Arcanaville

Don't get me started. Don't get me started.

Too late, you got me started.

Since almost the dawn of time, I have been on a mission to make Martial Arts more than a pretty face. Few sets have been as weirdly broken or misbalanced as MA, and for years I begged, cajoled, threatened, and beamed mind control rays at Castle to get him to take another look at MA and address one of several key performance issues.

I even went to BaB and asked him to take a look at shaving a few frames of animation from MA to speed it up. BaB promptly went and sped up almost everybody else to reduce the buffer for weapon redraw (he did eventually loop back around and speed up a couple MA powers).

When Dual Blades came out, I saw an opportunity to address what is the core critical problem with MA. MA is, and I'm not just pulling this out of my hat, supposed to be a jack of all trades secondary effects master. That's actually written down somewhere, unless Castle shredded it before leaving. But its secondary effects are a mess.

Slowing a target you're also immobilizing? Are you insane?

Anyway, with Dual Blades new combo system, which is just mode bit manipulation, I specifically asked Castle if we could leverage that system to add better secondary effects to MA. After all, the whole notion of combos seems to be a martial arts-like effect in the first place. And Castle told me that no, that wasn't possible because combos were created just for Dual Blades, and using them in other places would dilute a special feature granted to Dual Blades.

I asked him several times to reconsider this, but the answer was basically the same.


So then Castle leaves and Black Scorpion becomes the head banana and Second Measure says "hey Synapse how bout making a punchy punchy set" and Synapse goes "hey, combos would be cool" and I'm sitting here going, well, of course combos would be cool to use to add some extra interesting effects to that set since after all it would have been such a good idea to do for Martial Arts in the first place ARRGHH!! ARRRGHHH!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!






So anyway, combos for Martial Arts. Probably not a bad idea.

On average, about one too many.

That makes sense. Both the Willpower part and the Iggy part. But when I tried an experiment with my MA/SR, I discovered that while it might be theoretically possible, the amount of time it would have taken to defeat crowds of Cims with phalanx fighting making them really hard to hit was going to be longer than the heat death of the universe. Perhaps there's some trick to it I'm unaware of, or perhaps once again Katana just plain smokes MA, this time with all those defense debuffs.

Its still pretty impressive though, even with DA neutralizing much of the Cim's bite.

My objection is not that people are right to lodge this complain, only that they will and taking the steps you were advocating in their totality would radically increase the level of these types of complaints. The fact that people are making that complaint now is a fact, the notion that these complaints would increase if the numbers were more closely coupled with the advertising of the set seems difficult to fathom any possible objection to. It seems obviously inevitable. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. My objection is solely that asserting an *obligation* to release numbers for powersets, and to do so in a way far more extensively than already done for existing sets and in a way coupled with the advertising of the powerset *will* cause people to object when those numbers are changed more strongly than for other powersets and more often than if the numbers were simply released by the same avenues they exist for current powersets: no more, and no less.

Are you saying you think that actually won't happen when you say you disagree, or are you saying you think it might happen but you simply don't care if it happens when you say you disagree.

With all the defense debuffing, do you think your build is actually capable of soloing a MoITF? I ask because MoITF is a specific problem I've spend the last few months studying a lot, in terms of all the myriad ways its possible to get it more or less solo, and at what cost.

I've found that using multiple characters is a lot cheaper than trying to make a single character capable of doing it, even if you only really play one of them at a time. But I know a really powerful dominator can do it; I don't know if a Scrapper can do it (haven't heard of it before, and there seems to be some interesting problems with doing it on a Scrapper in reasonable levels of time).

I didn't say that is what you were saying or advocating, I said specifically that in my opinion is the natural consequence of doing the specifics of what you're advocating, whether you specifically want it to happen or not, and that side effect makes some of your proposals unpalatable.

Nevertheless, I think I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to go buy some points, and see if the amount of content I have drops. Perhaps I'm only looking at this from the wrong perspective. Perhaps if only I spent more, I would understand how to get less.

Kinda thinking of playing around with enhancement boosters anyway.

I cannot agree. Saying *by rule* the devs must release all numerical powerset information to the players prior to the set being offered for sale implies strongly that the players are actually paying for *those numbers* which then opens the door to players demanding refunds if the powerset is changed from those numbers in any way they find disagreeable. I would strongly recommend Paragon Studios not open that pandora's box.

Its one thing for the numbers to just happen to be available, just like all other powersets are, with the same understanding they are subject to change just like all other numbers are. Like oh say in the character creator screen, perhaps. But once you say its an obligation to release numbers, and you set up a specific system for releasing those numbers that goes beyond what the game automatically allows for all other powers, you cross the line into territory that frankly I would prefer not have to witness the fallout of.


No MMO player has the right to expect that any specific element of the game will not change, particularly powers. If you can't handle that at all, you shouldn't play MMOs. If you can handle that in theory, but not for powersets you purchase separately, you shouldn't purchase powersets. Anything else is impractical.

I wonder if its actually possible to convince someone that isn't spending more money that they are actually spending more money. I know its impossible in my case, but I'm just wondering what percentage of people who are not spending lots of money are reading posts like this and saying "well, maybe I am spending more money."

