Samuel_Tow

Isn't that the same as binding a key to Hide UI from the keybinds setting?

*edit* The "popmenu" thing might make it easier to clean up my temp power clutter, though it does seem to add the extra step of clicking through menus with the mouse whereas I've gotten used to direct-action binds.

That's a common request that should be very doable. The reason "back" pieces are disabled with other cape-rig costume pieces is for performance - multiple cape rigs cause a significant performance drop if many character use them in a large group. However, wings and backpacks are disabled by default because trenchcoats and the bolero disable the entirety of the "Back Detail" category, instead of specific cape categories, largely because this didn't have anything BUT capes for so many years.

That said, the game seems able to lock specific category items, rather than entire categories. If you're wearing a cape, then your upper body type category will simply skip trenchcoats and the bolero by not including them in the list. I'd like to see the same done for back details, as well - when wearing a costume part cape rig, then leave only wings and backpacks as back details, disabling Full Mantle, Half Mantle, Asymmetrical Mantle, Over-Shoulder Cape, Single-Shoulder Cape and High Collar Cape.

Not if you focus on a single character at a time like I do. I save those XP Boosters for the 40s. From experience, about 10 of those last me all the way from 40 to 50, and they really speed up the considerably slower progress there. I have SO MANY characters who get bogged down at 42 to 46 it's not even funny, and speeding the trip up so I'm actually seeing tangible progress to motivate me helps a great deal.

The Patrol XP formula is weird, though. One use grants you half a level's worth of Patrol Experience, but it doesn't get consumed like it seems like it should be. Under Patrol XP, you receive 150% of every experience reward given to you, with the extra 50% being taken away from your Patrol Experience. What this means, though, is Patrol Experience will last for twice as long as its own experience number, not accounting for it bleeding in between levels. I keep expecting all 20 of my XP Boosters to be needed to get me from 40 to 50, and I haven't really used much more than about 9. Arc experience doesn't consume any Patrol XP, and 40-50 arcs can be worth 270 000 XP a pop, which is not insignificant.

You know what, though? If I had enough Patrol XP to last me from 25 to 50, I'd probably use it. Slow levelling hasn't motivated me since probably 2005, just because I have so many characters I can be playing.

Wait, running a level 35-50 TF and not being on a level 50 character means I'm powerlevelling? Isn't the point of having a wide level range to allow people OTHER than 50s to do it so it has broader appeal?

I apologise if this sounds dickish, but BECAUSE English is a second language for me, I'm extra unforgiving about basic mistakes like they're/their/there and so forth. It's understandable that arcs will launch with spelling mistakes - mine have - but I expect those to be either genuine typos or fast-writing quirks. These are easy to miss. I do not expect them to be shoddy grammar and the dreaded "plural apostrophe" which suggests not simply poor command of the language, but poor command coming from a native speaker. Foreign speakers will rarely make these because they're often taught how to spell before they learn how to speak.

I didn't buy any because I don't like timed rewards. I have a propensity for getting of the computer to have dinner, browse the 'net or watch Ice Road Truckers for an hour or two, and having a four-hour window of opportunity where I'd be missing out if I didn't play disagrees with my stomach. If these were the traditional XP Boosters like what I get out of my veteran rewards, where they slap on Patrol XP which I can make use of whenever I god damn feel like it, I might have, but I didn't see any of those. I didn't exactly search hard, but I didn't see any for sale.

Plus, I get four stacks of 5 traditiona XP boosters for free on every character.

Badly enough to pay, say, $20 for one without even batting an eye, probably more if I really liked it. Is that bad enough? Honestly, I feel the basic structure of the game just doesn't do justice to as many character types as it can. I've discussed this with multiple people, and there's really no way to make, say, the traditional concept of the minigun power armour boss of many other games. Sure, NPCs can skirt this rule - that's more or less what Crey Elliminators are, and why they're my favourite NPC - but for us to use guns, we have to be "squishy." Sometimes you can fight back against this design, but that's still going against the grain.

What kind of character? Well, obviously one which can use guns AND armour at the same time, so Assault/Defence. I probably wouldn't want to go full Range/Defence just because it leaves the characters with no close-quarters combat, which is weird for someone who CAN do very well in close quarters.

I've often suggested such a character come with a complex mechanic which rewarded the character with more damage if ranged powers are used at range, but now I have to wonder if it's not better to force the character to become immobile or VERY SLOW to use those ranged attacks. After all, think about how your average miningun power armour boss fights - he does a slow walking advance through enemy fire, shooting back and suppressing resistance. He's not zooming around the battlefield, taking pot shots. Forcing people to be immobilie if they want to use ranged attacks should be enough to discourage "kiting," I think.

