Aerofiel

And if no one answers, the game is no longer fun to the troll. Trolls thrive on getting a response out of people. Thus, they're happier when you respond to them. If you truly believe the original post was a trolling post, then why bother responding to it? It's like approaching a drunk trying to start a fight and talking trash to him, then complaining when he breaks a bottle over your head.

Keep feeding the trolls, whichever ones you think exist, and they will continue to come back for more, raising the same exact argument every time, because they know that button works on you. And it seems to have worked Expertly on a great majority of the responders in this thread, if the OP is indeed a troll.

Trolling is about Control. Making you respond. Which seems to work in this case. If they don't get any responses, and no one plays their game, then they get bored and find someplace else to troll.

Even single 2-texture planes pull cycles, because on even the most advanced graphics card, every texture matters, even just slightly. Especially when they're being animated(moving in one direction, or if your camera angle is changing, a time where low-end graphics cards often experience the sharpest lag).

In the meantime, this isn't just about making the game more playable on low-end systems, but also for making it more enjoyable for players who simply don't want that extra noise. Also, toggle effects do not all use this billboarding effect, in fact, many use transparent render effects, i.e. "Bubbles" combined with an animated polygon effect, hence why the polygon "rotates" ever so slightly. Combine that with the effect it creates over the objects behind, and it can put a bit of a hit on older, lower-end cards. But that aside, some players simply don't want to(or care to) see it.

I've seen numerous complaints of "I wish I could turn off your armor effect" as well, i.e. when ice armor is cast upon you by another player, and you simply don't want to see that on your player(It looks particularly funny on Khelds, for instance). This isn't just about increasing compatibility; This is about increasing customizeability. Allowing each player to make each install truly their own in every way. If the number of possible vectors of customization in character generation were available for interface customization, that'd make for a very interesting gameplay experience.

This could easily be taken much further. I'm sure there're players who don't care about global textures beyond flat colors as well, though this is a bit of an extreme. "Disable World Textures", perhaps? It worked very well for Katamari, in that it allowed the lower-end CPU of the PS2 to render Far more on the screen with far greater efficiency. Some players might want the immersive full-city texture effect, but some players may simply not care. Something to consider.

To answer the question of "Why would you recompress the Audio"? Because it'd be incredibly daft to run two different decompression systems at once when one could concieveably use one to handle both jobs for less on the CPU cycles. Especially when the music effects could be tied in to prevent unnecessary overrides or combinations of music playing at one time.

In the meantime, Winamp is incredibly limited. Currently, it STILL lacks a true 5.1 output system that doesn't simply mirror the music across separate speakers, and does not properly parse AC3 audio across those speakers. CoH supports 3d sound. See the difference?

Apparently a lot of you misread my second posting. The bit about "Costume changes making a difference for powers" ONLY applies to the theoretical inclusion of the "Transformation" secondary powerset, which would apply boosts, and grant one extra costume slot for the armor transformation.

The thing is, what I am seeing in your statement is two separate powersets. Psylocke used a melee psionics powerset, in a sense, which might be a good power for scrappers. Basically, a punch that caused holds, disorients, confusion, etc. Might be fun.

As for the light blades, I agree, they'd be a ton of fun! Yes, they do get used a lot in japanese animation, but so do silly poses, which people seem to think that American superheroes have the monopoly on. Really, the genres aren't much different if you break them down; One is a comicbook about a superhero, the other is a slightly longer comicbook about a superhero, one just happens to go further into the daily-life details of that particular hero. I'm reminded of the second series of Justice League, wherein helfer and giffen actually pioneered the concept of "What superheroes do when they're not saving the world, and what happens if they don't all like each other that much".

But as for the light blades? Put them on scrappers using blades! We've got khopeshes, we've got kris's, why not light blades? They'd be a fun effect, especially fully colorable!

*EDIT* Also, to avoid lawsuits: Plasma sword. because there's already a fire melee, this could be an energy melee set? Though I still say the beam blade should be available to all melee classes. Perhaps as a craftable item? We need more craftable costume parts anyway! And perhaps a badge to go with them. "Craft 10 Costume Parts", "Craft 10 Temporary Powers", etc.

Curiousity...

How is it that super-heroes from other countries aren't included in the superhero genre? I'm not saying we need the big-eyes effect, but I'm saying that this could help draw in fans of other superhero groupings as well, i.e. the Dino-men/Power-ranger/Kamen-Rider fan types of ages long past(Personally I think they're a bit silly, but that's just me, superheroes in tights performing silly poses are always a bit odd-waaaaaait).

But that's why it would also include a wide variety of hero-oriented material from the genre. Something to make the expansion pack worth the 10 bucks to everyone that looked over it.

Perhaps it might even include a Power Armor secondary powerset for Scrappers/primary for tanks, which would grant two costume slots to start with(the second would be required to use the Armor slots for the chest and legs(And yes, this is a common theme among American superheroes as well)), the first power of the set being "Transform". Several powers in the set could be used to increase damage, increase total HP, speed up healing, all passive(always on) when the Transform power is active, but the transform power would severely reduce the endurance recovery rate, basically increasing your surviveability, but decreasing your long-term battle effectiveness. At higher level(perhaps tier 9), an endurance recovery power could be made available for the transformed set, which would allow you to slot endurance recovery enhancements, granting you the ability to work in battle in a more long term way.

Wow. I'm absolutely appalled at what I am seeing here. Yes, the devs have said it's not going to happen, but let's be honest here. The only reason a lot of you are trashing this guy so much is the standard MMO elitist attitude that gets pushed around this much, "We had to walk fifteen miles in the snow to get our 50s only to have them nuked in a patch, so so will you!". It's no wonder that people have been leaving CoH in droves if that's what sort of attitude the community portrays...

