Samuel_Tow

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My personal opinion is that splitting the physique slider into multiple specialized sliders for each portion currently without a specialized slider (upper arm, forearm, upper leg, lower leg, neck) would solve the problem quite nicely. You can have a character with very beefy arms without having hugely muscled neck and legs. You could also go with scrawny arms but huge legs (MA Scrapper much?).

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To restate, that would be a very big boon. We have (again, I don't remember) something like 27-30 facial sliders, yet only 6 or 7 body sliders. I would settle for something even simpler - just body, arms and legs is enough for me. Though, ideally, I'd like to see a mirror of the facial sliders - one slider for each axis.

See, one of the big problems I had when making Xanta was that while I could make her rather wide both in the shoulders and in the waist, I couldn't really give her any breadth. So her waist was wide side-to-side, but still very narrow front-to-back, while her rib cage was always rather flat. I wanted to make her bigger, but the chest slider doesn't slide the right kind of "chest." What's more, the Shoulders slider doesn't really make the shoulders wider organically, it just moves the shoulder joints into or out of the rib cage. But a real person with broad shoulders doesn't simply have his shoulder joints yanked out of his body, his shoulders are broad because his chest is broad. Men can achieve that, because their chest slider enlarges their CHESTS. Women cannot, however, as their chest slider enlarges their... Breasts...

The other thing that worries me, though, is that the muscle slider on women doesn't actually control muscle in the slightest. It controls fat. Well, unless women's muscles are in their butts and breasts, but I'm not quite dense enough to believe that The muscle slider should, one would think, make the biceps and triceps bigger, the forearms bigger, the thighs more muscular and the calfs more pronounced. Instead, it makes the butt larger and the breasts more extended, ding proportionately very little to the actual MUSCLES.

Further still, it bothers me that women are locked into wearing tiny, tiny shoes and having small little hands. Sure, that's largely true in real life, though more often because women tend to be shorter than men than anything else, but not all women are like that, and especially note those who have, say, spent their lives fighting bloodthirsty monsters (which isn't very common in real life). For instance, I had a girl friend (as in a friend who is a girl) from school who's slightly taller than me and wears the same size shoes as I do.

All that is to say that I believe the female muscle slider could use some work at the very least, and can do with a total overhauls and expansion, most preferably.

OK, I obviously messed up, so let's try this again, this time following the rules. Let me see if I remember how that went.

We all have our own pet peeves in the game when it comes to cosmetic appearance. For some it's the lack of jetpacks, for others it's the lack of skirts and for still others it's the fact that all characters we can make are invariably bipedal and humanoid. We all have things we dislike and things we would REALLY like to see, but most probably won't. Mine is, and has pretty much always been one thing above all others - muscular women, or rather, the lack thereof. Oh, sure, with the right choice of sliders and the proper slider values and costume pieces, you can get a girl that's pretty big, and I think I pretty much pushed the editor to its limits when I made Xanta, my big, super-strong Troll girl.

Generally, it has always been easy for me to ignore what we don't have here in CoH when I focus only on what we do, but every so often I'll find something, a good representation of a truly muscular or even beefy woman, and I'll be reminded of exactly what we're missing here in City of Heroes. Sometimes it's other games, sometimes it's movies, sometimes it's comic books and mangas, and hell, sometimes it's just real-life TV. While not very frequent, fiction has always had a special place for the muscular and tough of women, the ones who can fight hard and hit hard and, most importantly, look the part. I could cite She Hulk and Wonder Woman as the easy targets, but the fact remains that all we have access to here in City of Heroes is women who look like picture-perfect photo models.

Now, to recap a bit on what has already been lost, we've discussed many ways people envision that this could be improved upon. Many already talked about just adding muscular textures like the Icon dummies, but that's not all. Remember the old bug when Police Shirt Sleeves retained the Male veiny, muscled upper arm texture regardless of model? As soon as I tried that, and I tried it on a fairly skinny girl, she immediately looked many times stronger despite the fact that her model had not changed and her arms were still just as thin.

We talked about different muscle sliders for the different body parts, allowing us to, say, have beefier arms and legs without ending up with bigger buts and pot bellies or, worse, with a giant rack from the uni-muscle slider. We also spoke about replacing the arms ala Robotic Arms 3, only instead of replacing them with robotic cyber analogues, we would instead replace them with a different version of a human arm. This can already be seen on Foreshadow. Drop by the Hollows sometimes and have a look at his fake real arms. As some of the BIGGEST problems seem to be in the area of arms (too thin, not muscular enough) replacing them might be a just about possible.