As for Epic AT? HELL NO! I don't want any more Epic ATs. I don't want even the ones we have. I don't like them, I don't play them and I don't agree with them. They're too restricted in terms of concept and too closely tied to the game's lore to ever truly feel "my own." I have nothing against fanfiction, of course, but I prefer to write straight-up fiction of my own without having to worry about filling someone else's character mould. The story is good, but I'd rather not HAVE to account for it.

And, no, I don't care for a "story" to explain why the Archetype exists. An archeTYPE is nothing more a type of character, "a universally understood symbol, term, or pattern of behavior," according to Wikipedia. Giving a plot reason why characters can use guns and body armour is akin to giving a plot reason for why people like pie. You see, on Primal Earth, the Well of the Furies infected all human beings with a retro-virus which altered their DNA, causing them to perceive the taste of cake as good. While this does not manifest for all, it still explains why most people like cake. It's also very stupid and unnecessary.

Archetypes don't need to be explained. They're abstract meta-game frameworks used to package powers by types such that the game can ensure a character has access to all the tools necessary for decent gameplay, but not access to so many that all other characters become obsolete. There's no need to meddle in my character concepts by telling me why my characters are what I chose them to be. I chose them, so I'm pretty sure I can come up with a reason for why I made the choice that I did.

That's actually my only problem with the power, and why I don't use it more often. BABs said something about not wanting to spend time on making it work with toggles, but aside from full-model swaps, this really shouldn't be an issue. Toggles to have unique activation sequences. This is actually a double problem, because sometimes I want to walk WITH my toggles, such as walking with Cloak of Shadows on. I honestly wish Walk would suppress everything BUT toggles, but oh well.

I'm pretty sure I admitted to that in the original post, and I see no shame in it. As you said, artwork can have a lot of different effects on people, and looking "sexy" is far from an uncommon one even when it isn't deliberate. There seems to be a strong sentiment on the Internet to the effect that "G.I.R.L" type players are somehow deviant and should be ashamed of ourselves, we no-life sad people who favour games over social contact. Personally, I find my life became a lot less stressful once I stopped trying to deny I found fictional characters attractive. It's one less emotional dissonance to mess with my head. I still have to deal with the stigma about it, but that's not so hard.

---

More to point, I have to retract one of my original situations - I no longer use Walk to travel between spawns when my endurance is low and Rest is not recharged. Now that all of my characters have been given all of Fitness for free and thus have Stamina, this is simply no longer an issue. Even when I find myself without Endurance, recovering back up to doable levels only takes seconds with my higher recovery. I just no longer need it.

That said, my other situation for using it has not changed. I still like to occasionally set my female characters to Walk just because I like how it looks. It doesn't look right for all of them, granted (it looks damn weird on Xanta, for instance) but then no one thing looks right for my whole cadre of divergent characters. Still, it looks pretty on a lot of them, and I even have a bind that never fails to get comments out of people. It's something to the effect of:

/bind ctrl+q "++left$$++follow"

What this does is it causes the character to walk in a circle around anything I can target, be it an enemy, an NPC or most usually another player. It looks both pretty and intimidating at the same time, though it doesn't work for very long. Some quirk in the interaction between movement and character orientation causes the character to track slightly behind, thus walking in an ever expanding circle. If this is done in a wide open area, the circle will grow ridiculously huge. It's best done near some environment piece that the circling character will brush against when the circle grows too large, this setting a maximal range.

It looks pretty, and people keep asking me how I do it.

Additionally, I find myself using Walk on characters with the Magic cape. That's make, Female and Huge. When looked at from behind, the cape covers the entire character aside from the head and the feet, and almost looks like a full cloak. It has a very regal look to it, which usually makes a very good fit for the characters that have these capes. It's even better because the Arcane hood hides most of the head from behind.

Additionally, I tend to use Walk on characters who are intended to be big and imposing, like my giant robots and the aforementioned Xanta. Large characters have much slower movement animations because they make larger strides but still move at the same speed, so tall characters walking seem to walk even slower. It's twice as cool when walking backwards since it uses the forward-walking animation, but it's even slower. This is actually best done with the Huge model, because its swinging, lurching, caveman-like walking style really imparts a sense of size and weight, much more so than seeing a giant monster jogging. This actually goes back to toggles, but I'd REALLY like to be able to use the Walk animation with my one Stone Armour Brute. It's a lot better than the Baywatch Run, I'll tell you that much.

