Samuel_Tow

That's very true. When you see them side by side, it's obvious.

However...

The level-up animations for levelling up are different in the same sense that each flake of snow is unique. You can tell they are when you examine them side by side, but to a casual observer, they just look like a flash with fireworks. That's the same problem Arachnos bases face - they may have variety in theory, in that pipes and grates and beams are rearranged between corridor sections, but to me, every place looks like some variety of pipes, grates and beams that I cannot comprehend.

In other words, while the animations for levelling up ARE unique, this is a fact known mostly to the people who made them and those who work on them now. To the players, they look the same. If we wanted level-up fanfare that looks unique, it should have changed in colour or shape or in some way that's more obvious.

I was positive I'd qualified that as "for me," but it looks like I forgot I meant to say that he wasn't a very difficult fight for the character I tackled him with, who was a level 30-something Street Justice/Super Reflexes Scrapper. I can imagine he'd be harder for non-melee characters.

However, what I enjoyed about the fight wasn't the difficulty or lack thereof, but rather the intricacy of the combat script, which despite being quite complex, still did not require me to do know what to do ahead of time. I've often argued against "overly complex" gameplay, but that mostly has to do with the "homework" aspect of such, in that for things like Trials, I either need to know everything that's going to happen before I even start, or I need someone who knows directing me. With Blitz, I was able to get all the information I needed to end the fight from the fight itself. No homework, no preparation needed. It was - to me at least - the perfect combination of complexity that still let me improvise as I went along.

The Blitz fight goes like this:

Stage 1: He's invulnerable, with four machines making it so. He's completely active and WILL kill you if you let him. You need to destroy - not click, destroy - four machines that are making him invulnerable. A lot like the Ajax fight for Dean McArthur.

Stage 2: Standard EB fight. Blitz is vulnerable and will fight until his health drops to 0.

Stage 3: The Black Helicopter arrives, Blitz disappears. The black helicopter is quite difficult to take down, and it's also constantly flying which makes fighting it with something that doesn't have ranged attacks or flight (like what I fought it with) difficult. You can either beat it down conventionally, or click on launchers around the site which take a large chunk out of its health, provided you're not interrupted.

Stage 4: Another conventional EB fight, with Blitz starting at 50% health. He fights to 0 hit points and that ends the fight for good this time.

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As I said before, Blitz not a difficult fight, not really. What he is, however, is an engaging fight, especially the first time I run it. It's not JUST a question of surviving enough damage to get enough time to deal enough damage to beat an enemy's regeneration. It requires me to actually analyse the situation, learn what I need to do and then do it. At the same time, it does not instantly penalise me if I fail. I don't have to instantly know where the invulnerability generators are and destroy them immediately, because the margin for error is quite generous and I have the opportunity to look for them. I don't have to instantly know I have to take down the Black Helicopter with the launcher, because I don't die right away if I don't do it.

Moreover, it's a custom, interesting, unusual boss fight. It's a lot like that Nemesis fight I've been suggesting for years, where you fight the boss down to 75%, he runs away behind a door that you have to break down with enemies pouring in, then he fights to 50% and becomes invincible and you have to break down four machines with enemies pouring in, then he fights to 25% where he powers up and then he finally goes down. The point was that it's not just a fight against an enemy who has very high stats. It's a fight that's actually custom-made, almost like an old MegaMan boss.

Contrast Blitz against something like Khan's Reichsman. The man has a million billion hit points and four AVs. Essentially, you have one giant pool of hit points, regeneration and damage to deal with, and it's easily the game's most boring fight by a very wide margin.

What this content is is godawful boring, easily the most bored I've been in this game since ye olde Hamidon raids. There's a lot going on, yes, but it's a lot akin to walking into a kennel that's full of nothing but chihuahuas. It's a lot of noise and a lot of distractions, but there's nothing at all there to engage me. I generally prefer a slower-paced game where I can actually tell what the devil is going on, what I'm actually doing and what effect my actions are having, a game where I have at least some modicum of control, as it were.

Instead, every iTrial I've run is a clusterhug. I leave with no knowledge or understanding of what just transpired and, after having it explained to me post-end and actually knowing what went on, find myself vastly uninterested in events as they happened. I know there's supposed to be some kind of logic to what needs to be do and when, but all I see is bodymass tossed in the general direction of problems until said problems go away. That's the extent of my ability to comprehend.

