, bare legs with shoes instead of boots would be perfect.

Sometimes I'm jealous of the Skulls and their ankle-high boots...

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I'm still not quite sure why the term Oriental is seen as offensive, I just know that it can be seen as such, especially when the term Asian is not. It is, however, an older word and tends to be highly racially skewed. I tend to view it along the same lines as calling an African American a Negro. It's an old, imprecise, and offensive word.

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Offensive? But it doesn't even apply to the modern-day far east OR middle east, at least not in general. In my mind's eye, at least, "oriental" has very much the same connotation as "medieval" or "Indian" (as in, American Indians, not Asian Indians) - it's a descriptor for a visual theme that, for the most part, doesn't really exist any more.

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I'm curious what you think "small" is going to be. If it's a 5% increase in base damage, that's a 5% increase in damage, even when enhanced and buffed. That's not to be ignored.

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A 5% base damage increase IS nothing, at least in my eyes. Yes, it adds up over time, but at the cost of Aim. And Blasters don't really survive well by damage over time. I'm not sure what other people do, but after putting some serious time into them, I can safely say that a Blaster's most precious resource is time. A power that adds a small damage buff which is only meaningful if your battle drags on, thereby meaning you're pretty much guaranteed to face mortal danger, isn't going to add a meaningful benefit over upfront punch.

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Personally, I've always thought that the loss of Build Up was more significant than the loss of Aim. You don't need all that much +tohit for an alpha strike (which BU still supplies) but you need much more +dam. The only build without either would be Dual Pistols/Devices, but it would have a bonus damage toggle and a +tohit toggle, so it balances out in the long run.

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Build Up is a 100% damage buff, Aim is a 62.5% damage buff. This is not THAT much lower, and certainly enough to make a difference on its own. Both TOGETHER, however, make a Blaster into what a Blaster should be - instant death for the instant they are active. Aim may add up a paltry little buff over time, but it's not over time that matters when plenty of stuff can kill you three times over before the power has a chance to even think about recharging. Over time doesn't make much of a difference when stuff is too strong for you to fight, but where up-front damage would have taken out the biggest threats and allowed you time to endure. Any Blaster left alone does not have the opportunity to enjoy benefits over time, as battles shouldn't TAKE enough time for these benefits to be meaningful. If a battle drags on long enough for these things to take effect, you're already in trouble.

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Are you really trying to say that minions with almost no hit points left will get crit left and right and bosses will almost never get crit? That's what it seems like you're trying to say. Minions will actually get crit less than harder targets specifically because they're softer. You're only aiming 2-3 attacks against each minion, 4-6 against lieutenancts, and 8-10 against bosses. Sure, there will be times when you use your hard hitting attack against a minion and get a largely wasted crit, but there will be an equal number of times when you hit a minion with a weak attack and take it out in the first hit thanks to the crit. Bosses and other hard targets, on the other hand, almost never actually waste a crit because they've got the hit points to soak.

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No, that's not what I'm saying. But five years of playing with Criticals has simply shown me that they do NOT occur when you need them very often. Many, many of them get wasted overkilling stuff and many more occur on meaningless attacks like Cobra Strike or Blinding Feint. You can't rely on Critical Hits to help increase your performance. Even though Scrapper Critical are slated to occur more often against lieutenants and bosses than against minions, the number of times when a Critical has helped me much is very, very low. Twice so because Criticals REALLY count when Build Up is active, yet the chance of them occurring then is exceedingly low.

I'll be honest. I've seen some pretty amazing stuff. An Enrage-fuelled, Built Up Critical Head Splitter can take out over two thirds of a boss's health in one swing. I've seen it happen a few times over the years. It's not something I would count on, however. It is CERTAINLY not something I would trade my Build Up for, not ever.

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Actually, critical hit is equally beneficial to small attacks as it is to large attacks. The only reason the hard hitters are nice is because they've generally got higher crit chances, but, in line with your previous line of argument, those attacks also largely waste most of their crits except against hard targets that won't die to a single attack in the first place.

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Not true. If you calculate the benefit of Scrapper Criticals based on an average damage increase, then sure, attack strength doesn't matter. That's not how Criticals work. Here's a thought experiment: if Criticals only ever happened on Slash, would that be better or worse than if Criticals only ever happened on Head Splitter? There's a reason I don't bring up DPS at all. This isn't a game that's built around it. At least for high-damage ATs like Blasters and Scrappers where bosses are ~6 hits to take down and minions barely one or two, DPS doesn't really apply, what with significant damage lost to overkill and running around and with many battles over in fewer hits than there are enemies to fight. For instance, does DPS really matter if a Blaster can incinerate 5 minions in two attacks: Aim and Build Up fuelled Fireball + Fire Breath? Because it's well possible and I do it all the time. Or does it really matter when many bosses go down with Aim + Build Up + Total Focus + Bone Smasher + Energy Punch + Power Burst, say?

