Samuel_Tow

You used to. You no longer do. His animation is five seconds long, yes, but you get tagged for the effect half-way through the animation. I've gotten tagged with this after just barely Whirling Hands. I've gotten tagged with this after the game lagged and refused to unque a power for me. Because again - I play with 300ms of ping time. I lose 300ms before I even see the warning, I lose 300ms before I can react and I lose whatever time it takes me to walk out of range. And that thing has a decent range. I've fought Protean multiple times. Even if I dodge around a corner, he still drains me unless I happen to be idle when it fires up and I run around a corner.

Protean uses his Power Syphon every few minutes. I would like to use Total Focus and possibly even Energy Transfer more often than that. Furthermore, what you're suggesting is a MASSIVE decrease in DPS, which in turn gives him time to regenerate using more conventional means, and it gives him time to work through my inspiration inventory. Because Protean is not exactly a trivial elite boss even without his Power Syphon.

City of Heroes is a game whose combat system is built around DPS and DPA calculations and its encounters are designed around those statistics. Throwing in gimmicks only serves to ban the optimal way of approaching a situation, and what you're arguing is how this should be a good thing. If your argument is that that's the point, that breaking up the regular tank-and-spank is the point, then I disagree, because all it does is annoy.

Jousting is an unintended practice and the reason travel powers suppress in combat. It's also TERRIBLY inefficient from a DPS standpoint because you lose over half of your available uptime repositioning. That's a problem if you have trouble outdamaging Protean's regeneration before you run out of inspirations. If Protean were an easy fight with this being his only gimmick, then sure, why not? But I have to worry about actually taking down that elite boss without dying, and jumping all over the place makes this significantly harder.

It's twice as funny if you're a Mastermind, considering henchmen can sometimes take two, three seconds or more to even respond and even when they do their actions are not always predictable thanks to ****** pathfinding. And that's IF they're not locked into a long animation when you give the command. And that's IF they don't decide to ignore your orders like they're prone to do. And that's IF your pets are actually Mastermind pets you can control and not, say, the Dark Servant or Jack Frost or, heaven help you, the Fire Monkeys. You know, the things people tell me make Controllers from mediocre into great.

So? That's why I'm here. I've played plenty of games that treated me with tough love and they don't get my money any more. This one treats me nice, so I keep playing it. The last thing I want is more reasons to be pissed off at my connection and the game's combat mechanic quirks.

They are. I've wanted Vanguard claws for ages and, sadly, the Vanguard claws suck since they're mounted on the forearms and don't work with most Claws animations, which are intended to direct the claw with the hand. The Mecca Armour claws are mounted to the hand, and as such all animations work for them perfectly. Sweetness!

Where are you getting this from? I recall an NPC's offhand reference to "one of the 50 000 heroes from Paragon City."

"Mutants" are not special. They're people with super powers, with theirs being just one of myriad of ways to gain super powers. It would be ridiculous to deal with specifically MUTANT-related hatred without going through the process and introducing hatred for aliens, hatred for sentient machines, hatred for extra-dimensional or extra-planar entities, hatred for gods walking among men and so forth. "Mutants" are unique in the X-Men stories because that's all those stories ever deal with. You can't do that in City of Heroes because "mutants" are not unique snowflakes. They're not uniquely "taking our jobs," they're not uniquely "better than humans," they're not uniquely grotesque, they're not uniquely weird. There are people with animal heads hanging out in Pocket D. I'm pretty sure society has a handle on this.

*edit*
And besides, even if you want to argue that, no, there's still racism and homophobia despite this not being present in the game in anyone but VILLAINS, I'd rather not just retread Marvel's very specific story angle.

For the same reason I explained in a similar thread in this very forum.

I really don't like this argument, but not for the reasons you think. I'm not saying we should ignore the game's basic genre. However, I really dislike the concept of "MMO convention." It creates a hideously boring, samey, soul-less market. I've literally seen games marketed like "has loot, crafting, market, PvP, raids" and that's it. Almost no talk about basic gameplay, theme or any original ideas aside from reassuring people that, yes, this game has what EQ had 20 years ago. That's not a good way to design a game. I didn't come to City of Heroes because it was exactly the same as EQ as I don't like EQ.