We spoke about outright making a new upper body type called Muscular in the same vein as Armoured has a different upper body shape, as well as an extra lower body type. That seems at least somewhat feasible. We even spoke about adding a brand new player model. After all, we're looking at a new expansion some time soon, and who knows all the weird and wonderful things it might hold. Why not hope for this, as well?

Of course, there's also the matter of appeal. Not everyone likes muscular women, and that's coming from members of both sexes. I've seen as much many times over. There's also the question of how buff a buff woman should be, and there are many degrees of this. One thing that is not under question, however, that there are at least some people whose concepts simply require that a woman not appear to be so perfectly thin and to-model pettite, but rather be strong and tough-looking. It's certainly becoming more than a little unsettling how many times I've made warrior and fighter women, such written that they would be able to stand toe-to-toe with any man, take hits like a champ and punch like a train, only to end up making them into skinny little girls like some kind of strange anime tiny bruiser.

The whole point of this thread was, and still continues to be, that it always bugs me when I see a strong woman done right and remember that I cannot have that in city of heroes. The most I can hope for is a skinny woman with super powers and, if I push the sliders, a rather large butt. But one that LOOKS physically strong and imposing, we just cannot have. Hell, I'd pay full price for an expansion that had even just that - one new model or a retool kit for the existing female model, which allows me to have a real tough, strong, stout, muscular woman, a body type which would fit a LOT of my characters that currently just about make do.

If this thread sounds familiar, it probably is. I've done my best to keep it clean of rule violations, so let's please try to keep it this way because I really don't want to lose it again.

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Standard Code Rant applies to me not having any idea if it'd be too hard to make these underlings not count for the purpose of buffs, but doing so would certainly eliminate a lot of the potential problems.

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I actually suspect that will be the key problem with something like this. From what I've seen of the powers that do that, all of them use a pseudo-pet that just counts off one extra buff for each enemy it "sees." That's how Fulcrum Shift works and that's how whatever it's called in Cold Domination works, as well. I'm not sure about self-buff powers, though I suspect the same, which would be a rather tricky problem to fix. If it goes into AI behaviour, rather than power mechanics, it becomes a lot harder.

I can't really guess any closer without knowing how the powers actually work.

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They don't seem to work like Fulcrum Shift, but rather like Invincibility. I'm seeing two effects listed, one of which is repeated by a system that does not appear to be part of the power mechanics, because it's not described in any power documentation that I've ever seen, including Red Tomax's City of Data. It's just listed with two effects, but one isn't "normal." It's a lot like how you could never tell Thunder Strike's smashing damage component doesn't hit all targets in AoE range by reading the power's documentation, because whatever is limiting it to just the target selected is somehow... Odd.

You mean scroll with the mouse wheel? If so, there is an option to choose scroll speed that for some reason defaults to 0, so you can't scroll at all. It's under General options, I think, and I think around 80 is about three lines per wheel tick.

If not, then I don't know.

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Aside from the workload of actually making it happen, what reason is there for this NOT to be the case for all enemy groups?

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It would decrease the soloability of single target damage and drastically increase the value of enemy-targeted self-buffs like Soul Drain, Rise to the Challenge, and Against All Odds. Those last two powers specifically would probably make it a balance nightmare.

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Yikes! Yes, I completely forgot about enemy-drawn buffs. I guess making these underlings not count would be too much of a coding nightmare, though I wouldn't say it would be a pain for single-target powersets. After all, with posing little credible threat and being easy to kill, one shouldn't have to worry about them, much less worry about viability against them. It's kind of like Gears, only even less intimidating. I'd actually put those at an almost guaranteed one-shot kill from almost everybody.

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I've had experiences like that in CoH, actually. It's never fun, but often I've found I can wrest control of the team away from the leader just simply by continually asking, over and over what the plan is. Eventually they either kick me (which is fine with me, if they'd rather kick me than talk to me then that's totally fine, I'll go do something else), or they answer me. Once they actually start talking it's pretty easy to stick a paddle in the water and help direct a little.