DPA I'll give you matters when it comes to pumping out a lot of damage fast. I wouldn't bring it up into consideration, however, because outside of Blaster standardized first and second blasts, DPA is all over the place, thanks to the game originally not being balanced with animation times in mind and most of that legacy being still with us today. That's why you get Blaze as fast as it is.

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The problem here is that you've got an automatically bad opinion of what the endurance cost is going to be. There's no assurance that it's going to cost an arm and a leg for an extra 5% damage. There's no assurance for the cost or for the benefit. The most we can make is an educated guess, and an educated guess would predict a reasonably fair exchange for the benefit so that the endurance costs are no more prohibitive than Targeting Drone.

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But Targeting Drone IS expensive for what it does. And I've no reason to expect a reasonably fair exchange, given how endurance management in this game is handled. I've no reason to expect anything short of badly unreasonable exchange rate. You expect it will be balanced around being a small buff power. I expect it will be balanced around being a damage aura. And even if it weren't, even if it were given as a gift the same way the infamous Grant Cover is, then that just means it will be that much too weak to make the kind of difference Blasters need AND it will be at the cost of Aim. I'm not interested in trading Aim unless it's for something better. A small damage buff over time is NOT better.

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All of your other comparisons follow the same logic: damage is the balancing factor, not DPA. DPA is the actual determinant in how much damage you'll be dealing over time. You'd do well to actually learn this, especially if you think Blasters are doing so little damage, even thought they've got some absurd DPA.

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You seem to mean something else than what I thought by DPA. The damage you do over time. For all that matters when you don't have time to do damage over. Fat load of good it does me that Power Bolt does more damage over 20 seconds than Power Burst does over the same period of time when either the enemies are all dead in 10... Or I am. Blasters are not Scrappers. They don't get to stand toe-to-toe with enemies and exchange attacks over time. If you don't strike hard and strike fast, you die hard and you die fast. Been bitten by this so many times it isn't even funny. It's either that or you pick up Devices and set minefields 'till the cows come home, which is the WORST way to level up a character that I've ever experienced in all my time here.

Damage over time, per activation, per second or what have you is only ever meaningful if battles last long enough for all powers in consideration to recharge at least a couple of times. This isn't even close to true for most Blaster battles from where I've seen them. Maybe I suck, I don't know. Fact is that time is the one resource I do NOT have. To my eyes, a Blaster relying on damage over time is like a Stalker relying on Follow Up for his damage buff - fat load of good that buff does him when he's discovered and can't assassinate. Well, fat load of good a good damage over time metric does for a Blaster when he doesn't have the time.

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Then how do you explain the success of power set combinations that don't operate exclusively off of the alpha strike mentality? You're automatically assuming that the only effective blasters are those that can destroy a spawn in a single burst. It's a base fallacy. Discounting nukes, every non-Fire, non-Devices Blaster is going to actually have to stand and fight when solo. In fact, any AR/* that isn't */devices is going to have to do so because they don't have the huge amounts of area burst damage that is required to do so. Blasters still have to actually act for the entire fight. They're not just alpha strike machines that are useless otherwise.

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I can explain the success of these combinations the same way I explain the success of all others - each combination has means for heavy alpha strikes. Even Electrical Blast. It's not always high-yield AoEs, but it's always instant-damage heavy attacks. For My Energy/Energy Blaster, that's Boost Range + Power Boost + Aim + Build Up + Explosive Blast + Torrent. For Ice/Ice Blaster, it's Aim + Build Up + Shiver + Frost Breath + Rain of Fire. For my Electric/Electric Blaster, that's Aim + Build Up + Ball Lightning + Short Circuit + Thunder Strike. My Fire/Fire is obvious - Aim + Build Up + Fireball + Fire Breath + Combustion + Fire Sword Circle, if it gets to that. My AR/Devices/Munitions even more so: Either Time Bomb or Long Range Missile Rocket + Full Auto + Flamethrower. Haven't played my Archery/Devices Blaster in a couple of years, so I don't remember what I did with her. Aim + Fisful of Arrows + Explosive Arrow + Blazing Arrow, would be my guess, though.