If the MMO market is to survive, it needs to change and adapt. It makes no sense to have a hundred games that are basically a different skin over what WoW will always do better. You don't beat WoW by being exactly like it, because then why wouldn't people just play WoW? Why would I, realistically, ever play another MMO if it's just like the one I like, only I have to start over?

My point is that what an MMO "is" is not carved in stone, and breaking the mould is not a bad thing. When City of Heroes first came out, the notion of your appearance being independent of your stats was heresy, yet this was popular enough to have quite a few MMOs since copy it. Hell, if we go back to "MMO conventions," being boring is one such, as well. You go to a moor and kill stuff until you can't stand it any more.

What I'm saying is that just because this is an MMO, it doesn't mean it has to conform to some rigid MMO dogma. Especially when not doing so makes the development team more money. I'll explain when it comes up lower down.

Oh, boy. Time for another list:

First of all, this is a BAD thing. I've seen plenty of eyesore costumes that had capes on them for no reason other than, presumably, because players saw them as prestige designators. This is a big reason why I don't want to give items undue weight. I want players to use a piece because it makes their costume look better, rather than because it has some false value attributed to its lock, even if it makes the costume horrid. To me, the artistry of character creation is far more important than any status symbol a piece might carry. And if you follow the Best Costume Designs thread, you'll note how often that's actually the case. Yeah, I admit, Praxis on there, but that's just coincident timing.

Secondly, this really isn't fair towards Samurai concepts. Let's say I'm not interested in prestige items, but rather I just have an idea for a displaced samurai warrior looking to teach the world the ways of true honour. Is it fair that this "costs" more than the idea of a medieval chivalrous knight doing the exact same? I don't think so. It's a needless concept gate for a set that... Frankly, no-one really seems to even want. It's probably one of the rarest concepts I've seen.

Finally, you described the exact opposite person to me, because to me, not being able to have something doesn't make me want it more, it makes me resent it more. Sour grapes and all that. If you tell me that I can't have a specific costume item until some arbitrary time later, then I'm not going to be motivated to get it. I'm going to be motivated to complain and I'm going to be demotivated to care not just about that costume, but about the whole game in general. Yeah, that's how it goes. And that's specifically for cosmetics only. I can live with not having all the powers in the game right at the start - those are part of progression. But costumes are not.

No, there wasn't. And you know how they solved this? They sold cape and aura access at level 1 for $10. The genre doesn't matter. What matters is this is a business. And I ask you this - does it make more sense to lock something behind an ostensibly free in-game action or to lock it behind a real money purchase? For YEARS myself and others have been beating our chests saying we'd pay for this costume piece or that costume piece. We bought the Wedding pack in such numbers it budgeted villain Epic ATs an Issue early. That ought to say something.

Obviously, not everything can be for sale. This is still a game, progress is still part of the game, and as such, it needs to result from playing the game. But cosmetics are not part of progress, thus there's no reason why cosmetics can't all be sold for money. And there's no reason barring total destitution that I wouldn't pay money for cosmetics. I bought the ******* Party Pack for $8 and that sucked. I bought the Circle of Thorns pack even after making such a huff about it because I figured I'd waited enough to have a mark on at least its launch numbers. When the Mecca Armour set comes out, I'll be getting it immediately. I have 5 Paragon Reward points sitting in the wings, and remember - each of those points cost me $45 in subscription and purchases.

This is not an MMO issue, it's a money issue, and I'm more than prepared to put my money where my mouth is. That's not to say I don't want costume pieces earnable in the game, far from it AS LONG AS I can purchase them at character creation for all characters. I have no problem with all store-bought costume pieces being available for some in-game action, so long as all costume pieces available for some in-game action show up in the store, as well.

I don't like the environment, and it is a proven fact that the environment can be changed. Putting the Vanguard Pack in the store is proof positive of this. Putting the Roman Pack in the store is even more so. The fact that we haven't had unlockable costume pieces put into the game since Freedom isn't quite proof positive, but it's strong evidence. It seems to me that the F2P model values my money more so than my time, thus the store is all too happy to let me trade money for time, and I'm all too happy to accept. When it comes to cosmetics, yea, I turn to ruthless capitalism. To me, "the right costume" is an absolute prerequisite to playing the game. If a character's costume isn't perfect, I don't play them. And if I don't play them, they'll never get the costume piece to make them perfect.

