Ammon

What do you mean? I have a very good friend named Pizzaspine. He ranks highly in Rome!

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I wouldnt waste my time posting here if i didnt know what i was talking about because I'd be getting flames every two minutes, much like is starting to happen... needless to say by a stalker.

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I really want to try to help you here, but to do so I have to disagree with you, politely and for your own better understanding. If you cannot accept that an argument with your preconclusions is possibly for your benefit, or if you are too attached to your prejudiced (means: judged before) view that stalkers are too powerful to properly consider argument, then this will not work as with prior posts.

If so, then yes, you'll get no joy here. Bt is that our fault, or simply because you have come with preconditions, only accepting total agrement, and unwilling to allow for the fact that maybe not everyone is spending considerable time on detailed replies just to argue with someone they don't know. Most here are doing this to help anyone who bothers to read and consider the relies.

And so you know, I don't have a stalker character, and don't want one, having played them in the CoV beta, and while admiring the AT, deciding that I just wasn't a stalker type. I enjoy almost every other AT, I'm just not a skulker at heart.

Right, with all the prequalifiers done...

Firstly, a major part of the Stalker archetype is that they Stalk. Pretty obvious huh? Yet still people criticise a stalker fleeing an exposed battle to return to doing what they are meant to do, stalk unseen, and strike quickly and decisively. The clue is in the mane. They are not a Tanker (who tanks) nor a scrapper (who scraps).

So, obviously, a stalker-killer (not the same as an anti-stalker) build is about slotting to survive AS and then not allow the stalker to vanish. That means high mobility and good debuffs, and preferably some placate resistance, oh, and the skill to stay on him/her.

However, you're still missing one important point. The stalker is predominantly a solo AT. Its their strength. Even in a team, there's something insular and isolated about the whole concept of stalking. To really be sure of killing stalkers, you need to be playing team games. Solo, most of the time all you are going to do is reach stalemate.

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P.S stalemate is a draw not a loss, yes a tankers job is not to go down but that doesnt mean hes won either, it means both partys walk away unscathed, the tanker can claim moral victory in fact he lived but the stalker can claim same because the tanker was never close to victory :P

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Now, stalemate is NOT a lose, except for the stalker who is now stuck spending ages creeping up on a target for no purpose. If the stalker cannot kill you, (s)he soon picks an easier target or goes home.

Seriously, a Stalker is all about the kill. If you don't die, you have robbed the Stalker of his entire role in life. You've made him impotent. He is the Mr Droopy of the assassin world. He has lost unless he can find something else to kill and regain his sense of potency. Either way, you most certainly beat him on the psychological level. Utterly.

The number of builds that can reliably and predictably survive stalker attacks 1v1 indefinitely are huge, if the builds are made that way. Stalker versus any form of tank solo is pretty much an exercise in futility unless the actual player skill levels and experience greatly favour the stalker.

An Ice Tank is particularly annoying to stalkers because with their built in +percep they always see a stalker within 10 feet, often further if the Stalker has just activated AS dropping any secondary stealth before the actual animation, etc. Icicles as a PBAoE help keep the stalker visible so long as the tanker stays close, and chilling embrace helps slow the retreat of a stalker to make staying close a little easier.

However, catching a fleeing stalker is very tough, and so it should be. Their whole AT is about stalking, which obviously includes fleeing back into the shadows to stalk again. If that sounds too powerful, well think about it a little deeper. The stalker is a bit like a blapper, but instead of having all that superior ranged damage, and some of it being unresistable, the Stalker is only at his full potential against targets that don't see him, or are held. Oh, but the second he actually uses that full potential, he loses the stealth, and all the power that came from it.

A Scrapper or Brute both do way more damage over time than a Stalker can. Its just that where a Scrapper needs luck to get those Critical hits, or a Brute needs time to build up that rage, the Stalker has an ability that lets him get his damage boost up front instead. Remember that he needs to stealth again to get a second such boost though.