Give me a game I can play by myself or with one or two other people at most and I'll always take that over this. With fewer people, it's significantly easier to take everything in and think on your feet than it is in any iTrial I've ever run.

I don't care how fast or difficult or complex these things are. I leave them bored out of my skull like I were forced to stare at a Jackson Pollock painting for 45 minutes of my life.

I have a big problem with "MMO Basics," actually. A while ago, I saw an up-and-coming MMO marketed, more or less, as "has crafting, gear, market, PvP." Um, what game is that? "Doesn't matter. It has crafting, gear, market, PvP. It's an MMO. What else matters?" This, to me, is anathema, and is probably the most prominent source of the creative bankruptcy of the modern MMO scene. You have essentially two types of MMOs. You have WoW, and you have dozens of MMOs trying to be WoW. And that makes for a hideously boring, uninspired gaming environment.

I cannot tell you how sick I am whenever I see a new MMO coming out with the same god damn interface that WoW had back in 2005. I see a Warhammer 40 000 game advertised, but it has a WoW three-branch skill tree. I see a Warhammer Vanilla game advertised and it looks exactly like WoW. I see a gang-based game, a space shooer, an ancient Chinese games, and they're all remakes of the same one game, which itself is a remake of about half a dozen others, just done with more money.

When City of Heroes first came out, it had no loot, it had no raids, it didn't have dozens of currencies and so forth. And many of us were here because of it. Because we didn't want a game that's about these things. Because we didn't want the one and only one type of other MMO on the market. That's why I'm so leery of accepting "MMO basics" any more, because the kind of MMO basics that are usually accepted are exactly the things I hate. Raids are an MMO basic, and I hate the very concept of them. Loot is an MMO basic, and I never wanted any of it. Crafting is an MMO basic and I felt City of Heroes was better without it. Time sinks, death penalties, gear decay, money sinks and so forth are MMO basics, but I don't want any of them.

I get that certain conveniences are to be expected and their lack expected to be a problem. But the LAST thing I want to do is hold an MMO developer to some kind of colouring book MMO template, because I've seen all the template-made MMOs out there, and I'm not impressed.

Because Blasters suck harder than Stalkers ever have, and there isn't a thing I can suggest that's going to fix that which has a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted. That was just an exaggerated hyperbole to say that I'm not terribly interested in what Stalkers are turned into, so long as they work. And they really didn't work before. Not on a comparable level.

People also loved the old, pre-Defiance 2.0 Blasters and argued incessantly that the new Defiance is for poor players who played wrong and that veteran elite players knew how to leverage the old Defiance by staying at low health and not dying. This doesn't change the fact that the AT sucked so bad that even the development team had to admit it was the worst performer in the entire game by far.

I'm sure you enjoyed the old Stalkers. I'm also sure that the way the old Stalkers used to play is impossible to make competitive in a game system where enemies can never lose sight of you short of running away past the engine's draw distance, even then not always. I'm sure there's no way to make that AT work in a game whose mission designers started adding ambushes and never stopped - ambushes that see through Stealth and interrupt Assassin's Strike. Since their very inception in I6, Stalkers have been trying to do something the game could never achieve - use stealth in combat. City of Heroes combat does not do stealth. There is no stealth in combat. The only purpose of stealth is to AVOID combat. You can mitigate Stalkers' inherent weaknesses, but as long as stealth and interruptibility do not work in combat, you're never going to fix them, not to a competitive degree.

And I remind you, a recent developer comment warned against commenting that "Snipes suck" in regard to the new Blast powerset because Snipes were slated for a review. It seems like someone's finally realised that long-windup interruptible powers just don't work very well. And I couldn't be happier for it.

The thing with Scrappers is they aren't underperforming. Arguments can be made about how Brutes can probably possibly gain greater damage sometimes, but Scrappers still have the luxury of being the game's most uncomplicated AT. There's no Fury to worry about, there are no controlled criticals to track... There isn't even any team role for a Scrapper. It's the AT for people who want to flip out and kill stuff, and it does that quite well.

Scrappers do not underperform, not on teams, not solo. There might be a few odds and ends to improve on the AT and wouldn't really be against it, but Scrappers don't have a problem in need of solution. Stalkers, by contrast, did underperform, and significantly. I'm sure plenty of people were OK with the whole AT underperforming just as I know for a fact that plenty of people like Blasters for being "hard mode" (which is code for "I have to try harder to get the same result"), but that really doesn't reflect on the AT's overall performance.