Now, I COULD see this with items I could earn with another character and then transfer over to a new one, like with the craftable costume pieces now that they're common, but that's missing the point of gates.

I never saw the point to begin with. OK, I lied, I saw the "point" - it was to pimp out the Inventions system to people like me who don't care about achievements but like costumes. The studio has a history of trying to bribe people into their new shiny with costumes. I don't belie Matt Miller's tripe about "It would be an insult to the art team!" for why Ascension pieces are level-locked to 50, and I don't believe it for a second. It's there to get people like me to run Trials because they need a certain critical mass of Trial participation.

However, I don't see anything I stand to gain from having these gated, and have made it a point to NEVER hoard these costume pieces. If I can use them, I sue them as they drop. If I can't use them, I put them on the Market for 1 inf and leave them there forever. A number of people have purchased, say, Tech Wings from me for 1 inf, and it just makes me smile when I see it. I'm determined to do what I can to make these as widely available to people as possible without actually turning it into a job. A Numina's Pink Panties Blu/Red (50) I'll toss onto a vendor if it doesn't sell for a decent price, sure, but a costume recipe will stay in my market queue at the price of 1 FOREVER. The 250 million for fairy wings nonsense can never be allowed to happen again, as far as I'm concerned.

That's less about adapting to a changing situation and more adapting to quick-time events. Patch under your feet, move over there. Apocalypse beam, move over here. You've been tagged with this, do that. Enemy intangible, use that power. It's not a test of adaptation, it's a test of reaction time. You're not asked to figure out what to do, you're told what you need to do and you just need to time it right.

City of Heroes is not a game of action and reflexes, because THE GAME'S reaction time is around 4 to 5 seconds. You have ping, you have root, you have Arcana-time and only THEN do you have your own reaction time AND THEN you have ping and server time again when you try to react to what's on your screen. And the real kicker is that all of these things are thrown at you while you're trying to out-damage something's regeneration. Like it or not, the best way to out-damage something's regeneration in this game is to stand still and spam attacks. All these QTEs do is prevent you from doing so, and thus end up feeling like simple obstacles.

Now, I'm not against positioning in general, mind you. I'm playing an Electric Melee, which includes a cone, a targeted AoE and Chain Induction. Each of these requires different considerations as to how to get the best AoE coverage. However, unlike the "nagging wife" patches on the ground, these actually DO require me to react to a situation and try to figure out how best to use them, because there isn't just one very simple answer to problem.

I have to disagree on a VERY fundamental level here, because this assumes your hero is "an ordinary man" i.e. a human. Out of all of mine, the human heroes are... Um... I can actually think of one. Five if I'm generous. My most prominent Mutant is an alien hive queen who gave birth to her own race of worker drones sharing a hive mind slave to her own consciousness. Most of my tech characters are creatures MADE of technology with no human intervention, most of my Magic characters are creatures made of magic and hailing from other planes of existence, most of my science characters are creatures created by science (like my pollution elemental, an intelligence that spontaneously popped up on a pollution-destroyed planet) and ALL of my Natural characters are aliens. Hell, Praxis is Natural.

Or it makes people excited. Having powers is not something being "wrong" with your child in a world where super heroes are common place. On the contrary, it's something being "awesome" about it. I mentioned having a little girl mutant, and the only thing her parents were afraid of was that she's get herself killed before she was ready to use her powers proper. Because in a world where freaks of nature are commonplace, famous and clearly good people, unusual biology is acceptable.

I disagree. Think about the Scroll of Tielekku, for instance. That scroll was simply found, and it became a problem. This can easily be the same with technology, as well. How many movies have been made around finding the "microfilm" with the secret technology on it that one person just thought of, wrote down and then died? When it comes to technology, all it takes is one good idea, one breakthrough, and then other scientists can carry on the work. For science, it's even less necessary to invest, since so many scientific experiments happen by accident. Yeah, I'm sure it took ages for Professor Utonium to figure out that sugar, spice and everything nice makes for the perfect little girl, but it took for one split second to figure out that adding Chemical X produces super heroes. And since then, it seems trivial to recreate it. Mojo Jojo recreated the formula in a foul prison toilet using slugs, snails and puppydog tails to create the RowdyRuff Boys.

