Arcanaville

Everything.

I was on that raid. I was joking that City of Heroes had become a turn-by-turn MMO. I've played email chess games that were faster.

Reality warping without Omniscience is essentially personal and cosmic suicide.


That pause time power from the Twix commercials where you can stop time around you, but the only thing you can do while time is stopped is think of something clever to say.

Incidentally, something very close to that superpower showed up in the scifi tv series Time Trax. It was referred to as "time stalling": the skill whereby for brief moments someone could perceive time passing extremely slowly, giving them the ability to react to that situation far faster and with far more thought than ordinarily possible.

I managed to find this one I wrote back in the day. Yes, I used to write posts without calculations in them.

(For those not familiar with this ditty from the 90s)


Ladies and Gentlemen of the Scrapper Class of 2006...Save Respecs

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, saving respecs would be it. The long term benefits of having banked respecs have been proved, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your build; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your build until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 months you'll look back at screencaps of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how powerful you really were.

You are not as gimp as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to prevent nerfs by PMing Geko. The real nerfs in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you next Issue and were omitted in the patch notes.

Fight one thing every day that scares you.

/em sing

Dont be reckless on other people's teams, don't put up with people who are reckless on yours. Kick their stupid [censored].

Follow Up.

Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind, unless you're super reflexes, in which case you're screwed.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults on broadcast; kill everyone and let God sort them out.

Keep fighting no matter what, throw caution to the wind. If you want to play it safe, roll a FF defender.

Stamina.

Don't feel embarassed if you don't know what to do with your build when you're 50...the most interesting people I know didn't know at 28 whether to take Cloak of Fear or not, some of the most interesting 40's I know still don't.

Get plenty of HOs. Screw ED.

Savor your temp powers, you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll level to 50, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have dozens of scrapper alts, maybe you won't, maybe you'll switch to blasters, maybe you'll /em the funky chicken after receiving Task Force Commander...what ever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either - but at least you didn't go to WoW.

Enjoy your scrapper, use it every way you can...don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, its the greatest character you'll ever play.

/em dance....but don't go afk inside the mission door when you do, [censored].

Read the manual, even if you can't with a straight face.

Do NOT read build guides, they will only make you feel stupid. And most date back to I3: if you follow them, you'll *really* feel stupid.

Get to know your tier 9 power, you'll never know when it'll be gone for good. Be careful about relying on power pools; they've been nerfed in the past and are likely to be nerfed in the future.

Understand that globalfriends come and go, but for the precious few that never log off ever and require therapy. Work hard to bridge the gaps in supergroups and timezones because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young to complain about the noobs to.

Join a PL group once, but leave before it makes you lazy; join an RP group once, but leave before it makes you crazy.

Travel power.

Accept certain inalienable truths, damage mitigation won't rise, the devs won't balance the secondaries, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young damage mitigation was higher, the devs used to listen, and newbs weren't noobs. You'd probably be right on the damage mitigation part: everyone else has been so far.

Don't respec unnecessarily.

Don't expect anyone else to PL you. Maybe you have a hundred alts, maybe you have played every mission; but its still pointless.

Don't mess too much with your costume, or by the time you're 40, it won't be the only thing with too much yellow and red.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing previous issues from the disposal, wiping them off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it was worth. Look at MoG.

But trust me on the respecs.

I seem to recall MoGed scrappers sometimes dying from taking lots of tiny falling damage nicks they couldn't heal back as they hopped around. And because of the mechanics of MoG, those little damage nicks were effectively magnified by a factor of ten.

I would say that. Its obviously the same game in terms of general appearance, but in most of the specifics the game is significantly, sometimes fundamentally different.

Forget things like the invention system, supergroup bases, badges and accolades, flashback, difficulty sliders, and all of City of Villains. We didn't even have Global Chat back then: we had the supergroup and friends channels, and that was pretty much it. Even character respec didn't arrive until around I2, and body sliders in the character creator didn't arrive until I3 or I4.