Honestly, though, I just like using walk. I have it bound to Ctrl+V for easy access on all my characters, and it tends to turn heads when I do it. For instance, I sent Kim to Talos via Ouro, I think - she showed up on that hill near the station and I set her to auto-run-walk towards Luminari for her level-up training. I ran into I think two people on the way who stopped to have a look before moving on. Granted, Kim has a very "specific" look to her, but to me, it's more the novelty of seeing someone just walk across the world who isn't a pedestrian.

Someone mentioned immersion, and I agree. City of Heroes is a game where everyone's always rushing for somewhere, and you'll usually see people either standing around or zooming about. You'll almost never see heroes and villains doing the simple things ordinary people do, however, like walking around, sitting down or living a life. It's always "super-speed to mission door, run through instance, super-speed to next mission door" until the game feels like an arcade. Sure, few people in the game ever walk, but I find it adds to the atmosphere. Imagine if you sprinted everywhere in real life. Even if you could avoid being gassed, would you?

I smell Inventions Diversification at some point, then.

I'll agree on Granite Armour, and I'll extend this to the whole of Stone Armour. I hate the whole set. It's mediocre at best without Granite Armour, costing FAAAR too much to run for the protection it gives, while Granite Armour essentially makes three quarters of the set pointless to take. I dislike that this power disables the other toggles and I REALLY dislike that, at least on a Brute, it's essentially balanced by annoyance. Yeah, you'll be hard to kill, but good luck doing much of anything. Yes, the drawbacks can be overcome, but that just makes it all the more pointless to add drawbacks in the first place. You can't overcome the Unstoppable crash, you can just mitigate it somewhat, but if you're in a situation where you NEED Unstoppable (and I have been, quite often), then having most of your health and all of your endurance fly out the window is a pretty solid death sentence.

I guess it's better than it was before when Granite Armour used to kill your accuracy, instead of your rechange, but still.

That's if she isn't ret-conned to have always been Positron's life-long friend instead of the Statesman's.

Honestly, I wouldn't want to see something too much more bombastic than the Cyrus Thompson statue in Kings' Row. As others have said, the Statesman probably wouldn't have wanted a parade. I'm not even sure I want an actual statue of the guy, more a memorial monument of some sort, something dedicated to all the good he has done and all the lives he has touched. Even as wretched as him "giving up with a smile" was, that can still be used for a decent memorial - consider it not a memorial to himself, but more to the future heroes who will take up his mantle and the people they will fight to protect.

What I'm saying is I want to see the man treated with a shred of dignity in death.

I don't really have a problem with games that expect me to move. Hell, one of my favourite moves in most action games is the instant-translication dash-teleport dodge move. I LOVE being able to move out of the way of a big attack in the nick of time. The problem is that City of Heroes doesn't really have this. It has, as a point of fact, really awkward unresponsive controls. It doesn't have action-game controls, it has click-n-kill RPG controls. The game can even be navigated via click-to-move.

If this were an action game like Devil May Cry or Oniblade or Kaan: Barbarian's Blade, then I really wouldn't mind it, but in City of Heroes it's just AWKWARD. Few things bug me more than a game with bad controls which require fast, precise reactions. Very, very few things cause me to punch my keyboard, but this is one of them.

Moreover, the way people most often suggest I move around just looks horribly ugly. City of Heroes does not have jumping animations for its powers. It has standing ones and flying ones. Jumping past a stationary enemy to avoid getting hit stuck with a long root just looks horrid to me, because it plays the standing animation, and it delivers a melee attack at long range. If we had running attacks or jumping attacks or any way for the game to acknowledge moving and attacking at the same time, I might feel differently, but I've seen what this looks like and it looks WORSE.

Besides, all this does is promote exploits that circumvent rooting, like the one I found where you can skip all rooting for any Electric powers. Just make sure you're not in combat mode, activate Build Up or equivalent to go into a "false" combat mode then just don't stop moving. No more rooting, no more animations, and the game looks like *** because of it.

I'm not so much worried about DPS as I am about the game never letting me fight. Protean is actually not that bad of a fight, since his Power Syphon is so rare. Every minute or so is actually pretty conservative. It's enemies like the ******* Knives of Vengeance Prophetesses and that GOD DAMN Stutter TF with the absolutely constant airstrikes that follow you even underground.

I don't mind having to move in order to react to a developing situation, so long as it's used with some degree of moderation. I mind when the mission designers go berserk and have me run around the whole ******* time and don't give me a millisecond of time to actually get in an attack, and yet I have to fight a tough enemy at the same time that I don't get the chance to even ******* approach! God damn that Stutter TF!