The X-Men work for Marvel because they were made in an era where racial tension and homophobia were much more prevalent than they are today, and even then it didn't really make sense. Why is Gambit hated just because he can make cards explode while Spider-Man isn't hated for being able to cling to walls? I mean... Who knows who Gambit's parents are? Who even knows what the source of his powers is? Hell, Pyro carries around flamethrowers, so at first glance he looks like a tech character. And we hate Rogue because she has the powers of Miss Marvel but we didn't hate the actual Miss Marvel? It's splitting hairs that most people in the public who hate mutants in the first place can't know about.

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I don't mean to come down on you just for the sake of being mean. I just feel we're trying to elevate a writing practice Marvel writers came up so they wouldn't have to bother with origin stories into more than it is, and we're trying to argue it from the standpoint of a society which doesn't exist in City of Heroes.

Penelope Yin is a mutant, Sister Psyche is a mutant and, according to the Origin of Powers, most of the canon psychics are mutants, too. Your story has been covered. What you're asking for is not a story about "mutants." It's a story about the X-Men, which I never found compelling as a racist/homophobic metaphor, myself.

I have plenty of mutants in my own roster, including a little girl who has taken up crime fighting because it's the right thing to do. The only ones of mine who are hated and oppressed are the VILLAINS, who pretty much deserve the hate through their own actions.

No one single origin is a special case for hate crimes. You can make a case about hating and wanting to ban AIs. You can make a case about wanting to control magic like it is in Praetoria. You can make a case for wanting to put an end to wildly ambitious scientific experiments that keep giving people powers. The sky's literally and metaphorically the limit.

The "Mutant" origin in City of Heroes is just an origin of a character's powers. It's not the "hated outcast of society fighting for equal rights" origin.

The Statesman has really nice teeth I always wondered how people's masks wrapped so neatly around their ears, too. Do they sew ear pockets into them?

Good artwork, though. The BCU is actually kind of awesome I just need to figure out what, exactly, the Statesman is doing to hurt it. To me, it looks like he's holding it back with his right arm so he can punch it with his left, but then the chin sparks make it look like he punched it, but then that arm position doesn't look like it could have resulted in from a downward punch. Maybe an uppercut, but...

I, on the other hand, find ground patches infinitely annoying. They don't force me to "adapt," they just never let me stand still, and I enjoy staying still. If I wanted a stressful game, I'd go play PvP. This was never more irritatingly obvious than when fighting the Talons of Vengeance and having every. Damn. Prophetess drop a ground patch that essentially punched through all my defences.

"Use TicTacs!" say people to me. Yeah, well you know what the tactic is against those? Run around like an idiot, have them drop their patches, THEN attack them. These things are on a decent recharge. However, when it comes to something like Admiral Stutter where the ******* airstrikes are CONSTANT and they require me to move CONSTANTLY... Yeah, that's not gonna' happen. In a game with root times of two, three seconds and more, in a game where you can't even CHASE enemies with cones, that just doesn't work. This isn't an action game. You can play it like one, but it not an action game by any stretch of the imagination.

Someone brought up Diablo 2, and this game is pretty much exactly like that - it's a click-n-kill fighter. I play it with 300ms of ping on a good day. Forcing me in situations where my reaction time has to be less than a second (hello, Eagle's Claw added critical chance!) does not enhance my enjoyment of it.

I'm not saying it's a bad investment. Far from it. I just don't feel like City of Heroes benefits that much from a larger enhancement inventory. It benefits, certainly, but I really don't want to pay the price of a month's subscription for it.

Not all goals go through money. You don't summon an eldritch god with money. You don't evolve into a higher being with money. You don't need money when you already HAVE money.

Furthermore, "it's a problem because you make it a problem" is a logical fallacy, and a dishonest one, at that. It's not a problem TO YOU, but you can't argue that it's not a problem per se, because then that argument is applicable to anything and everything. Being punched in the face can be argued to be a problem only if you make it a problem because a face isn't crucial to survival. It's only a problem if you care about having a pretty face.