I would be alarmed if it was more than, say, five percent, but I'm honestly not sure. Studies have shown that under certain conditions, you can convince innocent people to confess to crimes they did not commit, and that seems to be a much higher hurdle than convincing someone they are spending money they are not spending.

I don't have any specific issue with that, although I think that its one thing to offer the information, and another to allow players to purchase something and then say that after running some spreadsheets with the numbers they've come to the conclusion the set is not as good as they thought it was and want a refund.

I would sooner yank all real numbers from the game than accede to that. It, and problems like it, were the one dark side to adding real numbers to the game in the first place, and I said so from before real numbers were even added to the game.

So that was a fail about a fail about a fail?



I find your lack of win disturbing.

I must be doing something weird because I keep looking at what I get without paying extra, and it looks like more than what I used to get. I mean, its only been a month and you only need to be able to count to two or three to verify this, so I don't think I'm doing that wrong.

Maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to pay extra.

You're saying its good business to tell all of the players that they can buy anything whenever they want, and at any time for any reason all they have to do is push a button and get their money back?

That's one opinion. Mine is that I would veto that idea by strangling it to death in the first design meeting it came up in.

You say its bad practice to "leave customers unhappy." Is that an actual rule, or just something thought up for this situation? If its a rule, what's the cut off. Do we refund people who decide they are unhappy with the set in the twenties? Forties? How about people who decide they are unhappy with the performance of the set in incarnate trials? If its bad business to leave people unhappy, all these situations should be bad business. Which ones deserve remedy? All of them?

How about if they rebalance the set? Unhappy, so refund? How about if they just make all the other sets better but don't change the set at all? Still unhappy, so refund?

To me, this is extremely impractical. Its sets a dangerous precedent the company can't really follow through on consistently, and inconsistency is worse than doing nothing. Far, far worse.


Now, as to the issue of demanding a refund for a powerset for which you do not have the numbers, if you actually know that this is a position you believe in, you have a personal obligation not to actually *buy* a powerset you don't know the numbers for. And saying you tested it in beta doesn't matter, because all beta testers, among lots of other things, are expected to recognize and understand that everything in beta is subject to change at any time, and subject to change prior to release without warning. If you can't accept or agree to that, you are not supposed to beta test.

We were arguing about canon before 1980. The original Marvel "What If?" series started in the mid 70s and it was already playing on our understanding that the entire Marvel Universe was interconnected.

Depends slightly on context, but there are four fundamental forces: Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong, and the Weak forces. The Strong and Weak forces are considered "nuclear" forces because they operate at short ranges comparable to the size of an atomic nucleus or smaller. They don't operate exclusively in atomic nuclei, but were first discovered in context of atomic nuclei.

The specific force that overcomes electric repulsion and holds atomic nuclei together is the strong nuclear force, which acts to bind quarks together, and also protons and neutrons in the nucleus. The weak force is responsible, among other things, for beta decay - one way for a radioactive nucleus to decay to a lighter one. So one nuclear force keeps nuclei together, and the other sometimes causes them to break down (somewhat).


The phrase "nuclear energy" has two distinct meanings in common usage. In colloquial usage it can refer to "the kind of energy we get from nuclear power plants." In the context of physics, nuclear energy is potential energy stored in atomic nuclei, the kind that can be released by radioactive decay. Fission, which is the spontaneous or induced splitting of nuclei into two smaller nuclei of comparable size, is the process behind atomic bombs and nuclear reactors. Uranium or Plutonium is processed in the right way and configured in the right way so that chain reactions occur: one nucleus spontaneously splits (because they are unstable and naturally split) and generates some heat and some extra neutrons. These neutrons can strike other uranium atoms and cause them to split. When this reaction happens at a controlled rate you have a reactor. When it happens in a rapid exponential rate you get an explosion.

All this energy comes from the potential energy stored in the atoms' nuclei. If you were to add up all the mass of all the particles that are generated by all that atom splitting, you'd end up with a little less mass than you started with. The rest of that mass was converted to energy: in an atomic bomb about a tenth of a percent. That mass was stored in the nuclei in the binding energy of the forces holding it together, and when those forces are released that mass is converted into energy - kinetic energy for the most part, in the fact that the pieces tend to fly away from each other at high speed. Trivia fact: in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, about 6 tenths of a gram of mass was converted into energy. The E=mc^2 equation allows us to calculate that this much mass converted into about 54 trillion joules. Enough energy to boil about five hundred thousand tons of room temperature water.

Estoppel.

I could parse gender transformation into a comprehensible bug. What in the great googly moogly is gender deformation?

There's a lot of other options between flats and six inch stilettos. I think the risk/reward ratio tips over the other way past three or four inch heels, particularly spikes.

It was just an example, though. If the example fails, I'm sure there are others where people deliberately eschew functionality for fashion or appearance even when doing so has far more risks than rewards to what is supposed to be their primary priority. Hickman seems to be dismissing the notion that practicality should be a major concern in what is ultimately modern mythology. I would *tend* to agree in general.