*edit*
Seriously, that TF is probably single-handedly responsible for my hatred of moving around.

This is more or less why I've always disliked social networking sites boiled down to a few sentences. I really have no interest in watching people off-topic chatting. This isn't down to any business-like approach or question of time investment, but rather more because I hate fun and people having fun bug me.

Wait, let me try that again. It's because when it comes to official communication channels, I'm really only looking for information or development-related dialogue. This isn't unique to Twitter, either. I have a habit of skipping red-name posts about upcoming books or movies or fantasy football (of all things...) and why I to scroll past "tangents" in Von Krieger's Ustream write-ups, as well as why I skip "What is your favourite X?" in developer interviews. This kind of stuff doesn't interest me even when it's about my close friends.

When I was younger, my mother used to love asking me about people I'd met, and asking "But what does he work?" "Where does he go to school?" "Does he have any relatives?" and my answer was usually, um... I didn't ask. Because I don't care.

I'm not saying he's anti-social or evil or something. I don't know the man in person. What I AM saying is I don't get the impression that he "loves" interacting with as much as the article's trying to depict.

Hell, I don't love interacting with people.

Does that involve nuclear toasters or should I tell Dr. Fluke Hawkins to come back another time?

I'm really not against "mutant issues" per se. After all, we still have those "Earth for humans!" and "They're among us!" posters all over the place. Sure, why not? I just don't want this to be presented as a somehow special global phenomenon that's so much more important than hatred against aliens or robots or supers in general.

OK, normally I don't like getting trumped, but you earned this one, friend!

My running criticism of Matt Miller - and this goes back years, even when Jack was still around - is that he treats his customers like cattle. We don't know what's good for us, we don't know what we want, we need to be treated with tough love and game theory and Skinner boxes (not so much lately, but more so round I18-I19)... Matt said that they would "give the players what they want," but instead it seems more like he would rather give player's what he thinks is good for them, even if it's not exactly what players asked for, "within reason" always being the escape clause.

I mean, say what you will about Jack Emmert - the guy basically overruled his fans at every step - but at least he seemed to be coming from the standpoint of making a fun game even if that fun wasn't strictly logical. Hell, his vision was anything BUT logical, but I could see where he was coming from. With Matt Miller, it feels like the game is being designed and led by SkyNet - this is what fun is, this is what you will enjoy. He comes off as the systems guy who's willing to compromise presentation to keep his systems just as he wants them. That one bit about inviting your own characters to your own SG he made was this feeling distilled: They'll probably never allow that because SGs are for many people to play and solo SGs are not the point. Even though that's what we want and it doesn't interfere with team SGs.

That recent address that was posted in his name had me laughing and rolling my eyes at the line where Matt Miller enjoys interacting with people. This is the guy who does not accept PMs and the guy whose forum posts are usually a sentence long, whenever they even exist. Yeah, I know he meant at Pummits and the like, but still.

This. I'm interested in creating my own characters with my own stores and my own costume and power design. Epic ATs are essentially other people's stories that I can borrow characters from.

This is the developers changing the status quo on their end. We as players can't do that. This is actually a lot like what BABs said about power customization back in the day - he can change a power to look like whatever he wanted it to look, but WE can't change a power's look because him doing it would be through a patch. They eventually developed some new tech to make this happen, but the analogy stands.

We, as players, can't change what's written in the game, because a mechanic for it doesn't exist. As someone higher up said, we can't just kill Recluse at level 20 because then the Time After Time arcs don't make sense. Sure, when the status quo involves a major event with a generic instigator, then we can assume the role of the instigators of this event much like how the gender of Brother Hammond's Luddite champion changes to match the player playing the arc, so that's something.

However, I stand by the notion that we don't have to change the status quo. Especially when it comes to villains, leaving satisfied is more important than changing the world around you. I can accept not being able to destroy all created things like Kragoss would want to, but so long as the result is actually satisfying and puts over my villain strong, that's good enough. Same for heroes, actually. Having my villain constantly fail time and time again only for some other canon NPC to go about changing the status quo is just pointless. If I wanted to watch a movie where other people's characters experienced other people's stories, I'd go to the movies.

I'm with Bill here. If these guys can't proof-read their actual in-game content so that it comes out without so many illiterate, horrible text errors, do we seriously expect any of their official correspondence to pass by an editor on its way out?

No, I will never stop banging on about text errors. Maria Jenkins' "ask about this contact" has typos in it from 2004 that whoever added to her backstory didn't bother to fix.