"Money" is not a generic goal.

To give a little bit more context, it's not just Praxis that has a problem with this. Let me give you a VERY brief summary of off-the-top-of-my-head villains of mine for whom money doesn't work:

*William and Isabella Worthington are filthy rich and immortal. They don't need money for anything.

*Zik owns his own evil organisation with his own funding and his own cadre of lieutenants. He doesn't need money.

*Tyler and his Genesis Unit want to destroy all humans and care nothing for money. They have their own bases and factories run on their own resources.

*Lighteater is an automaton from the beginning of time who fancies himself the ultimate being. All he needs, he gets from teleporting into the hearts of black holes. He does not need resources of any kind.

I get that that makes them sort of an ill fit for most of CoV, but that's because most of CoV assumes I want money. And, yeah, money is not a generic motivation, it's a very specific one. Some missions I can spin as my characters having alternate interests in, such as those involving Bat'Zul or large-scale signature characters. Those, however, involving no-name enemies and no-interest plots (like the Shadowy Figure) just comes off like busywork when "pay" is all there is to look forward to.

What I'm saying is that the original CoV content makes the mistake of painting stories as benefiting the contact with the player only getting "money" as a hired thug. The newer CoV story arcs, however, have the much better idea of painting stories as the player benefiting himself with the contact just coming along for the ride, or even getting ripped off. It just helps this a LOT when the actual motivation isn't given.

Mission structure isn't based on the goal, and it shouldn't be. It's based on the story the missions tell. WHY we do these missions does not need to be stated. When I say that "money" is implied, I mean that if that's your goal, you can assume that's what you're getting in every mission without it having to be said. Thing of it like any other game - you finish a mission, you're rewarded with money and experience. That's how these games go. It doesn't have to be stated.

And that's why both Ruben and Hammond are so cool - they're not ABOUT the money. Sure, I robbed a bank in the Ruben arc, but I had to do SOMETHING to take advantage of the situation, so why not? It doesn't really bother me because the arc isn't about the bank. It's an arc about taking advantage of patsies, and I can fill in what I hoped to gain from it on my own. I see the bank as a necessary evil in this case because it's an actual mission in the game that needed SOME physical representation.

There is, however, no need for Mr. Boccor to keep talking about how I'm costing him money in fees for hiring me. He's not hiring me, I have my own agenda for working with him and I don't value money. It adds nothing to the experience but a cheap gag.

Um... Did you actually read what I posted? Because I'm not "complaining" these don't fit. OF COURSE they don't fit, I get that. But both Ruben and Hammond are still a LOT more applicable to Praxis than Golden Roller or Willy Wheeler or Shelley Percy.

And no, I don't believe a goal is even necessary. It might be workable, but it isn't necessary. It helps nothing at all, because "for the money" and "for the resources" is simple enough to infer even when it's not said outright. Oh, hey, look, there's a bank in Paragon City that I can rob. I wonder why I'm doing it? Oh, hey, there's an Arachnos operative that needs help. I wonder why I'd help him. If "money" is your motivation, then you really don't need this said to you because it's pretty much implied in everything villains do.

It's not a big upgrade, and it doesn't really save as much time as an XP booster. The enhancement inventory is really only relevant in the lower levels where Training enhancements still drop, and in those lower levels, they aren't worth selling. I have personally made more money on Praxis selling the Inner Inspiration large ones at the Market than I did off any of my enhancements. And post-40 where only SO drops, those drop so infrequently and are worth so little the extra inventory space is little more than a QoL change.

An XP booster, however, 2.5 levels of Patrol XP, and because of how that works, it ends up being even longer. That's aves a considerable amount of time and helps not rerun the same arcs over and over and ******* over again on my 40+ characters.

I'm not saying enhancement inventory increases are bad. I'm saying they're not $15 good and they're certainly not $20 good.