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This kind of reminds me of Battlefield 2142 for some odd reason. Matches when I'm NOT a squad leader usually go like this:

I joint a squad. There are no orders.
Orders, sir!
*nothing*
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
*nothing*
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Orders, sir!
Shut up and get off this channel!
*You have been silenced for XX seconds*
Orders, sir!

What makes it WORSE is that having orders allows both the people carrying them out to rack up close to double points AND the squad leader to rack up points for free from squad members following orders. So not only are idiot squad leaders hurting themselves, they are hurting ME. And let's not even get into stupid commanders. Ye gads!

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I am curious on the cost,I know they can't say anything about it,but I can not remember any expansion of a game costing more than the original game(special deluxe sets excluded),and as the current price can be as low as 19.95,wonder what this will cost.and I assume that it will be avail as a download ,so no packging costs.

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City of Villains cost me either $49.95 or $59.95 (can't remember) at the time when City of Heroes cost $19.95. I've no reason to believe this one will be cheaper. After all, an item pack with just one costume set in it is $9.95, we have to expect this will be significantly more expensive.

I actually don't play on Freedom. Most of my characters, including all my 50s, are on Victory

I generally don't mind imperfect players (unless they're complete idiots), as most of my characters are designed to take care of themselves and my preferred teams are small - duets and trios. I can typically take care of myself and pick up the slack of anyone underperforming. But most of the time I run into an "imperfect" high level player (often due to having been absent from the game for a couple of years) I spend half my time explaining the intricacies of the various systems.

I enjoy doing that, mind you, and most people seem to appreciate it. I'd say we agree for the most part, just that I wouldn't question the ability of those who cannot grasp the game. It takes some time and some effort.

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I'm a trial and error kind of guy. I take a skill, see how it performs, through use I evaluate what works best for it:defense vs end reduction, damage vs accuracy or range etc... Another way I evaluate my progress is how difficult things are.

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That's the big thing here. trial and error is how most people play and learn, but the thing with trial and error is you need TRIAL for it to work. I've seen it suggested a lot of times that trial shouldn't be needed, because the game is so simple you shouldn't ever have to be in error. To make it clear, this is NOT something said in this thread, but I've heard it before in others. And the thing is, when you hand a newbie a fully-levelled characters, there are a LOT of new powers, mechanics and techniques to figure out, so trial and error takes a good deal of time. How much time differs between people, but for me it takes a day or two to wrap my head around how MY OWN characters that I haven't logged in in a while played. Being handed a brand new character I've never played before would take me significantly longer get accustomed to.

The game isn't very difficult if you keep away from the complicated stuff (and you can play it well without most of them), but it still takes TIME to learn how to play it. More time the more stuff you have to learn at once.

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That would be interesting, but it would pose new soloing balance issues between sets with credible AoE damage ability and sets without. Problems that could nto easily be solved by simply changing damage variables (making ST heavy sets deal more damage to compensate, for instance), since that would overpower them during team play which would, in this plan, remain unchanged from what it is now. It wouldn't be anhug issues, granted - underlings are VERY weak - but I suspect it would elad to a measurable increase in disparity of solo performance between sets.

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Partially, yes, though if they're not strong enough to put you in a serious danger of death by underling, I'm not sure how serious of a problem they would be. On the other hand, however, this would help make sets that overfocus on area effect attacks a lot more viable for solo than they currently are. For instance, one of the BIGGEST drawbacks of Assault Rifle is that half the set is made up of expensive AoEs when solo, you'll be lucky to face more than three enemies at a time. Yes, it's INCREDIBLY STRONG against large groups of enemies like those faced in big teams, but it's a drawback that is in no way compensated for in solo play. There are a few more sets like these, as well.

Granted, it's not as simple as "Make it happen!" but I still think it would make the game look and feel a lot more exciting than it currently is, at least solo. I have a friend who usually plays WoW on the computer next to me while I play City of Heroes, and one of the things I keep elbowing him over is "Dude! Look at how much stuff's shooting at me!" when I manage to get double spawn aggro or a few ambushes on me. Granted, a REAL big mob of strong enemies is technically more impressive, because it's a credible threat, but I still feel the theatrics of many weak enemies attacking you are worth it just by themselves.