My mental estimate is that roughly half of all the powers that existed at release currently work at least slightly differently now than they did in I1, or were replaced with something else entirely, not including the effects of ED. Point of reference: my first three characters are an En/En blaster, an MA/SR scrapper, and an Ill/Rad controller. Of those characters, nearly every power in Illusion control is different, every power except Practiced Brawler in SR is different, and every MA power except Build Up is different than in I1. My Energy/Energy blaster is the only character of the three that still works remotely the same as in I1 at SO slotting levels: only power bolt, total focus, and energy punch are really different than I1 if I recall correctly.

Even many fundamentals are different. Jump physics is different. Defense is handled differently. Even doors work differently. Mission doors used to reset health and endurance to full. And doors used to fail to respond to players unless they literally stood at the door for a second: you couldn't walk up to a door and click it. Terrorize works differently. Confuse works differently. Nobody had anything called an "inherent." You could be one-shotted. Falls could kill you.

Oh, and in I1 we still had missions that were a victim of the Langoliers. Missions with passages that just ended in a void: no walls, no floor, no ceiling, just black empty space.

To commemorate the seventh anniversary of City of Heroes, their anniversary statistics are off by a total of seven decimal places.

Seems unlikely. Positron specifically refers to the person he's contacting as a "colleague" and the email that Colston gets is addressed to "My Colleague."

Conversely, Anti-Matter didn't seem to imply he was sending an email to someone familiar enough to be a colleague. The message also specifically instructed Colston to use the information to protect The Rogue Isles by name, implying that Paragon City was already taken care of. That also doesn't sound like something Anti-Matter would do: he would be warning his recipient about a threat to all of Primal Earth, not just the Rogue Isles. Anti-matter's message would have said, in effect "pass this on to the heroes of Paragon by whatever means at your disposal."

Indeed.

Science marches on.

On the other hand, Praetor Tilman's preferences for waist ornamentation dangerously conflicts with the sensibilities of her plastic surgeon.

In fact, I could probably end the menace posed by Mother Mayhem upon the world by simply dropping a quarter in front of her.

I can try to make one on my next few BAFs: I have several demorecords of BAF, but none include the opening scene because of the logistical issues involved.

I do have screencaps of most of the dialog; seems I'm missing a couple of lines when I go back and look. I've assembled them into a slideshow that I think is in the right order here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/3421074...75968961/show/

That's bad. And extremely dangerous. There's a very tiny chance you could accidentally attempt to pull that trick on me. I wouldn't advise it. I'd definitely out a player for trying to pull that fast one. Slip me a temp power because you were too afraid to admit you didn't see it, and I'll just use it and call it a day. Try to frame me for it would be a bad idea, especially because I doubt anyone thinks there's enough alcohol in the world that could make me forget where my temp powers are listed. I actually keep my power window open all the time when running trials now, just to be triply sure I used them all, I don't have any more, and I didn't get any when I wasn't looking.

In fact, this is what my blaster's set up looks like now, basically all the time. Note the power window in the upper right: its always there (although in trials I specifically scroll it to the end of the temp listing, its not in the screencap).



I'm not even on a trial at that moment, and yet its still there.

Its actually kinda absurd I have nine power trays open *and* the actual power menu, but I have a fairly big screen so I can scale the gui to 75% (which is what that is above). I don't use all the powers all the time, but I hate hunting for them in the menu so if I use it at all, I put it on a tray. I could reduce some of the clutter with keybinds, but I'm not really a keybind person. Target_enemy_next is the sort of thing I will keybind. Teleport is something I'll mouse-bind. But I don't want to have to think about which key is nova, and if that's the same key for EMP on my controller.

Even the list of powers I use regularly, constantly, is getting long. Sprint, Power Bolt, Power Blast, Energy Torrent, Explosive Blast, Bonesmasher, Total Focus, Hover, Fly, Combat Jump, Weave, Temp Invuln, Tough, Power Thrust, Boost Range, Power Boost, Build Up, Aim, Conserve Power, Sands of Mu, Judgment, Destiny, Lore. That's 23 powers. Toss in Pocket D teleporter, Ouroboros portal, Mystic Fortune, Mutation, Nova, Reveal, PFF, Force of Nature, and Archmage and you're up to 32 powers I use nearly every single time I log in at least once or would tend to want to use at a moment's notice. And that doesn't count Hasten which I have on autofire and superspeed which is one of the few powers I have keybound.