Like Dominators, Stalkers were seen to underperform and improvements were made. None of their tools were removed, so if you really wanted to, you could still play Stalkers exactly the same as you did before. Simply don't use Assassin's Strike out of Hide. But you wouldn't want to do that, would you? Why gimp yourself by not using the AT's strengths to their fullest? My point exactly.

Certainly, I have no problem with it. I'm also waiting for Stalkers to get Titan Weapons, Battle Axe and War Mace.

Because insulting my intelligence is a much better way to make me better understand your point, right?


That's assuming you have "hard hitters" to speak of, which not a lot of Stalker sets do. The hardest hitter Broadsword has that's a guaranteed critical is Disembowel, which isn't that hard, Katana's Golden Dragonfly is even less impressive, Electric Melee doesn't really have anything more interesting than Havoc Pucn and Dual Blades' best is Vengeful Slice. You can try to make an argument for opening with an AoE, but this is an argument I will simply never accept, because I am not interested in non-guaranteed criticals. I've tried to use them and failed to score a single critical enough times to not want to bother.

You're right, Assassin's Strike was never meant to be used in combat. And that was the problem which was fixed. Before, Assassin's Strike was just about a waste of a power pick. I don't care how good it is, it's still a power I can't use more than once per fight, and it's nowhere near good enough to merit that kind of uselessness. It was nothing more than a melee snipe with all the crap inherent in snipes, with the added indignity of depending on another highly interruptible effect. This power was literally only ever worth using once to open the fight, and even then only if someone doesn't aggro first and cause that Tsoo Sorcerer to fire off his Hurricane and break both your Hide and your Assassin's Strike.

This is hardly the first time people have wanted to play the "wrong" way and the game has been made to accommodate us. Feel free to believe it was a mistake. That doesn't make it true. As far as I'm concerned, NOT being able to use a power I give up a decent attack for in combat was wrong, and now it's been made right.

No, it does not. If I wanted to fight like a Scrapper, I'd make a Scrapper. Stalkers need to be different from Scrappers in a way more meaningful than how the fight starts. Assassin's Focus does this. You may not see it, but I do, because I've played plenty of Scrappers and none of them play like this. Not even Street Justice, which has a similar mechanic.

They could have been, but I'm not sure that would have been a better solution. An interruptible Assassin's Strike is *** regardless of the circumstances. No change to the power which left it interruptible would have been sufficient for me, because no change that left it interruptible would have made it useful in combat. And I will be damned before I run away from enemies until they lose aggro.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Because apparently what I got from your points before wasn't what you were trying to get at. I recall once upon a time Venture said something I took a different way. In an effort to browbeat people arguing ghosts could be of the Natural origin, he said "There's nothing natural about ghosts." I was inspired to interpret this to mean that the creation of a ghost is unnatural, a soul not doing what it was supposed to be, thus Ghosts were naturally not of the Natural origin. Venture later clarified that what he'd really meant was "You're stupid if you think ghosts can be of the Natural origin." as he tends to do, which I didn't specifically agree with.

It transpires that you what I thought you were saying way back when was something completely different from what you were actually saying. Having had a better view of what you're really saying, how could I NOT stop listening to you? I'm glad I understood you wrong, because what I took from your old posts makes for a lot more entertaining game than what it turns out you were actually suggesting. Obviously, it's my fault for misunderstanding, but here we are at the end of the day - you complaining and I satisfied. Considering how hard I've been on essentially every aspect of the game over the past year, I find myself greatly unmotivated to mind a version of Stalkers I enjoy playing greatly.

And yet you go on to restate essentially what I described you as saying. You have a specific idea of how Stalkers should play and the new changes don't correspond to it. That's what it boils down to.

And I welcome you to go ahead and prove that. I also warn you that not terribly many may care either way. So Stalkers aren't Stalkers any more. Fine by me. The old Stalkers sucked and the new ones are awesome. I quite literally do not care what they're "like" so long as they're fun to play, and the new Stalkers are fun to play. I've made it a point to stick with Stalkers ever since Castle made their original improvements, but I've always been too polite to say it in plain text - the AT was horrible, broken and gimped. Less so than other ATs, but gimped nonetheless. The best you could hope for was to have sub-par performance with much more effort and much more reliance on luck. The AT no longer sucks, and I honestly don't care what it turned into to get there. I wouldn't bat an eye if they turned Stalkers into Blasters if they played better.