The stalker is a very balanced AT overall but part of that balance is that the Stalker excells against single-target mobs, whether in PvE or PvP. If you are alone, you give stalkers an advantage. With teammates, you have an advantage over even a team of stalkers (that whole even in teams a stalker is a lone wolf thing).

I'm simplifying things a little, of course. Experienced players can team stalkers very effectively, but other ATs that team are often 'more than the sum of their parts', such as the Tanker taunting foes while his teammate uses interuptible powers, or the defender/controller buffs, etc, etc.

Coile, I truly don't think I have met a more generous creative spirit in the brief years I have been playing this game, or hanging around the community.

You'd happily share ideas without falling into the common trap of then wanting to control how they were used. That's a real rarity. Your origin ideas that did so much to create the Hyperion Watchmen are just one example of many.

Sky goddess protect, and Rock On, Dude!

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Damn! Forget I said anything!

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Igor, prepare the 'guest' chamber. I want Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" playing in there on a loop until this Romanov chap takes the hint.

Evil is always the other guy. In anyone's own mind, they are the hero. They are misjudged, misunderstood, or justified by mistreatment.

So my concept villain is the Dark Hero. His primary power is the root of evil in us all: the ability to lie to himself and be proud of the guy he tells himself he is. He likes the guy in the mirror. Anyone who really understood him would, and anyone who does not therefore obviously doesn't understand him. The ability to justify himself and believe it. The sureness that he's right and good.

He absolutely sees himself as the hero. When others do not, it is because they are weaker than him, jealous, trying to cover up their own failures by tearing him down, or just frustratingly that they plain can't understand him.

He has never committed murder. The other guy started it by being a crook. He desrved it. But it gave those jealous a-holes an excuse to trump up charges. They refused to listen to reason and railroaded him to the zig.

He's bigger than that. They couldn't beat him by making him surrender and give up. That ain't what heroes do. They just reinforced his convictions. They proved him right. He kept the faith, never surrendered, and his faith was rewarded. The hand of fate, or whatever higher power you like, bust him out, using the Arachnos goons to do it.

With utter conviction, this hero knows he's on the right side. In time, everyone else will realise it too. History will vindicate him, exonerate him. Make him the greatest hero of them all. Meantime he'll keep doing the good work, and busting heads of those who deserve it.

((I'm not certain there are enough hours in the week left for me to have yet another dedicated RP alt, but I do love the concept.

I can offer either of 2 specialist mercenaries that might just have come to The Peddler's attention. The more unusual and practical being Lord Borealis with his ability to keep harvested samples fresh through instant freezing. Ice/Ice Dominator.))

Nobody is suggesting using the Wiki as a forum.

However, the forum already has sticky listings of supergroups and roleplayers looking for other roleplayers, and the criticism has been that it gets old fast, and due to the editing restrictions, can't be updated.

To that extent therefore, the wiki is LESS 'static' than posts in this forum. The point of a forum is to be 'of the moment' and once that moment is past, no post content can be taken at face value without confirming it is still valid.

Rather than repeat the entire thread every month, it makes sense to store the information we get from this discussion at the wiki, where it can be updated at will, by anyone, and kept valid.

((Please see Discussion tab on the Wiki page about how to make it easier for people to add themselves, without all trying to edit the actual page simultaneously

I suggest using Category:RP Roundtable which makes it far easier for peope to add themselves, profiles, plots, etc as needed without needing to edit the main listing page.))

It sounds a bit like you are hoping to duplicate all the functon of the Union Handbook Wiki into a thread, and even edit that into one gigantic post.

This is what the Handbook of the Union Universe is about/for. To act as a database for all the active plots, characters, etc so that RPers can find each other, and borrow (with permission) from each other to create a more enjoyable and realistic setting and game experience.

As I think Coile is hinting in the prior post, a lot of people do seem to miss out on the subtleties of the wiki. But this is just one of the many things it is for and would be better for than any forum post/thread.