Every Blaster has means for hard-hitting alpha strikes, some harder than others, some more reliant on support or control. Any combination or period I've found myself lacking such and asked for help fixing it, I've been told to get a team or buy lots of inspirations. The former doesn't help me and the latter doesn't last a full mission unless I want to make a dozen inspiration trips. It works on bosses and elite bosses, sure, but those aren't as common. It's the regular spawns that cause the most pressing problems, especially 40+. Got burned on a character who reached the 40s and became unable to fight anything once already. I'm not interested in going through that again.

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You're also assuming that, if there were a combo system, there wouldn't be any alpha strike capability, which I've never said. I'd actually suggest that the combo effects be largely control and debuff type effects.

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IF a combo system can be such that it would ensure a good, solid first he, be it single-target or AoE, then I could get behind that. I've been meaning to play a Dual Blades Stalker since the Stalker changes but never got around to that, and solely because of the Build Up -> Assassin's Strike -> Placate combo. I've no idea what it does, and I don't really care one bit. It's a combo that starts with a SERIOUS hit. If Blaster combos can be like this, then SURE, I'll buy that for a dollar. So long as you keep away from my damage buff and lead at least one combo off with it, such that that whole combo can be led with Build Up if I happen to have it, then why not. The buffs don't recharge fast enough to be used very often, so that could open up the door for the rest of the combos.

The big thing for me is that I do NOT want to lose Aim in the powerset like how non-Stalker Dual Blades lost it. As a Scrapper, yes, I can afford to stick around for a good, long while until my Empower combo kicks in, then stick around for a good while more until Sweep takes its sweet time in coming about and THEN go from there. As a Blaster, I cannot afford that, not in the slightest.

The reason I compared Blasters to Stalkers is in how their sets are built. Even sets borrowed from Scrappers that have damage buffs drawn from attacking have them migrated to standard Build Up powers, because a damage buff AFTER breaking hide is largely useless to a Stalker. Much in the same way, a damage buff that makes a difference only after the battle is over isn't going to help a Blaster as much as a damage buff BEFORE the battle starts.

A combo system that allows and encourages opening with death from above is something I can get behind. One that opens slowly and takes time to wind up, however, isn't.

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Done. I doubt it's coming for another month, though. Then again, I haven't really fiddled with Beta much. There's a reason I'm glad I'm not chosen for Closed Beta tests

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This beta was open to everyone....

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Makes no difference. I'm not a good person to play to test.

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I hate how some of the feet are sooooo small. Like if you choose bare feet. Why is it that the Stealth boots can make you look like you have clubfeet, but bare feet and sandals and a few others look like your feet have been bound since birth?
--NT

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Argh! Don't remind me! The bare feet are a relic from almost 10 years ago now, as they are among the original pieces the game has always had. They're a texture for the Flat boots, which in turn look a lot like the bare feet Lara Croft had in Tomb Raider 2. You're right that the Stealth and ExoProto boots look a lot like bare feet in fancy socks, and I too am confounded as to why this hasn't been instituted for ACTUAL bare feet to replace the abominations we have to use today.

And as someone else said, I've always wanted to see shoes given as an extra option in addition to feet. Knee-high boots are good and all, but they are VERY limiting. The one option we have for sneakers just isn't anywhere near enough.

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But when I see a heavily-armoured torso with a metal helmet that ends up in tattered pants and bare legs... I burn with hatred.

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LOL because I feel the same way. I think a problem is that a lot of people have no taste and they have no artistic sense of rightness when going through the CC.
What makes me burn with hatred is women wearing Angelic or a bikini, top & bottom, with either spike heels or bare feet.... and they have a Crab Spider backpack hanging off their back. There is not a single case where this does not look effing ridiculous, yet one sees it literally around every corner. I think another problem is that some enjoy doing stuff they're not supposed to do, like mixing bikinis and CS backpacks; they do it BECAUSE it looks stupid.
Mission accomplished!

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Well, there are always the people doing stupid stuff on purpose, but a lot of what I've seen seems to be a genuine attempt at coolness, which backfires very badly. And it's not that either part looks bad on its own, mind you. You can take a perfectly good upper body, stick it on a perfectly good lower body and STILL end up with utter garbage. That's the reason Random is at the same time always ingenious and always retarded. It gives you a collection of really cool ideas, but it stables them together in a way that does NOT go at all.