As for how it's different? How are Scrappers different from Brutes? Not very, when you get down into the basic mechanics. What's different is the "feel" of it. Scrappers feel like "stand-and-fight" fighters who bring enemies down with constant, consistent, reliable damage. They're the characters who jump into the fray and keep hitting stuff until stuff stops moving. Stalkers, to me, have the kind of explosive damage and surprise attack edge that Scrappers don't really have, or at least don't have to nearly this degree. The ability for my team-mates to blink and miss all of a lieutenant's health disappearing is what makes the AT for me.

Clearly, you disagree, but this really isn't a subject we can argue about. It's a question of "feel," and to me, it simply "feels" different. My Stalkers still feel just as underpowered as they did before if I choose to scrap it out entirely, but luckily, I don't scrap it out nearly as often as you seem to think I should.

Victory and Pinnacle, and I have Stalkers on both. Right now, I'm focusing on Kim on Pinnacle, who's just about to make level 31. I'd welcome the company, but I'm really not sure what you hope to achieve here. Do you just want to see what I do and how I fight? Can probably demo-record that for you. Do you hope to show me it's better to not use Hidden Assassin's Strike? Because I don't learn from example very well. Honest question - what do you feel will change if we play together?

DPS, DPS, DPS. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I haven't run the numbers and I'm not going to run the numbers because, to be quite honest, I don't give a toss. If I were all about DPS, I'd play my Dark Melee characters without ever using Twilight Grasp or Syphon Life. I like seeing big numbers and enemies losing their health all in one go. It doesn't have to be optimal, it has to be good enough, and that's more than good enough.

Also, when do you start counting DPS? From when you enter a mission to when you exit? From when you queue up your first attack? Because, to me, it really doesn't matter what happens until the first enemy aggroes. If it takes longer to set up and thus I get less DPS, then so be it. "Longer" is still within the neighbourhood of seconds, nothing of the sort of what I'd have to set up as a Devices Blaster. About the only argument I could see is that I'm wasting Build Up time, but really, I'd take that for the return of being able to kill that Nerva Spectral demon in-between when he sees me and when he turns on his Chill of the Night or being able to take out that Sapper before he can sap me, or that Steel Strong Man before he can debuff me.

There's more to this game than DPS. And no, Stalkers are still not all about DPS. Like I said, you are literally physically incapable of ruining my satisfaction with Stalkers. It's not humanly possible.

The Doom Marine is a bit of a special example. As a basic protagonist, he really is just "some guy," but like Gordon Freeman, he's "the right man in the wrong place" and he ends up literally fighting his way out of hell, and that really does make him both special and historic. You have to imagine that this guy is both awesome enough to do that and that the experience has made him even more awesome. That's not exactly what I had in mind, you're right, but it's not that far away, actually. And it's definitely something I'd want to roll with, so to speak.

A player after my own heart I'm often accused of god-modding or wanting everything handed to me when I state my desire for pretty much exactly what you describe. It transpires that to some people, it's the struggle and helplessness before a greater power that makes a character compelling, and thus a character who has nothing to fear or worry about is logically less compelling. While that's squarely into personal opinion territory, mine lies exactly where yours does - I have the deepest respect for characters who have the confidence to do amazing things without having make sure everything goes their way AND the power to actually pull it off without dying or failing horribly.

Granted, this can be somewhat less exciting from a dramatic standpoint, but there are more ways to make a story enjoyable than strict drama, at least from my perspective.

I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, you insist that a sandbox has to have something for everyone, so if it lacks a non-combat alternative, it's not a sandbox. On the other hand, in the very next sentence, you state that a sandbox MMO that is entirely non-combat exists and you're perfectly fine with calling it a sandbox. Why is one that has only combat but no non-combat activities rejected but one that has only non-combat activities and no combat accepted? Doesn't that seem one-sided and not really about having something for everyone? Because from everything you've said so far, it seems like you define "sandbox" as a "game" that's entirely non-combat, but can have combat as an alternative if you REALLY wanted to.