Example: the Plotmonkey Category
This is a category for any and all characters stated to be suited as plotmonkeys, able to help plots along by being an expert in some field or skill that may be useful (or essential) to a plot. Just add a =Plotmonkey= heading to your character's wiki profile that explains what they may be particularly useful for and add [[Category:Plotmonkey]] to the listed categories at the bottom, and you're done.

Example 2: The Current Events category has ben empty almost continually. This should instead list all of the currently open, active plots that people can openly join in with. The Supremacy plot being a prime example.

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Nene goes back in time. Changes X. Timeline splits into A and B, Nene returns to her original timeline (A) where things are the same. B is the timeline where different things happened due to the change. Nene goes back again. Timeline C is created. Repeat ad infinitum.

No one goes back and kills (MajorNPC/character) stops event and changes the gameworld, et cetera, et cetera. Problem of time travel plot majorly effecting everyone solved.

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This is very similar to the idea posed at the Militia Forum discussion of this topic. The idea being that what makes this timeline be this timeline, as opposed to one of the infinite alternates, is the precise history of events.

Riled got a little closer to that in his post, for instance:
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If they went back in time to god-mod kill you when you are a bubby, then they wouldn't come back the the universe you still exist in...so they unfortuantly god-mod them-selves out of the game >_<

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Sadly, this falls over in three particular points.

1. Traveling to alternate dimensions/timelines differentiated by often just one small event is what the Portals do at Portal Corporation. The Ouroboros Time-Travel is additional and different, so we cannot simply fudge it to be the same thing.

2. The idea of every litle different event creating its own full universe of a timeline isn't one that can be easily accepted in connection with a super-hero or super-villain game-world. Why? Because you have just taken away all heroics and villainy. Every heroic attempt will automatically create thousands of alternate timelines, just as real as one's own, where the hero actually made things worse, or where the villain failed miserably. Anything there is a chance for will automatically create an entire alternate universe where it happened.

For you heroes who don't kill, this means an obvious situation where however tiny the chance of some freak accident causing you to kit too hard, or a weakpoint, happens in some alternate universe. For each blow you strike, every possible chance of it going wrong is spawned into a new timeline different by one life. Per blow, per opponent, per battle, per mission... a million alternate universes where you killed, just for one where you are.

It just doesn't sit with the heroic situation to knw that in many alternate universes, you automatically not just fail, but make things worse, through your actions.

3. This is the really big point. We only get to make up our own canon where the game developers haven't provided or created one. They get to god-mod quite legitimately because they are the game devs and thus the gods of the gameworld.

There are a quite a few posts in ths thread talking about how a player sees time-travel. Interesting, but ultimately entirely irrelevant to a discussion about the gameworld. The way time-travel works is however the gameworld has it work. It is our job as RPers to then make it real in our characters lives, no matter how much we as players might think it impossible. I mean, hello? Super-strength lets you tear up chunks of concrete to throw? So you have finger-skin tough enough to be forced through solid concrete without causing so much as a hangnail, yet some guy smacking you with a fist can hurt you?

Its a game. The gameworld isn't supposed to be real, only just plausible enough for us to suspend disbelief and play it.

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So if someone returns the favour and godmods YOU by turning Terror into a greasy stain on the club window, you won't ignore that?

Sure you will.

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Darned tooting he did, thus becoming the first RPer I have EVER had to put on ignore. Not only did he refuse to accept the IC consequences to hs actions (and I'd even offered it as an arena match to give him a real chance that common sense woudn't allow for a three-foot midget brandishing a gun just inches from the talons of a dragon (as in a real Oriental Dragon) trained in martial arts virtally from birth), no he topped that off with the same abusive language in tells that I note Echo has experienced too.

God-moder, plus coward. /ignore was the only cure.