Reframing this thread in those terms, though, seems to ask the question are the cultural keystones that myth taps into so ingrained that we can't fault comic books for wanting to leverage them rather than try to change them. We so equate female power with attractiveness that even when physical attractiveness isn't necessary or even originally noted, we often invented it. Its a myth that Cleopatra was known for being physically attractive. What she was was an extremely powerful, intelligent, and politically crafty person at a time when that was rare. That alone might have made her attractive to men of power. But somehow the notion sprung up that her physical beauty was part of her success. We don't actually know if she was physically attractive or ugly or something in between. But the myth was quick to arise that she was beautiful nonetheless.

We'll do that to actual historical figures who actually lived in reality. Should we expect and demand that the people who craft modern myths like superhero stories try to overturn that, or should we accept they might want to leverage it to create stories that resonate with a larger audience. Not universally or all the time, but often.

My own personal opinion here is that this sort of thing takes time, far longer than anyone wants, but that's because this sort of change is generational. And that's why I cut the designers a lot of slack here. I think their first responsibility is to make a commercially successful game, and if that includes appeasement of some gender skews, so be it. But they have an opportunity, albeit a not unlimited one, to play around in some areas to push things a little in the right direction. Skirts for men, suits for women, there are things they can do. But if we don't end up with high heels for men and cigars for women, that's a shame but I don't think the devs deserve to be judged too harshly there.

Of course, that's a general opinion. It shouldn't stop people from asking for specific things. I have a list myself. Just that not getting them isn't necessarily a sign of an unreasonable sexist entrenchment.

Why would you need to give up the Lockdown proc to slot Basilisk? Since it only needs four of the set to get the bonus, you can still slot lockdown if you want to.

Some people might even be using distortion field as a set mule, and have little intention of using it much, making the slotting of the proc unnecessary.

Wade has nothing on Phipps. Not only does his direct arcs make my skin crawl, even when he shows up in a tip mission its clear some cosmic law makes him into an evil Ferris Bueller that is untouchable no matter what you do.

Do you subscribe to the notion that deep down, powers or no, anyone who would publicly attempt to be a superhero has to have an exhibitionist streak somewhere, and the costumes tend to be explicitly designed to attract attention even if its sometimes not entirely wanted attention?


Interesting real life analog. Some people say that many of the costumes worn by superheroes (and villains), especially female ones, are totally impractical to the primary task of fighting villains (and heroes). Since that is their primary focus, its illogical to wear anything that is a disadvantage. And yet, I think of all the women who go to things like celebrity awards shows, where the primary task is to look good and not look like an idiot, and wear nearly death-defying stilettos and risk falling on their face on television. That seems like a related level of logical lapse to me unexplainable by anything except simple vanity.

If you're going Electric Armor, I would additionally recommend trying to fit in Burnout. Electric Armor seems to love Burnout. To the OP: all the travel power pools have an extra fifth power added recently: the speed pool got Burnout. Burnout instantly recharges all your primary and secondary powers (but not pool or epic powers) and costs 25 end and temporarily (60s I think) reduces your max endurance by 25%.

The costs for burnout are pretty heavy for most characters, but Electric Armor practically doesn't care: it has both a conserve power ability and an endurance drain/recovery power, so endurance is usually not a problem. Burnout can act as a temporary panic button: you can use Energize (heal + conserve power) and then Power Sink, then Burnout, then Energize and Power Sink again. Everything will be drained to zero, and you'll be basically at full health. Burnout has such a long recharge you can't do this often, but its an interesting option.

Especially with an all SO build, this sort of thing is an easy way to get a temporary big boost in performance. You don't have to do them back to back like that either: you can be going along using Power Sink and Energize at will, and then if you suddenly find yourself in trouble and they are still recharging use Burnout to get them back immediately. The Energize/Power Sink combination itself will carry you through the Burnout mini-crash.


Now, if you're primarily going to solo, and you like melee combat, and you are thinking of dropping back down to premium and want to use only SOs, then may I suggest you take a look at tankers. SR just got ported to tankers, and when SR uses tanker mods rather than scrapper mods, you end up with just SO-slotted SR powers getting to 40.56% defense. With SR toggles and passives and just combat jumping 3-slotted with SOs you're already up to 44.46% defense. You're already just a half percent from the defensive soft cap - in other words, you're nearly perma-eluded to most situations with SOs and combat jumping.

You're going to have issues with high tohit situations and trying to solo AVs without IOs will be difficult without extra health, regen, or resistance bonuses, or enhanced recovery to power offense, but since you're not looking to do any of those things, just roll up a melee and go pound things on a simple SO build, perhaps SR tanker might be a better match to your requirements. SR/Dark Melee would be extremely difficult to kill even with just SOs and you have Dark Consumption for extra recovery without the use of IOs. But SR/anything tanker might be one of the better all-SO soloing melee options out there, particularly because you aren't necessarily tanking for anyone, so you can play it like a scrapper and avoid the few situations that SR is weak to (like Praetorian DE with their increased tohit).

Believe it or not, it has. Well, female granite armor has. Granite lactation is, I'm pretty sure, a Hickman original.