Samuel_Tow

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Funny, I tend to take Air Superiority because I like like Fly over any of the other travel powers, and for a melee combat character I'd rather have another attack than Hover.

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Exactly; my melee people do not pick up Hover because that would be a wasted power pick for them.

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It would? Hover has only a fraction of the cost of Fly, does not suppress and can be DAMN fast if slotted for speed. Granted, if you don't intend to fly WHILE fighting, then I can see not needing Hover, but then... Well, why go for Fly? Where's the fun in that?

What's worse is that falling damage doesn't scale with level. A drop from, say, the sixth storey will deplete a level 1 character of half his hit points, maybe more if he's a low-HP AT. The same 40-50 hit points worth of damage won't even budge the health bar of, say a level 50 Tanker, yet that's exactly how much damage he'd suffer from a fall like that. WoW's falling damage is a lot of fun, because a drop that would have taken, say, 900 out of your 1000 hit points will take 9000 out of your 10 000 hit points when you're high level, which might make it easier to standardize this.

I have to agree with the general spirit of the suggestion, though. A little more impact when landing has always been something I've wanted to see, especially on my ultra-heavy cyborg who should really be leaving a small crater when he lands. The game in general is highly non-interactive when it comes to terrain interaction. Stairs, slopes, inclined walls, they're all the same. Surfaces don't matter for anything other than sound, our characters' stances never match the terrain incline unless it's perfectly level ground. Kneeling from a big drop would, technicalities and standard code rant aside, be a big step in that direction.

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You're on the Internet. You can get porn for free. So that $20 for adult entertainment can pay for City. =-3

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You know, that's actually a pretty good idea. I was going to say that there are things Live adult entertainment can give you that Online adult entertainment can't, but... Let's just say those aren't the things you can get for $20 anyway, so the point remains.

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.... Why can't they have us leave Claws drawn while we use Air Superiority! Would this truly break anything....? What is the point of making us redraw every damn time, its so annoying.
/endrant.

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Each power that uses a weapon has its own activation sequence, which is what summons and keeps the weapon. If a power has an activation sequence different than that, even if it uses the same weapon model, it will force redraw (or force the weapon away if the power doesn't use a weapon). In order for a power to not cause redraw, it has to have the exact same activation sequence as the weapon currently out which, for a Pool power available to every weapon set in creation, is quite a significant task.

It was either Castle or BABs (or Castle AND BABs) who said that Brawl is by far the power with the game's most complicated activation sequence. Somewhere along the line BABs said it was finally made to inherit weapon activation sequences and play a different animation based on them. Which meant it would have to have a unique (if same-looking) animation for every weapon in the game. And as BABs said, no player would settle for JUST one power doing that.

And that's before we consider that Air Superiority looks pretty silly with a lot of weapons, as the old bug that caused Stone Mallet to play Air Superiority's animation when flying demonstrated.

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Because CO looks like crap?
Comicy crap, but crap.

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It looks like a comic book, and frankly, comic books look like crap. Poor them for sticking to their heritage.

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This is the exact reason I'm not looking into any new "comic book games." I don't like comic books and I'm glad City of Heroes doesn't keep too close to them as it is. I've no desire to play a game that's closer, because all that brings is crappy stuff like mandatory cel shaders.

I have some crippling difficulties when it comes to reading the original poster's posts, but from what I can gather, there are a LOT of things in that posted budget that can be cut before you go around asking for game subscriptions to be made cheaper. I pretty much started laughing at "Xbox Live subscription, WoW subscription, City of Heroes subscription... Did I mention my money is tight?" I guess that means I must be flat broke if I refuse to pay for another MMO unless it's so good I can stop playing City of Heroes...

On the "must be crazy or spoiled to not want to pay less" front, that is a farce. We're not little kids. We don't pay because we're told to pay. We pay for a service and I HOPE most of us understand that the money we pay goes towards sustaining and expanding that service (I've conceded it's a service AND a game, so don't bother). I highly doubt Positron is making a money house out of our monthly subscriptions, for instance. The money we pay goes right back into the game in large part. Because I like the game, I happen to appreciate that.

Would I like to pay less? Practically, yes. I'd like nothing better than to live life for free. But I know full well how heavily the game's revenue would tank if we all paid a third less, and I also understand that the support this game is getting from PlayNC is directly related to the game being one of their longest-running, most profitable games. Slash the profit margin, you're cutting right into the meat of the game. And, call me crazy, but I'd rather pay $5 a month more and have a GOOD game to play than squeeze my wallet and have an ill-supported game or, worse still, no game at all.

You get what you pay for. I'd rather not pay less because I'd rather not get less. Simple as that.

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My playstlye is all the matters.

FunSeeker

[/ QUOTE ]We ALL play for fun. If we didn't get any enjoyment out of it, either as we're doing it or when we achieve a goal, we wouldn't be doing it.

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You'd be surprised.

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This farmer vs non-farmer topic will never end will it?

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If this is the kind of thread this is, should it go in the official thread, then?