The villain experience has no overall aim even now. Even when Operation: Destiny was still a "thing," it wasn't really a goal because - slight spoilers here - it doesn't accomplish anything. The whole point for it, from Recluse's point of view, was to use the player villain as a patsy, take over the world and then KILL the player villain. That's really not a goal to speak of, and beyond that, there really isn't one. "Money" is not a goal, it's a means to a goal. What that goal might be is never mentioned.

The thing with roleplaying games is that it's just bad form to try to force motivation on your players. If that means letting them go without an aim, so be it, but NOT forcing motivation lets the more creative ones pick their own. Look at heroes - they never, ever have an overall goal forced on them. Not even doing the right thing or upholding the law. I guess heroes are sort of expected to just be heroes for no reason so it's easier to not give them one, but this really CAN and SHOULD apply to villains.

Let me put it this way - I chose to be a villain for a reason. Do I really need ANOTHER reason?

Unless I look where I'm going. If we're going off the Recluse's Victory model, then villains winning will turn the location into a rat hole. So if I'm on a hero and I'm in this rat hole, then others' actions very much do affect me.

Well, unless you want to code this in such a way that it has NO effect on anyone who isn't directly involved, but even Warburg - which has no visual cues for one side winning - still has those buffs and debuff that make a practical difference.

Any time you involve other players into shaping up my gaming experience, I start looking for a way to not be affected.

I play melee, so I don't care either way. Well, melee and Masterminds, but I'm sure the Yellow Ink Men will feel really good about themselves for continuously trying to put my Battle Drones to sleep.

The hero-side arcs really don't hold as much weight for me at this point, though. Heroes, for the most part, have been done right. Sure, the SSA1s are HORRIBLE about being a hero, but they're an abberation. For the most part, heroes in this game do what heroes in general do, and the arcs leave plenty of room to fit in our own motivations. Why WOULD I want to save Paragon City from being infected with Devouring Earth virus? I don't know, why would I? The game never presumes to tell me, it just lets me choose whether I want to take the story or not, and I decide why I'm actually doing it. Maybe it's the right thing to do? Maybe I just hate monsters? Maybe I want to steal the chemical for my own experiments? Maybe I didn't even stop it, I just pretended to. Who knows? The game doesn't tell me, so I'm free to decide for myself.

The villain-side stories have, historically, not been anywhere near as open to motivation. We're always told WHY we're doing things, and it's usually so we can serve someone else's agenda. That's part of the reason why Ruben is so awesome - in his arc, I'm not serving anyone. Arachnos is helping, yes, but I'm not their servant because I'm free to talk back and free to screw Arachnos over in the end. Hell, Ruben doesn't even allude to paying me, he just sort of says it's a good idea, but I'm free to agree and run the arc, or disagree and walk away. Same with Hammond, as well. No allusion to being hired as a thug, no promises of indeterminate "power." Here's a guy, he sucks, I can use him, let's do it. Why? I don't know. Kicks? Money? Malice? The game doesn't say, so I can fill in the blanks. For Praxis, it was because she needed Bat'Zul temporarily free to offer the fiend a place in the timeline she's orchestrating, which includes him being sealed within the mountain until the right time comes.

For years, villain writing has struggled to figure out exactly what it is that villains want to do and what motivates them, blissfully unaware that those questions have no answers. There's no one thing they want, no one thing that motivates them, so the simplest solution is to just not bring this up at all. Tell villains what the story expects them to do, then let villains decide why, and indeed IF, they want to do it. Both Hammond and Ruben come very close to this, and that's what makes both of them awesome. Because the game doesn't give me the excuse of "the contact says that's what you should do," it puts me in the position of having to figure out why, then, I am doing it. And I've spent more than a few sleepless nights figuring this out.

And I love it!

Three things.

First of all, no it does not. Plenty of MMOs out there let you pick your look separate from your powers and your progression. The Chronicles of Spellborn, despite being a fantasy MMO, still let players pick their armour as costumes.

Secondly, almost all of the MMOs out there are either based on a specific intellectual property with a specific look and feel to it, or are otherwise generic fantasy which is itself a very specific theme. Super heroes are a much more diverse thematic, and one NOT driven by loot as a means for self-determination. Though super hero costumes do change occasionally, most of them are not made from stuff found lying around after defeating the bad guys. Spider-Man didn't do that, Superman didn't do that and the Statesman certainly didn't do that.