I'm sad to say that I don't feel this has been entirely satisfactory, and not because I don't think you've done enough to explain. It just seems to me that your interpretation of "sandbox" is so far removed from anything I'd even begin to consider gaming that I really find I have quite literally no use for the term, as defined like this. Again, that's not a dig against you, I just really can't think of a situation that interests me, personally, where this term with this definition would come into play, aside from Second Life, MineCraft and... Um, Myst Online Uru? Maybe there are more I'm not aware of, but I can't imagine there are that many which aren't PNP or MUD or otherwise non-graphical.

I'm with this Guy - I don't like wide-ranging unpredictability when all that means is some of the spawns are likely to be too hard to kill and thus no fun to fight. I'm actually one of the people who suggested an option which eliminated level drift altogether and ensured all enemies spawned at the level I chose for them to spawn at. I like having control over my own experience, and if I want my experience to be easy and monotonous, why would anyone want to argue with me?

I really don't mind having more variety in the enemies we face, just because the exact same spawn composition group after group after group is very easy to develop a static routine for. I ran a bunch of Sky Raider missions that exclusively gave me the exact same spawns every time, and my tactics were always the same - assassinate one Engineer, placate the other engineer, combo whatever's left. I like variety for the fact that it means I don't have to keep repeating the exact same algorithm every time. But I don't want more difficulty as a means to achieving this.

That's part of what makes me smile, as well. Ganking one person at a time has always worked, and it has always worked just fine, but what killed my enjoyment and fast was that anything ASIDE from ganking one person at a time felt underpowered and lacking. Now, Stalkers can gank one person and then keep on fighting without feeling like they're fighting at a disadvantage. Not only has this made 90% of the AT's gameplay considerably less disappointing, but it has made the ganking process more fun, too, just because the entire AT is better and more welcoming for it.

I think I see what you mean, but I still maintain that that line in the sand is pretty clear. I just picked a poor way of describing it Let's try something else: You seem to enjoy creating your characters from the bottom up - create a relatively normal person and then pile experiences on top of him, and then pile powers on top of that, and then pile super-powered experiences on top of all of that. I, personally, build mine from the top down - I start with a ludicrous super power, I derive a history from it, and only then do I create a character to pit it all in. In essence, my characters don't start out as people who became super-powered, they start out as ideas which gained a humanoid shape.

I played through a recent Fantasy RPG and was so disappointed with its final revelation that I had to wonder... What if my character were that god inside the mountain that these all-powerful bad guys worship? We know something of immense power happened and a corpse turned up that later came to life and grew amazingly powerful. What if my character literally were the god of that fictional universe? Of course, that's not the case, but that's how my ideas form and where they come from.

That's also why I tend to make "THE character" so very often - because those kinds of historic personalities are the easiest to be impressed with. They left their mark in history, surely they did something to deserve it. It transpires that I, personally, really need my characters to have had some hand in making some kind of history for me to really stick with them, hence why it's so important to make that distinction.

This is another place where I have to draw a line, but again, that's on a personal level. I DO NOT tie my characters into the game's established lore. Ever. I've had a few I tried to do that to, but for all but one, I've either rerolled the characters or changed their biographies. I consider tying my own characters into City of Heroes to be extremely bad practice, that that's strictly and only about my own characters. I've no problem with others who do this. But for myself, these are my "babies," they're something I take both pride and joy in. I can't really feel either if I know I most of their backstory, I didn't make. I just borrowed it from an existing author.

Moreover, I'm not in direct control of City of Heroes lore, and that's a problem when you think as big as I do. The things I want to do, I simply can't do in this fictional universe as I'd simply ruin it for everybody. You're right in that I can't make, say, the scientist who invented inter-dimensional travel here, because that scientist already exists in fiction, he's named and his fate written out (tortured and killed by Reichsman). And even if we ignore direct canon contradictions, because I'm not in control of the game's lore, I can't make any big claims because other people are likely making the same claim, and I have no authority to insist mine is more worthy. Because mine isn't more worthy, we're all equal players.

My solution to continuity snarls is to shift my narrative to "other places." I have a few time-travellers from a time-line that no longer exists, I have quite a few aliens from other dimensions that the game has no control over, I have quite a few aliens from other planets that the game can't say anything about, I have quite a few spirits from alternate plains of existence that the game simply hasn't mentioned and so on. When I make big claims, they're usually about environments that no-one but me has any control over. Because these "other places" are completely under my control, I can make any claim I want, and no-one can argue with me. Because it affects no-one and no-one really needs to care.

I like to subscribe to a "live and let live" sort of philosophy.