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I don't think this is a difficult game to pick up, but it is a difficult game to master - if that makes sense? I had to explain some stuff about IO set bonuses to a friend recently, and he's been playing for a while.

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That I have to agree with. It's fairly easy to pick a character up learn to play it at least relatively competently in a short amount of time, though I still think handing a brand new player a combat level 50, character level 1 character would be a disaster. But the thing is that most of the veteran players would never settle for "relatively competent." They expect people will be good at fighting deep purples with optimised builds, know their place, uphold their roles and instinctively assume what they're supposed to do. I've seen more than a few instances of people being chastised for not knowing how to speed-run an ITF, for instance, and that's before we even get into the "offender vs. healer" debates. Hell, I think I have reasonably competent builds who can handle most anything solo on Tenacious and I've been on the receiving end of this because I don't have Stamina, need to rest and don't measure up to the other optimised 50s.

This is not a hard game to pick up, but just picking it up and being reasonably competent has never seemed like enough, judging by other people's demanding standards.

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So Praetoria might be a new starting "grey" area, or it might be a whole new city? If this is a paid expansion, I would think it will be an entire world. My bet is Praetoria is treated like a whole new world with 5-10 cities that are totally different from the ones we know. Imagine a Mercy Island that wasn't run down, but rather nice like a tourist destination....or a Skyway City completely run down and decrepid, overrun with Arachnoids.

If this is the case, you'll probably be able to enter Praetoria from either side, and do content to change your moral meter to switch sides....then head back to the real world. I'm thinking everything in Praetoria will be CoOp. Just my $.02

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Just read this. I totally agree with this theory. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Although this now creates just a few more questions.. But I think this theory of how the "New World" will be is the most logical, that I have seen.
... oh and Yes, it has been announced it will be a paid expansion, I feel pretty confident assuming the prices will be $29 and $39, for Standard and Collector's.

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Something like this is pretty strongly confirmed in the Going Rogue FAQ. To the question "Do I have to change sides in order to play the expansion?" the answer is "No." This means we'll be able to venture into this "Praetoria" (why no call it Praetorian Earth, like it's called?) from both sides and likely interact with each other, then go back to the side we came from. The expansion's general premise - side switching - will likely allow us to visit Praetoria, switch sides, and then return to the OPPOSITE side's home town.

The question, I guess, is whether Praetoria will be a COMPLETE world with content from 1 to 50 and enough zones and contacts to facilitate that, or if it will be a TRUE expansion and focus on, say, post 35 content, which is closer to when Praetorian Earth opens up CoH-side. The interesting point to note is that, if it's the former, than that probably means we can START there and be undetermined, branching of into heroes or villains as the levels progress. This is somewhat problematic, however, as that means the expansion would need enough content to get to 50 twice over - one for the heroic path and one for the villainous path.

What's a lot more likely to me, however, is the latter - that it's a partial world that opens up at some point AFTER character creation, after you've picked a side and worked for it for some time. That way, the expansion won't need enough content to get to 50 twice over. It won't even need enough content to get to 50 once, because it would expand what you could do for your own "side," so you'd get to 50 both of, say, Paragon City and Praetoria.

This doesn't preclude the expansion from starting at level 1, of course, though it would likely mandate you to pick a side anyway, even if it can be changed. I expect we'd get a pop-up asking "Where would you like to start? 1. The Rogue Isles 2. Praetorian Earth." like we pick between Atlas Park and Galaxy City or between Kalinda and Burke. If this is the case, however, this means we'll be able to dimension-hop as early as level 1. This also means, however, that we'd likely get new ATs, so I'm hoping that ends up what's true

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This game isn't exactly rocket science. There's nothing hard to figure out. Anyone who can't figure it out on their own won't figure it out at all. Doesn't matter if or when they hit 50. That number doesn't mean jack.

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That's an easy position to hold as a veteran of the game. Right now, I could probably pick up an AT I've never played before, levelled to 50 already, and still figure out what to do with it within a day. However, I also know almost everything there is to know about this game and can cite precise numbers on most powers off memory, as well as explain the intricacies of obscure in-game mechanics.

This isn't as easy a position to take if you're a newbie, however. For me, it took over a year before I even started to grasp the basic concepts of the game, and I've respecced my old characters many times over because of the stupid stuff I'd done with their builds. And it took me until recently - that's FIVE YEARS - until I figured out the very simple concept that what costs more is not the power with the highest cost, but rather the power with the highest CYCLE cost, meaning the cheapest of powers often end up being more expensive than the most expensive powers. And that's one of the simpler, more obvious things.