Rather than wax philosophical on this, I'll quote a simple rule I always follow. If people have questions, I answer them regardless of how stupid these questions may be or how many times I've had to answer the same question before. If people ask for help and I can help, I help them. If people are idiots or jerks, I bid them farewell and leave them to their devices.

Stupid repeated questions are not restricted to new people. Plenty of veterans don't know everything there is to know about this game and sometimes ask newbie questions. They deserve help as much as new people do.

Idiots are not restricted to new people, veterans, 50s with no veteran badges and so forth. If people need help but will refuse to have it or spit at you while you give it, they are free to figure it out themselves. If people feel they know better, then they are free to do it wrong if that's what they want.

New people or old people, we should help anyone who needs it and wishes to be helped, but don't need to suffer the fool who doesn't appreciate it.

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Mostly because it makes BaBs sad, and to a lesser extent (perhaps even a similar extent!) Sexy Jay.
BaBs would have to make sure that it plays properly with every animation in the game twice (Flying_NO and Flying_YES modes).

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BABs once commented on a thread of this nature that adding a full new model would mean not just duplicating ALL applicable costume pieces to fit the new model and scale with it, but would also increase the overhead associated with adding new pieces in the future. I'm not sure if it was the same post that talked about how this might affect power animations, but I do recall BABs saying that while all three skeletons used technically different animations, adapting an animation that worked with one to work with another was not secifically difficult. That was, however, probably two years ago, if not more.

The biggest thing with a new model, I think, seems to be that if they will be adding a new one, they're likely to stick in something diametrically different, like the Monstrous rig that things like War Wolves and Kheldian Crabs use. I've heard that it is a reasonably functioning system that could be made to do different things, but lacks a WHOLE host of things that would be very much required for it to be playable, support for non-NPC-specific costume pieces and support for anything but a few very simplistic animations being the biggest things. We've already seen how things that "should" be simple are, in fact, quite difficult and troublesome, as evidenced by the many, many problems Huge Crab Spiders had with their backpacks on Test before Issue ?? went Live.

Then again, how different IS a Huge from a male, but in that the Huge muscle slider starts where the Male muscle slider ends? That isn't directly applicable to females, of course, as the problem with them isn't how high the muscle slider goes, but rather what it affects. I'd say just change it and reweigh the different muscle groups, but I just KNOW that many, many people are going to blow up if their characters are altered irreversably, and BABs has gone on the record as stoutly refusing to change established looks without a very good reason. "I want" just doesn't seem to be good enough.

That still leaves the various technological solutions, though, like additional upper and lower body types, fake arms and so forth, but again, that might still be too much work. In the end, I just choose to hope that we'll get something like that some day at all, because this will quite seriously DOUBLE the things I can do with the editor. In a sense, I'm afraid of it being a new model, because it would mean I'll have to remake several old characters

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Honestly, I have no idea. But I think(speculation) it is enough that relying on vet badges is a poor idea.

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I honestly never look at badges. Like, ever. I think I check some random passer by's badges when the topic is raised on the forums and promptly forget about it.

But still, if people meet a specifically poor level 50 character with no veteran badges who doesn't seem to know his left hand from his right... Well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... Of course, segregating people purely based on badges is silly, obviously, but I wouldn't say it's a good idea to just discard them as meaningless. Nothing in life is ever absolutely certain.

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Books? Feh, I have books that say 45c. They're *older than me*. The same book today? At LEAST 7$.

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That reminds me. I have a stuffed dog I'm still keeping for sentimental reasons. It used to belong to my brother, and it's older than me and STILL holding strong. Well, relatively. We've had to sew it up a few times. I don't remember how much it cost, but it must have cost a pretty penny to survive 25-30 years now. And it's not exactly sitting on a shelf untouched, either.

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To note - Chat and windows have their buttons in one order (Save then Load, I think) but options is flipped.

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This makes my head hurt... lol they really, really need to look at future UI improvements which actually standardizes everything.

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Chat and Window "Save to Default File" are part of the Options window contents, whereas Options "Save to Default File" is part of the options window interface. Not... That that is an excuse, but that's likely why they're not standardized with each other

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Would more bodytypes be a good thing? Hell yeah, and I hope to see them in Going Rogue, but I think everyone expects it to be some sort of Miracle Expansion.

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Well, "expect" would be too strong a word. Call it "wishful thinking" I intend to make myself fell better by pretending it will have all the stuff I always wanted up until about a month before it launched, when I'll give myself forty lashes and start expecting the worst. But still, you are correct that they really should be looking into giving City of Heroes SOME kind of facelift. We can have the best game in the world, but when its public face begins to look more and more dated, the game will not age well. Besides, there are enough technical limitations in the current engine (such as not being able to use more than two cores last I heard) to merit messing with it anyway. I'm not expecting the zones will suddenly gain a new level of detail or that characters will suddenly turn into UT3 models, because that's not just engine, that's someone sitting down and making NEW zones and costumes, which will not happen. However, the things that CAN be added as technological solutions without someone having to remake, say, all the costume pieces in the game, should very much be capitalised on, in my opinion. Messing with female models' sliders is a good example, and I believe I posted about shaders the game has but doesn't use at some point. Technological solutions that allow us to pick what our "skin" looks like are also something to look at, though how feasible that is is dubious.