It just seems that if people are going to make a mistake somewhere, nine times out of ten it will be picking the wrong legs. Female characters seem to suffer the most, as miniskirts an high heels seem to sprout on everybody, whether they actually go with the rest of the costume or not. Men, on the other hand, seem to get awkward pants and leather boots when they make no sense, like on a dude in power armour, and yet NOT get pants when they should, like with a suit jacket or when making street clothes. Monster legs litter character for no reason whatsoever, and even more often monsters end up with bare or hairy feet. To a point, I can see that the engine would be the limitations here, as monster feet are ALWAYS bare, but that still doesn't mean they have to have hairy upper legs to go with them.

In many ways, I think everyone should try a thought experiment: remove any belts you may have put on your characters and try to design a costume that flows from top to bottom continuously. I used to struggle with the concept a lot, but I've found that doing that gives a much fuller picture of what a whole model looks like, because having a belt there sort of makes a person only design above or below the belt, never both at the same time.

And yes - half-naked women in high heels will never go away, no matter how much we may wish for it

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They are doable with Blasters. I've fought Malta on Invincible with my AR/Fire, which is possibly the worst combo to fight them with, and I've done ok. I maintain that we need the challenge. My Blasters tear through just about everything else in the 40s. Malta, Rularuu and Vanguard are the only things that aren't easy mode.

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They're doable, yes. They're just a PITA and take AGES and they're STILL not a meaningful challenge to a Scrapper who can think on his feet. Or a Brute or a Mastermind, for that matter. They're meat on the table, same as everything else. This is why I don't like balance by obscene difficulty. It's never going to be truly challenging to the ones most in need of a challenge, but it can make life extremely unpleasant for everybody else.

Blasters were playable before the Defiance changes, too. It sure as hell wasn't fun, though.

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Rewrite the FX engine to let effects remember their creator's color. Right now, they could make the glow around your hands and your fire bolt purple, but they have no way to change the color of the bolt exploding on the enemy and the fire that lingers to show the DoT.

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Yeah, there is also that, though I think that more falls into just more work. The reason we can't customize thrown spines and shot arrows likely has to do with how weapon customization was instituted. Before, weapons were summoned by effects scripts just the same was a fireball or a hurled rock would be, which made them uncustomizable. The change they made is instituting animated costume pieces controlled by effects scripts, meaning WHAT was summoned was controlled by the costume system, but what it DID was controlled by the powers system.

Customization comes from the costume system, and since effects not actually attached to the character cannot be part of it, they aren't currently customizable. Standard Code Rant obviously applies, but the man really did say "not hard, just a lot of work" about the whole thing.

Isn't "Asian" kind of vague and all-inclusive? I mean, technically, Asia houses cultures as far apart as Japan and Iraq, or India and Russia. When I see "oriental," that sort of old corny movie and ye olde anime are pretty much what I think of.

Done. I doubt it's coming for another month, though. Then again, I haven't really fiddled with Beta much. There's a reason I'm glad I'm not chosen for Closed Beta tests

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Off the topic of power customization and what not and back to the OP. Even though BaB said it'd be inappropiate to implement the idea of this post I'm still gonna add to it just for fun.
When i die, i want a chalk line where I fell. That is all

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Wait, so you fade and leave a chalk line behind? COOL! I love it

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I fought Malta a few weeks ago and all I can say is, we need more mobs like this. It felt great actually fighting something that's challenging.

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The problem is that it's challenging for something like a power-built Scrapper, and that's a really bad base level of performance to go by. I started this thread when I fought Malta with my Broadsword/Invulnerability Scrapper, and their increase in difficulty was only token. More damage, less damage, it's all the same in the end, as there's little that can scare an upper 40s Scrapper. That's what they were built to combat, in fact.

But then the problem is that that's not all we play. Hero-side, Scrappers and Blasters are all I can play. Tankers are too slow, Defenders too weak and Controllers too late-blooming. Scrappers have precious little problem with anything and despite years of the developers trying to one-up us, that hasn't change. All that HAS happened, however, is that everyone who isn't a Scrapper or, per chance, a Tanker, has gotten shafted by the effort. My Blasters, first and foremost, suffer BAD from all of those "challenging" enemies, because they don't have Scrapper defences and only just about above-Scrapper damage. That's why I mind "challenging" things - they just mean my Blasters need not apply.

Completely agreed on the Thigh pads. Our upper bodies have no less than three separate places to put details on, our lower bodies have none. They don't have a fraction of the options overall, either. I really can't blame people for slapping them together if there isn't all that much to work with.