I'll definitely have a look. Aside from text errors, I've heard nothing but good stuff about Dark Astoria's writing. I still suspect we're speaking about different things, though. When we talk about a good villain, I'm much more often after greatness and audacity than I am after evil and despicable acts. I've always held that while wanton murder and torture might indeed make one a villain, that's still not a "good" villain that I want to play as.

That's not a dig against Dark Astoria, of course. I'm just saying we might not mean the same things when we talk about villains.

This sort of approach that's going to represent the line in the sand not just between you and me, but for the whole idea in general. It really comes down to whether you prefer characters who reached their superiority through hard work and dedication, or whether you favour the ones who were fated, just because fated characters typically reach a MUCH higher level of inherent power. Again, neither approach is wrong or bad, it's just a matter of personal preference, and mine just happens to lie with those fated for greatness. It has less to do with circumventing the labour than it has to do with the sheer absurdity of importance such a character can attain.

To give you an example, let's take a common but very determined man. His exploits and his power could well become legendary if, after many years of hard work and training, he simply became the greatest human who ever lived. Let's avoid "toe treading" for a moment and assume that's the case. Even then, how powerful do you really foresee that character being? How powerful when, within the span of a day, an old god with power greater than our entire universe combined, can return into our existence and reassert authority? What, really, did that god do to earn this kind of power? Nothing. He was born/made/imagined with it. Of course, you can fudge ways for a common but highly skilled and intelligent man to challenge a god, but on the grand scheme of "greatness," you really can't compete on the field of aesthetics, personal opinion depending.

It comes down to what characters interest you, I suppose. For me, one source of inspiration for even posing this question was actually League of Legends. Gameplay notwithstanding, each character in that game has both a name and a "title" of sorts. Just for instance, you have Volibear, the Thunder's Roar (huge lightning-infused armoured bear), or Galio, the Sentinel's Sorrow (large magical gargoyle) or Nautilus, the Titan of the Depths (heavy diving suit armed with a large boat anchor) and so on. Each of these is not just "a champion," they are all somehow remarkable, somehow important and indeed often somehow historic, because each of them had to be invited into the League of Legends. You almost don't have any regular people because these simply don't get accepted. Everyone who does make the cut is, thus, unique and deserving of that honour.

I don't necessarily have a league of my own legends, but that very much mirrors my own instinctive criteria for accepting a character concept for exclusion in my own roster. Not just anyone can be among my chosen, there has to be something very special about that character in order to hold my interest. And I have, historically, made many characters that lacked this. Almost to the last, these have been expunged, expanded on or re-written.

Of course, that's just me

From the many, MANY arguments we've had on the subject, I don't believe Leo has a chip on his shoulder so much as he has a very specific vision of what he wants Stalkers to be. It's a lot like what I used to have for Blasters once upon a time, until I learned to let it go. And to be honest, I don't really have a problem with alternate interpretations of what an AT should stand for. Specifically, he has a very strong opinion on the usefulness of AoEs out of hide and their 60% chance to score Hidden criticals.

However, I feel that this was a direct and very necessary change to Stalkers, and I feel it made them not just stronger numerically, but also significantly more fun to play. As I said in my original post, they don't strike me as playing like Scrappers at all. I still make extensive use of Hide, I still make extensive use of Placate and the Assassination Criticals, exactly like I did before. That part hasn't changed because that part wasn't broken. It's what Stalkers did when NOT hidden that was the sore spot, and that's the area the fix has targeted.

I guess the fear is that out-of-hide combat now sucks so little that in-hide combat will become neglected. And it will, if you're cynical. But really, in-Hide combat is still superior to out-of-hide Combat and the surprise attack of an Assassin's Strike is still a very powerful tool. There's no reason to not use it if you're already hidden at the start of the fight. Unlike Blaster Snipes that can only pump out 2.72 scale damage for their 4+ second activation time, Assassination Criticals can pump out 9.0 scale damage for their 2-3 second animation times. That, to me, is still a win.

The bottom line, really, is that Stalkers are better and more fun now than they have ever been since they came out in I6. Whether it's the precise kind of fun everyone was expecting, I can't say, but in no way, under no spin, can they be claimed to have become worse.