Finally, I don't disagree with you that MMOs require progress of some kind. It's what they're built after. What I disagree with is that this progress needs to be cosmetic. Again, there is no "progress" when it comes to cosmetics because these cannot be graded. No look is objectively better than another look. A samurai is not "better" than a medieval knight, nor is a roman soldier better than a US Army soldier. How much a part is worth is not measurable on an overall basis, because how much a part is worth depends on who's going to use it.

Capes are the perfect example of this. For all of the "Capes at 20 shenanigans" (which you're pretty much recreating here step by step), capes are and have always been worthless to me. They're supposed to be "better," a status symbol, and so they're locked behind a mission unlock. But they're not. They're not better. They're specific to "classic" super heroes who, for some reason, are seen as wearing capes, but I don't have any of those. OK, I have ONE of those. Consequently, I've used capes on a small handful of my characters, thus its "prestige" status is worthless to me. It's a junk drop, as it were, since I don't need it.

Contrast this with, say, the Legacy Broadsword. Until Titan Weapons came out, the Legacy Broadsword was by far the biggest weapon women had access to, and consequently the one I used for my swordswomen the most often. It was seen as a worthless pick by others because it was old, low-detail and untintable, and it was seen as worthless because others clearly didn't share my design aesthetic of wanting big things. Yet set after set added new weapons to Broadsword, and still I only really liked the Legacy one - the junk drop BABs left behind as a holdover.

You can't grade aesthetics as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so the only thing you can do is lock stuff at random and punish people whose concepts happen to require these things while giving pretty much nothing to the people whose concepts aren't in the same direction. It's the Celestial set all over again - if I could use it at creation, then maybe I could make a character who looks good in it, but since I have to use it at level 50, I don't really have any concepts that need it, because what I have at 50 is mostly more technological.

But that's not what the goat wants, both from what I remember from before he left and from what he's said in this thread. He wants those recipes to be rare and hard to attain, because if they're not they might as well be in the costume editor. Designing around a cheap, plentiful recipe is... Cumbersome but not impossible since those can be easily attained. It's not nearly as easy if these became as rare as they used to be when they were first introduced.

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Here's the practical side of it, though. Whether this is an MMO and what that means is irrelevant in the broader business sense. The development team have realised that the playerbase will pay through the nose for costume stuff, something I've been saying for years. At this point, we get "free" costumes only occasionally to give the impression of a VIP service, but most of the biggest costumes are paid. And I will gladly pay for them.

Thanks for your sympathy, Golden Girl.

Guess what - when I made the original Steel Rook, he was supposed to have a jet pack. He was made in about June 2004. I STILL don't have a jet pack option, but I will some time soon. There's one in the Retro Sci-Fi set and there's one in the Mecca Armour set.

I just can't see the argument that if it was bad for you, it HAS to be bad for me as some sort of divine punishment to make your situation less bad, but do you have any idea how many of my characters would not even EXIST without certain costume pieces? I've been throwing Praxis around all over the forums. She would not exist without the Carnival pieces and without the Fire And Ice set. Before that, I used the post Stardiver around, who would never have existed without the various Celestial and IDF pieces, and the Fire Sword was invaluable. Then there was Lady Isabella who I would never have made without the wings, the legs, the tail and the Omega face. The list goes on and on.

What I'm saying is that a great number of the characters I have an enjoy - and a great part of the reason why I keep subscribing to this game - is a direct result of me possessing these costume pieces at creation. Without them, these characters would not have been made. Without them, these characters would never have reached a point they could unlock them. If Kim were forced to start the game with regular blades and wait until 35 to unlock proper Energy Blades, I'd never have made her, or written a story about her, and she is right now my highest-ranking character of all. She's 50, she has some Incarnate powers and I've spent hundreds of hours playing just her. I remade her when the Vanguard pack came out, I played her from when I22 launched until a few days ago, I spent TWO WEEKS of essentially 8-hour days writing and refining her story, and this entire thing would never have happened if it were not for those energy blades being available at character creation.

I'm sorry you had to a few years for wings, but I fail to see how that's anything but an argument for having more items available at creation. You know, so other people don't have to go through the same?