To the original poster, I offer this. Powersets are relatively balanced these days, you won't have near as many issues with your powersets now as you might have in the earlier days when this sort of suggestion would have been an incredibly Good idea(i.e. for those of us that rolled fire/fire tanks in Issue 6, only to find out twenty or so levels down the road that they were in fact the WORST classification to play in the game). With a standard in-game respec, you should be able to change the way your character plays in a pretty drastic way, should you want to, given that most individual powersets have enough flexibility in them that you can make a real difference in how you approach things simply by changing a couple powers around. I suggest doing as many respec-granting Trials as you can, if you haven't already, and toying around with your toons until you find a groove that really works for you. Spec yourself out one way with a planner, play with it for a week or two, see how you like it, and if you don't, respec and do it again, until you find that groove that really works for you.

ADDENDUM: Reading over what Tenzhi had to say gave me a thought on this. Perhaps a power-tree replacement respec would be best suited for someone with A: At least 200 badges, or a good lot of defeat badges(grind badges are incredibly tedious, especially when you later find out that you did them on a toon you really don't like playing), B: Having reached at least level 40 on that toon(Plenty of time to try out, respec out a few times, and realize that the build is entirely no fun at all), and a swappable C: The powerset in question has undergone moderate to major changes(changes in endurance cost, damage output, healing output, defense, etc) in at least one major Issue release.

As an additional addendum, the idea of a Reslot isn't a bad one, in my opinion. Perhaps a set of mission trees and trials that specifically grant a Reslot, which, as the name suggests, would allow you to re-slot every power you have currently(naturally, powers would be limited in the number of slots by the number of levels you have had the powers for already, etc). This would work well for folks that like their powers, but don't necessarily want to go through the hellacious trial for getting a single respec, or for those that would like to simply try a different slot configuration before attempting a complete respec.

In light of the recent Ultra Mode additions to the city of heroes games, perhaps it is time to also increase the ability to disable unnecessary and/or redundant specific occurences to increase in-game framerates for players on slower systems?

Enable/Disable/Only Self: Visual Toggles: Allows you to disable the visual effects shown by the toggles of all players, reducing the necessity for on-screen particles and clear textures being shown, as well as other effects of the like. Only toggles on yourself will be visible, whether cast by you or by others when Only Self is selected.

Enable/Disable Visual Inspirations: Those little rotating icons around a player while they're using inspirations don't seem like much, but in mass amounts, they can lower framerates on lower-end systems. This would allow you to disable this visual effect.

Enable/Disable Extraneous environment effects: This would remove effects like floating newspapers and garbage, leaves, and the like, increasing performance, if disabled.

There are other effects similar to this that may improve in-game performance, I am sure. Let's hear what everyone has to suggest in this! Even for players that have a high end system to work with, this may assist in simply removing unnecessary or undesireable(to some) effects, allowing each player to tailor their game to their individual liking.

So, this could produce some interesting results in regards to how the game is played out. Allow players to put several MP3s into a folder in their CoH play data information folder to be recompressed by in-game tools for an in-game radio. Doesn't sound that exciting? Well here's where it gets interesting. Have that radio interrupt-capable for global events(this can be disabled, of course), i.e. "We interrupt this broadcast to report a 5 alarm fire in progress in Steel Canyon", or perhaps "This is an alert from the Vanguard enforcement service, rikti invaders have been sighted in the skies over (blank), you are advised to take cover immediately", and the like. Have this on voice, so that people don't have to read over them just to check them out. Couple that with the ability to set stations specific to areas(Outside and Mission radios of course, each independently able to disable global reporting), and you'll add a lot more customizeability to the game!

So I've noticed that there're a lot of little hidden inspirations for certain costume components in the game. Perhaps it'd be nice to see even more little ones, like a Sentai mask! Specifically, a Detail 2 part done in shiny metallic, as a set of fake lips that do not move. Additionally, the japanese giant-robot helms could be added to the set(check Gundam, Gaogaigar, and others for a relative representation of these), along with the V-fins for the head, and other additions. Additionally, this pack could include other power-armors inspired by japanese animation, including components to build the Bio-Booster armor from the Guyver(it really didn't change much between Japan and the US movies...) series.

The set could be finished out with a set of beam-oriented weapons, as well as semi-anime inspired weaponry as well(Elbow mounted blades for dual-blade scrappers, for instance), and new costume change emotes of a similar nature(see Danzaivar of the Eretsvaju title).

I'm sure there're a lot of additional ideas that could come into play with this idea. Let's hear all of yours, everyone!

My question is, and I'm sure this has been answered otherwise, but When? When is the Double XP weekend slated to occur?

Don't you love it when you join a nice relaxed SG that's not too pushy in any direction...

Don't you hate it when you realize that you've donated more prestige than any other member ever has, but you still don't ever see anyone else on anymore?

Don't you love it when you Finally get that TF together you've been trying to get going for a week...

Don't you hate it when your fiance immediately gives you that "I'm disappointed that you're playing your game" look, the moment you get started, and begins asking every twenty minutes how long you're going to be?

This post will hopefully be updated by everyone here whenever you get the inspiration to say something like this. List one thing you like, and one thing(hopefully related to) you hate. This can be game related, or just be for fun anyway.

Don't you Love it when: you find the perfect costume parts for the look you want, using your Free Tailor session to install all of them together...

Don't you Hate it when: you notice after building and selecting said costume that there's a part overlap that makes you look like a clown!