I don't know, maybe some of you are geniuses who can figure out the game on your own instantly, but my experience shows me that this is FAR from a simple, obvious game.

"Boss fight" is a general gaming term, at least as far as I could tell. I don't mean specifically fighting bosses, the CoH enemy class, but fighting "bosses," the general gaming concept of... Well, a boss. Take any side-scrolling beat-em-up and think what you get at the end of each level. That kind of boss.

And I have to say that bosses, at least certain ones, are very much a credible threat to at least certain ATs. I'm not sure about other people, but being that I don't over-optimize my characters and don't shoot for fighting purples all the time, so for me the right boss, say a Malta Gunslinger or a Rularuu Overseer, is very much a real, pressing threat even of a Scrapper, and pretty much a very genuine boss fight on a Blaster. More so now that they use all their powers.

But more to point, what I meant about underlings was to add them IN ADDITION to regular spawns, not INSTEAD OF enemies in the regular spawns. Think of how Void Hunters get added to spawns without replacing anyone from it. And the point of Underlings as I described it was never to present a challenge, but rather the complete opposite - to present NO challenge whatsoever, but display large groups of enemies regardless.

I've heard it several times, though I'm not sure it still holds true, that there is a certain upper limit on the number of enemies that can be drawn on the screen before the performance hit on both client and server becomes unacceptable, and that that number is roughly what an 8-man team running on one of the "more enemies" difficulties (second and fourth) would see. For that reason, I suggested padding solo spawns with Underlings until they reached somewhere close to that number of enemies to provide the visual effect of tearing through MASSES of enemies, but without screwing players by slapping them with extra difficulty in the process. To that effect, the Underlings are intended to make spawns look bigger but NOT increase their difficulty by a meaningful amount.

The net result is that if a team of 8 would face 20 enemies, then a solo player will also face 20 enemies, only his enemies would be MUCH weaker. Say, a full team of eight might face two bosses, four lieutenants and 12 minions or some such, whereas a single player would face three minions and 17 Underlings. In both situations, you're fighting against HORDES of enemies, but they are tailored to be doable for both solo players and big teams. Effectively, a mass of Underlings would be nothing more than cannon fodder, a Fireball's worth of carnage before moving on to the real, credible threats that are the actual enemies.

Essentially, we'd have a constant maximum spawn size. When the spawn rules call for anything LESS than that, the rest of the spots would be filled with Underlings. The bigger the spawn that the spawn rules dictate, the more of the worthless underlings would be replaced with actual enemies. Honestly, aside from the work needed to make it happen, I don't see a downside. Not even graphical or network lag, as we're already facing these kinds of numbers on a daily basis with no ill effect.

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I did. Call it Tactical Training.
Or do you mean rename every power too?

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Come up with a NEW set, not a renamed old set, that was the whole point. You're not going to get a new set with the exact same powers as an old set but a new name. It won't happen. It didn't even happen with Katana and Broadsword, and those were a HELL of a lot closer than anything we're likely to get, yet STILL significantly more divergent than "Shield Defence without the shield."

If you want that, come up with a NEW set that has a similar feel, but both makes sense and is different enough from what we already have. If you make a good enough point about it, there IS a chance it will make it in. After all, look at Willpower. In concept, it's practically another type of Invulnerability, but it is sufficiently different (you're not invulnerable, but just very hard to kill) and mechanically VERY different. People suggested it, people asked for it, and we eventually got it.

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It's been suggested that there be a much more prevalent use of the Underling type enemies for just this sort of long-day-at-work-and-I-just-want-to-chill-out-violently type of player, and I for one approve.