In general, I really do believe this game will need a facelift to remain truly great, at some point and in some way.

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I think that expecting a slider system for musculature as complex as the slider system for the head is a bit much, especially since the head doesn't perform anywhere near the number of animations that the rest of the body does (and isn't even articulated to boot!).

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Well, technically speaking, the only thing that should matter as far as sliders and animations interfering goes is anything which changes the bones of the model skeleton (such as the leg slider). The worst thing separate width sliders can do, if properly weighed, is cause a little more clipping around the joints, of which there is plenty already, especially the buff Huge variety. Women tend to get away with relatively less clipping and distortion (though they still get square elbows) mainly because their limbs are thin and there isn't much there to clip. I don't believe it's even FEASIBLE to buff them up so much that they enter the area of the Huge model, let alone be that big and actually look good.

It COULD, I will grant, interfere with shields in some parts, but by and large the biggest actual obstacle seems to be rigging the system to do that. I've no idea how characters are bound to their skeletons and what it would take to fiddle with existing sliders and/or add new ones, but I'm thinking the biggest thing would be making it in the first place. Working with it shouldn't pose any problems that we're not already seeing. I guess we could worry about certain items distorting based on new and unexpected slider values, but again, fixing those is a question of work, not a question of technology.

I still think that adding a new upper body and a new lower body of the Muscular variety might get around this problem in a very cheeky way. It comes with its own perks and drawbacks, of course. On the one hand, a purpose-built muscular upper and lower body combo would look a LOT better than anything sliders could do to the stock body AND have the benefit of sliders affecting it in a more natural way. On the down side, a separate such body will always be limited, like the Robotic Arms variants, to being used by itself, so no Shirts, Robes, Jackets, Boleros, Trenchcoats and so forth. Again, this is a work solution, not a technology solution, as it's essentially "more stuff" rather than "new stuff." I suppose asking that different body geometries be allowed under Shirts and Jackets and such, so that we can pick Robotic Arms or this one, but that is a technological solution as the editor doesn't seem to allow this currently. I could be wrong, however.

I suppose we COULD get away with just a muscular skin, but then that has the problem of Tights with Skin (really the only way females can show skin) only having one menu option, which is the pattern. Choosing the "skin" below the tights does not appear to be possible, so while that solution would be less work, it would be more technology. There's the added problem that Tights With Skin are actually just patterns over the basic skin texture. The current largely smooth and unshaded female texture works as well for skin as it does for tights. A ripped skin texture might look odd when "painted" with a skimpy tights top.

Though I seem to have rambled on...

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New players don't have veteran badges.

[/ QUOTE ] So if I start a new account you'll be able to look at my vet badges and tell how long I've been playing?

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Here's an interesting data point - how many people have accounts started several years apart? This is not a claim one way or the other, it's an actual question that might bring more meaning to the discussion. Personally, I never remember to check badges at all out of sheer forgetfulness.

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Sure, because every lvl 1 or lvl 10 player you see is a *new* player right...? As if you guys would even know the difference... (I know I can't tell that easily).

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New players don't have veteran badges.

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Fact is, the only events in game for constant on-going group activity are the Task Forces and the Mission Architect - and y'all are just more than happy to take a newbie on board who can pad your missions then drop 'em like hot cakes (I know I got asked several times last night to pad for Victory's TF night). And you can't even acknowledge the fact that you've actively contributed to the very problem you're complaining about now!

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What proof do you have that the people who have posted here do that?

That happens from time to time - forums display no new posts when there are, in fact, new posts when you access the forum. I've seen General Discussions do that.

You're quite welcome

I usually use basic keybinds to set V to sprint, Q to map, L to first person view, E to nothing, minus to +showfps and equals to +netgraph, as well as R and F to nothing with Ctrl+W and Ctrl+S to autorun and follow, respectively. It's a pain to do it by hand every time

Seriously, what's so strange about this pic? The most I can get is the red background on the hero-side boards, but that's doable from the skin selection menu somewhere.

What are we looking at?

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ummm, wouldn't doing that cause a stiff neck?

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More like a sore back.

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Pics or it didn't happen

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Good idea! Scan/shoot the letter and upload it on the 'net. This is something to be proud of.

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>_> Do I have to do something other than open my options window to do that?

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Open your options window and scroll all the way down. You should have three "Save to Default File" buttons, one for chat setting, one for window settings and one for options. Saving them all creates three default files which will auto-load onto every new character you make, and can be force-loaded onto old characters.

You can also make a default keybindings file that will load onto every new character, but that's best done FROM a new character, so you don't end up with, say, a bind for Fulcrum Shift on every new character you make. This one is under either Controls or Keybindings.

OK, I have not had such a heartfelt laugh in quite a while. I am more happy for you than you know, sir. You have the kind of family I've always wanted. Congratulations and the best of luck to you