This is probably where Standard Code Rant applies. We just don't know enough about how arc files are handled in memory and transmitted over the 'net. Remember the good old days of I9 when clicking on a Wentworth's representative would time you out of the server? Well, the Architect seems to hold a LOT more information than that.

We're really going to have to hear from a red name before we can discuss how things are or should be set up, because until then, we just don't know.

Been suggested, though I don't remember what the developer response was. I think it was either "working on it" or nothing at all.

More to point, the size limit is there for a reason. Arbitrarily rising it to potentially five times its current number isn't something I'd hedge my bets on. I'm not very positive on exactly what kinds of negative effects too big a download has, but I do know that the Architect was causing significant load at one point. Hence, if ever you get branching story arcs, you're likely to be using up the same file size and number of missions, which as low as it is, wouldn't leave much room, unfortunately. I guess the number of missions could be relaxed, expecting you to use fewer custom enemies if you want more branches. But then you KNOW that people are going to make 12 custom critters and still try to cram 32 missions in anyway

I'd like to see branching story arcs as a general thing in the game, though. Plenty of CoV stories already try to emulate this on the cheap, and plenty more would do REALLY well with giving us a choice. Betraying Ghost Widow because Daos threatens is top on my list of things I wouldn't do if I had the choice. For player arcs, I suppose some kind of system that links your own arcs together so that at the end of one, you get to pick between the other two depending on your choice could work (and is emulatable right now with proper contact text), but then given the restrictions on number of arcs, that also seems dubious.

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Just pointing out that the legs looking like crap isn't always the players fault.

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My complaint is rarely colour, more so shape and design. I've actually gone into a long argument about it with a friend of mine and there really is no clear answer as to which way is right. But when I see a heavily-armoured torso with a metal helmet that ends up in tattered pants and bare legs... I burn with hatred. Or a woman in a formal suit with a tie, then miniskirt, full-length fishnet stockings and thigh-high leather boots. Yikes! Granted, with our game a more generic lower body model is pretty much mandatory because we don't actually HAVE that much esoteric stuff to use, but not all games are as demanding. And I seem to have somehow missed all the hordes of women in heavy leather jackets, yet running around in their panties in this game. I count myself lucky over it.

To my eyes, this seems to be the most common manifestation of what I consider to be an overall problem of character design - people simply don't appear to stop and look at how all the pieces they've chosen go together as a uniform whole. Far too many times I've seen characters with well-designed jackets or well-designed pants or well-designed helmets, each of which I'd like to use... Yet stuck on the most inappropriate body.

This has turned around to bite me in the butt so many times as I make a selection of pieces that work incredibly well together, yet cannot fit into the costume's theme because the other pieces I need to do so are either missing or ugly. For instance, I love the Cyborg gloves and upper arms, even the upper legs, but I HATE the bare-feet-look lower legs, so I always have to come up with a different design to match the exposed Cyborg hands against, boots of some kind. On the flip side, I LOVE the Valkyrie boots, but I HATE the Valkyrie gloves, so I almost always have to miss-match them. The last time I did that I matched them with fingerless Padded gloves.

And don't even get me started on the horrors that people do with misusing the wrong Tops and Bottoms with Skin for women. Ugh! It's like the Pocket D tailor, only WORSE!

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You tell the story ALONG with the mission...not before and after. That way, everyone get's something out of the game and feels more a part of the gameworld. It's not about liking storytelling vs. combat vs. RP...its about seamlessly combining compelling elements together to create something greater than just a single aspect of gameplay could provide.

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That's actually one of the biggest things I've tried to work with in the Architect when making my own arc - never leave the player grinding enemies for more than a short while before something meaningful happens. It could be something as simple as a patrol making a comment or non-required clickie with a bit of background information, or it could be something as complicated as a boss fight or an NPC battle. For instance, I had a mission about going through a warehouse full of Freakshow and included a battle between them a some Security Guards for absolutely no reason that just to add something more to the mission. Not that it matters when it triggers so early.

It's also one place where so many Architect authors fail so miserably. I've had my fill of missions that have a short briefing followed by a Large map of NOTHING but grinding enemies and a boss fight, followed by a short debriefing, then rinse, repeat for four more. That's not the way to make an arc. That's not even the way to make a Diablo clone. That sort of thing bores even ME, and I enjoy clearing the Moth Cemetery map of all enemies.

True, the game doesn't have many subsystems to deliver storytelling in real time and interact with the environment, but what tools it does have CAN be used to create a much more immersive environment. Pity so many just click through them to fight more stuff faster.