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I once made a long post in the Suggestions forum where I went down the list of enemy factions and suggested adding Underlings to all of them to pad spawn sizes up to 8-man-team levels even when solo, with the understanding that said underlings would be pathetic cannon fodder. The general idea was to add unpowered or underpowered versions of more common enemies. Say, in the 30s and 40s when the Freakshow are mostly Stunners and Shockers, Enforcers and Metal Freaks, throwing in a few punks with axes and clubs to act as underling sounds like a good idea. Or Arachnos could retain their Wolf Spiders post-20 to act as Underlings. Or the Sky Raiders could employ unarmoured soldiers with light weapons or only small arms. The Nemesis Army could always have miniature versions of (the already miniature) Jaegers and soldiers in light armour with pistols, and then later the soldiers with the single-shot bolt-action rifles could fill the same function in the 40s and up. The Council are easy. Post-20, the regular soldiers would become Underlings. Post 30, the Elites would serve that purpose and probably retain their function. Post-40, we could even add the Ubermenschen to that. Err... Cor Leonis, whatever. The CoT have plenty of low-grade Casters and Wielders who could remain as Underlings, rather than outright no longer spawning. And that's not even looking at all the factions that already HAVE Underlings which rarely if ever come into play.

The list is easy to put together, and while I'm not sure how easy it would be to actually put into action (I'm thinking fairly simple, but a LOT of work), it's still something that I would very much like to see. With Underlings supposedly posing little to no danger (one-shot health, pathetic damage, no status effects) and spawn sizes never overcapping what an 8-man team is already facing (presumably, towards the upper limit of graphical intensity, but well within capacity), I'd say the game would at least look and feel a lot more impressive and our characters a LOT stronger.

I've always been a firm believer in retaining old enemies as factions move up in level, but demoting them in rank. For example, Crey Security Agents start out as lieutenants in the 30s, but drop to minions in the 35-45 range. Cryo and Voltaic Tanks start out as lieutenants and Power Tanks as bosses, but post 45 Cryo and Voltaic Tanks become minions and Power Tanks lieutenants, with the boss role filled exclusively by Elite Paragon Protectors. Aside from the workload of actually making it happen, what reason is there for this NOT to be the case for all enemy groups?

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I highly doubt the devs are going to give us a set that exactly duplicates another, with different animations and graphics.

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That's pretty much as far as it goes. Traditionally, the developers have never settled for (or gone out of their ways to make) multiple copies of the same powerset but with different graphics. If they make a new powerset, they make a NEW powerset, not a recycling of an old one but with a few graphics changed. Shield Defence is not just "defence that lets you pick a shield," it's a whole new approach to self-protection sets... That just also happens to let you pick a shield.

About the closest we can come to a valid comparison is CoH Live to I2 Katana vs. Broadsword, which shared the exact same animations, power names and general power effects, but had a different weapon around three years before Weapon Customization. However, even then the sets were not functionally identical, as Katana did consistently lower damage, but its attacks recharged consistently faster (with attack animation not being included into balancing equations at the time). What's more, this was later averted when I2 gave Katana its own brand new set of animations and power names, making it only vaguely similar to Broadsword in general design direction. The two sets still share similar effects, but with different power stats and animations, they play very much worlds apart.

If the idea of "Shield-Less Defence" is to have any merit, then the people voiching for it have really only one reliable option - to pin down exactly what it is they like about the set's functionality and try to suggest a new set with a new thematic that features those items.

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There might be more truly new melee sets at some point, but melee players have received a ton of attention in the last few issues (dual blades, willpower, and shield defense all were added, plus there was proliferation). So the ranged people could use some love. I suspect next will be a new control set after that.

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Much as it pains this primarily-melee player to admit it, melee ATs HAVE received a lot of new sets lately, and have generally received more new sets historically. Aside from Powerset Proliferation, the last time I can think of the game getting new Blast sets was... I4? I5? When did Sonic Blast and Archery come through? Support sets got a new addition in the form of Pain Domination, but I cannot remember the last time we've gotten new Control sets, aside perhaps from CoV's launch, and did that bring anything other than Plant Control? Blasters did get a brand new Mastery in Psi Mastery, even though it was made up of existing powers, mostly.

I'd say that, the obvious need Masterminds have of a new set aside, a control and a Blast set are the primary things I'd say the game is due for. I mean, not even CoV brought us a new Blast set, and Psi Blast is hardly "new."

I'm hoping for a new melee set at some point, perhaps one that's more boxing (aka, the famous "street fighting") perhaps a staff-based powerset, perhaps an energy blade or even a TRUE two-handed greatsword, but for the moment, the most we can hope for is shuffling more powersets around still, like Broadsword for Brutes, Battle Axe and War Mace for Scrappers, maybe sharing Regeneration, maybe sharing Claws and so forth. I'm sure we'd get a massive outcry of hurt feelings if a new melee set were introduced next issue, mark my word.