My condolences for your characters

This, really, is why I made the thread, though. One evening, just out of the blue, I realised why some of my characters had such a pull for me while others, despite having great costumes, exciting concepts and solid builds, simply left me cold to think about them. THAT is why - these were characters I'd created without making them remarkable in some way that's going to excite me once the costumes and powers grow old. The funny thing here is that actually having been able to put this into words that I can say has made it much, MUCH easier to spot the characters I need to "fix" without having to rely on imprecise gut instinct and lots of trial and error.

Occasionally, I will say swear to never forget Insane Rick, and I realise that this is precisely what killed what might have been an amusing concept. Rick was a man born completely unkillable, and also completely stupid. He was one of the legions of headless characters, but only because Rick decided to pull his own head off. The poor fool was so stupid he really didn't miss it. You'd think that would be cool (or ridiculous) enough to be interesting, but for me, it just didn't work. I couldn't quite say why, but now it occurs to me that I simply didn't give the man anything meaningful to set him apart. He had a gimmick, but no real story to speak of. Without a real story, I was left unable to write for him, and thus lost all interest. Now that I know why that is, I foresee my character-making future being brighter than ever

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I also want to address what I see as an undercurrent in a lot of replies: Making my character "THE character" in some aspect runs the risk of stepping on the toes of other people. Well, it does and it doesn't. While I can certainly see how claiming the title that another person has claimed, such as "world's strongest psychic," might be a bone of contention, there are a couple of tricks to doing this that don't run into this problem in the slightest.

The easiest solution is other planets, other dimensions, other timelines, other realities, other plains of existence and generally "other places" where my characters achieve their status. I see our shared fictional world here in City of Heroes as the "capital" of our fictional nation, whereas all of the specific fictional settings that gave rise to our separate characters are the different faraway provinces. In this way, I can claim that my character was THE scientist who invented inter-dimensional travel in his dimension, but that doesn't have to mean that the other seven scientists who the THE scientist that invented inter-dimensional travel in their home dimensions are any less deserving of the title. We are all kings of our own home towns, but none of us is king over the other because we're not in our home towns any more.

The very first time the seed of this idea struck me was when I was designing my F Squad, the soldiers from the future who fought to secure the timeline so their perfect utopia over a million years into the future would not be ruined. Each of the four that survive is not just a great person, but an actual historical personality from that future. The squad commander is the future's greatest hero and living proof that human potential still reigns supreme, the other is essentially the father of the future's advanced technologies, the other still is the founder of the future's concept of military discipline and integration of human soldiers with battle technology and the final one is a an AI-controlled robot who ended the future's AI rebellion and earned artificial life forms an equal place in society. Each of these people helped build the world of the future, and when I made them all, I left with a profound yet inexplicable sense of ultimate satisfaction.

I've not really played any of these characters, not past level 2, anyway, but they're still easily some of my favourite creations, just because the very ideas behind their history motivate me to care, and motivate me to want to play them. I'm just pressed for time, is all.

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I find that looking at character designs as THE character or A character is at least a somewhat novel approach. You may, obviously, not really care about the distinction, and you may very well not agree with my affinity for one side over the other. That's fine. Character design is a very personal thing. Nevertheless, I still want to know about it, and I still want to discuss it. This is interesting stuff, and it's helping me gain not just a deeper understanding about the many factors that make up a compelling character, but also develop a more instinctive sense for them. Plus, it's just interesting to talk about, I think

OK, you have me there. No, I have no. I saw a little of it on Test, but that was from the Hero side since of things. I certainly hope that Incarnate content, at the very least, would let villains pursue their own agendas and pull off their own plans.

My complaints have more to do with the SSAs being seen as villains finally getting a win. Maybe, but the villains getting that win there sure as hell ain't my villains.

That is an amusing observation, yes, and it's one I actually do share The SSAs have put Darrin Wade over so strongly that even as a villain player, I no longer care about fighting the good guys. I want to take Wade down, instead. And, yes, if I can do that, I will probably save the world. Even if that's not my intention, that's what I'll end up doing.

What I find even more amusing is that, for the longest time, people complained that villains spent most of their time fighting other villains or working for other villains, and this wasn't "villainous enough." And now what's being touted as being the pinnacle of satisfying villain? Working for Darrin Wade, and eventually fighting Darrin Wade. Oh, sure, you cap a few heroes along the way, but they're small potatoes. That's not what you're after. You're after Wade. You want to serve Wade. You want to usurp Wade.

This isn't about villains fighting heroes, it's about villains leeching off another villain. When am I going to follow my own plans and work for myself again?