((Aye, a big thank you to everyone involved, as this was truly fantastic, with moments of real humour and sincerity despite the surreal setting. As Brit's character noted earlier, this is ecrtainly a very memorable wedding, and a real joy to read and be part of))

((Oops, just realised Brit's opening post sad late evening, where in reality it was after midnight when the zombie hordes attacked. The timing is important to another plot, so can't let it go))

"Unless someone brought in a second army, it should be as clear as it was when the, er, 'choir' marched in from over the hill" Powerstone announced. "The first bunch were awfully untidy above ground so I put them back on my way here. Hadn't realised you were saving them for confetti."

Turning to Pious, Paul added, "Good to see you again, Priest. A while since I've been back to Egypt, but give the place my regards"

Paul retrieved the bottle he'd so carefully guarded on his way to the cathedral, "I thought a bottle of bubbly would be appropriate, Eric"


Looking around her at her friends and family, Suzi couldn't help smiling at the strange yet loyal bunch they made. In answer to Rachel's question, she simply hugged her adopted daughter and said "I'm really glad you found us honey, but I think we'll be just fine. I think we can all stroll together ... Lord help anything that decides to trouble us"

"Congratulations, Brit, old boy!" Paul said, stepping up to pat Eric's shoulder and firmly shake his hand. "and to you also, Suzi, you look radiant, my dear"

Suzi grinned happily "That happens most nights, honey, the only difference is my name changed"

Suzi looked at the shining ring on her finger. "The ring is beautiful, Mr. Stone, thank you. And the ceremony was maginificent, Father. Thank you so much. This means a lot."

"Eric, I love you, always and all ways. Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Suzi said, her soft gaze never lifting from Brit's eyes, and she slipped the ring on his finger.

"Eric gets kissed first, Father" She said, lifting her lips to Brit's.

"Well, I guess that'd be okay Reverend, but no tongues in front of my new husband, okay?" Suzi teased, unable to resist.

Paul stepped forward and handed the two slim, white-gold rings to the Priest.

"I do" Suzi responded.

"I will" Suzi replied instinctively before adding a long list of unspoken provisos in her mind.

Between the unknown medical situation of her artificially mutated DNA and Eric's, the current situation regarding her friend High Burn's child, and the burdens and risks of her super-heroine status, Suzi had a lot of provisos regarding children at the moment, as she and Eric had discussed before.

Suzi smiled to herself. She'd been given a second life. Although it had terrified her at first to be thrown back into this world that she'd tried so hard to escape, this second chance was a life worth living. The man beside her was a large part of the reason for that. He was her anchor to life itself.

"I will" she responded with utter conviction.

"I have" Suzi replied

As Pious came to stand before them, Suzi felt so much elation that she felt she wanted to laugh, or cry, or even both. However, with all the control she'd learned as a professional stage performer, she held herself together for the solemnity of this moment.

Perhaps it was the imposing aura of the cathedral. Perhaps the sincerity in the concern and care of those gathered around. Quite probably it was the depth of her love for Britanic, who despite all his easy-going casual attitude in public, had so literally made life worth living again. Whatever it was, despite all the surreal craziness of a spontaneous marriage before a choir of zombies, in an almost deserted and forgotten Cathedral in the mists of Dark Astoria... this moment did have a solemn gravitas that gave it an undeniable majesty to her.

Suzi looked to Britanic, her eyes moist with the tears she would not shed and felt so much pride, happiness, and of course love that she felt stretched to contain it. Her face lit up in the gentlest of smiles before she turned back to face the Priest, head high, chin up, and completely ready to avow her love for her hero.

The Priest's projected thought-speech came to Suzi's mind as, quite literally, the answer to her prayers. It brought shining hope to the darkest corner of her mind. Forgiveness. Redemption.

Suzi's voice soared brightly in the hymn, matching and enhancing the musical beauty of the Priest's illusions. Turning her gaze to Eric, her eyes shone brilliantly with the power of her love.

Everything was going to work out.