My profound respect goes to Mids for his outstanding piece of work that has helped so many so much over the last couple of years. Without people like him, this game wouldn't be anywhere near as good and playable as it is.

And man thanks to Steiner and crew for keeping a great work alive and even keeping its original name.

Thank you.

Sefu... Now I understand who the guy with the mask and the handgun looks like!

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This is dumb anyway. You people just like arguing for the sake of arguing.

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If I had a penny for every time someone said that...

For me, the distinction is always simple - many weak enemies to form the bulk of the resistance throughout the story, and then a single tough enemy, or a series of single tough enemies at the very end.

If every fight is a boss battle, that makes the hero seem weak by comparison. When every mook is a boss, then the hero is barely as strong as the average mook. It's much more impressive to have the hero tear through hordes of faceless supergoons, only to be matched by a single hard enemy. This lends both the hero much more credence by displaying his prowess, and it lends the villain much more credence by having him be able to take a hero who's torn through so many mooks one-on-one.

In my opinion, difficulty should always be a plot device and never a status quo. Not unless you're making some kind of survival horror, which this game most decidedly is not.

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That said, I'll stand behind some of the use of their own characters as the leaders of filler factions. When done well, it actually gives a face to them instead of just 'oh, hey, here are these other guys that need beat up.' (Which is kind of how the Knives of Artemis always come off in the canon material, to me.) The ever-common 'Oh, I'll come with you on this mission, since you'll never beat up [Archvillain!] without my help!' contacts are downright obnoxious, though.

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My beef with people making stories pretty much about their characters isn't the very notion that someone would do that. Heck, that's the first thing I thought to do when I heard about the Architect, though I never got around to it. My beef is that, more often than not, these either feature as cameos that, while it's OBVIOUS they're meaningful, you have NO idea who they are, or as entities with entirely too much story behind them to put in a five-mission arc, which makes it feel like there's a whole lot of backstory going on that would be terribly relevant that you're not getting at all. Mary Sue "it's all about MEEE" don't even blip on my radar most of the time.

The problem is that most of us who've been here for several years have a loads and loads of characters, many of whom are interconnected in an intricate web of correlations that's probably never going to make sense to anyone we don't share a consciousness with, or unless we spend a few years publishing expanded universe novels. And it's even worse when you compound that with people who come with 20 years of PnP or own comic book characters baggage. This isn't bad in and of itself, of course, but when people try to excerpt from this to form a short story, invariably you end up with so many hanging pointers that you spend half the time wondering if this or that isn't meaningful and if understanding it won't make the story make more sense.

When people try to tell tales of their fiction, they always seem to make it over-complicated. When you meet an important-looking, plot-relevant character who keeps laying down strange references, you can BET that's one of the author's title characters.

I've seen people try to make their stories episodic, so that they can spread their arcs over more missions and better tell a story, and I can't say I disagree with that approach. But five missions just isn't enough to tell a long, complicated story. Yet it seems that that's exactly what any arc which isn't a joke, a farm or a string of paper missions does. Sometimes I feel that people should make up brand new characters to put in their story arcs, just so that they aren't burdened with years of backstory.

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I liked the good old days, when 'high level' meant you stopped seeing the old guys forever. None of this "level 53 council and CoT forever" bullchunks. There weren't any easy fights any more. If you got to 50, you got there fighting in the big leagues.

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I don't recall there ever being such a time. CoT, Council/5th Column, Freakshow and so forth have always extended all the way to 50. Not having missions against them might have made meeting them more rare, but they've always been in the game (well, post I1, anyway). Unlike, say, level 30-40 Carnival or level 10-30 Rikti, which were added to the game after missions requiring them were instituted.

Personally, I got my first character to 50 fighting almost exclusively Nemesis, Rikti and the various odd factions that populated the alternate dimensions like... Level 50 Banished Pantheon, level 50 Freakshow, level 50 Devouring Earth, level 50 Council and so on and so forth. That must have been around I3, it took me from April 2004 to January 2005 to get to 50.

Wish I could help you, but I live in Eastern Europe Not that I'd refuse having a chat, though. I usually solo, so I welcome any and all conversations.