And I have to admit: I use Return to Battle also.

I wouldn't call it worlds of difference. Mounds of difference maybe.


This is the cut scene with Odysseus (not the scene in the office, but the actual cut scene later):

Odysseus: A most admirable display of martial cunning, Banebritch. I salute you.
Odysseus: But did you really think that I would take your story at face value? That I wouldn't check your accusations out with spies of my own?
Odysseus: Mr. Wade was most helpful in uncovering the truth of your scheme. While my Warriors and the Midnighters hacked each other to pieces you were going to betray me!
Odysseus: I don't take lightly to betrayal, Banebritch. But I do have a sense of honor... or was it sport? If you can defeat me and my Warriors, then the insult against me is dropped. Fail... and I'll introduce you to a little piece of history known as a Brazen Bull.
Odysseus: WARRIORS!
Crusher: HUA!
Warrior Chopper: HUA!
Warrior Slicer: HUA!
Hewer Elite: HUA!
Slasher: HUA!
Warrior Slammer: HUA!
Warrior Slammer: HUA!
Warrior Bruiser: HUA!
Odysseus: ATTAAAAAAAACK!

And its not like I haven't had some fun with this one myself:




Later with Positron:

Positron: <Player>! Return Numina to me and I will let you go.
[Caption] Are you kidding me? The Flames of Prometheus are mine, Positron. I can take as much as I want! Why would I ever give you anything?
Positron: Yours? The Flames do not belong to any one person. If you will not relinquish your hold on Numina...
[Caption] ...then you shall face the consequences!
[Caption] Have you forgotten that I was chosen by Prometheus to be the Keeper of the Flames?
Positron: I've had years to harness the power of the Flames. You've had that power for less than a minute. Now. Let. Numina. GO!

It does in fact say that. However, I would tend to agree that the structure of the recipe within the context of all the surrounding recipes in the Incarnate system is somewhat misleading. This is compounded by the fact that the conversion in this case is one requiring significant number of valuable components; any uncertainty no matter how small is likely to be amplified by the concern the system may do something irreversible and unwanted.

The devs do not consistently obey the cardinal rule of user interfaces which is confirm all commands with irreversible side effects that don't have a time requirement. Such as accidentally quitting a league when it is in the process of launching, for example. Because of that, the conversion recipe as presented would even give me pause.

That's an interesting way to attempt to value the cost of conversion: not as a percentage of the value of the VR itself, but as a percentage of the value of everything else you earn while earning the VR. Its a variation on attempting to measure opportunity cost, but it has a noteworthy twist.

Consider this odd paradox. Suppose the devs were to leave the drop rate of VRs fixed, increased the drop rate of Rares, and decreased the drop rate of uncommons and commons to compensate. That would mean in the time it took to get one Very Rare, you'd also get more stuff than you were getting before. What's interesting specifically is that with a higher preponderance of rares, it would be *easier* to make VRs, which makes VRs themselves intrinsicly less valuable. But by your methodology, the crafting cost for a lateral conversion would go *up*.

It suggests to me that connecting crafting costs to the relative value of everything except the thing itself being converted might only appear to generate reasonable numbers by coincidence, but the methodology itself would generate strange results if the reward system was only moderately modified.

That's sort of tossing me into the opposite corner from Uberguy. Who would break down Empyrean merits into threads when their value is much higher - about twice as high - if they are used to directly buy either rares or very rares (I think its 20-24, so the average is 22).

Fair enough. What percentage of the total value of the Very Rare component would you assign the 150 thread conversion cost? Its not enough to say its high, since the value of the drop is also indeterminately high. It I specifically said "set the conversion cost to be 10% of the value of the drop" what would you have set it to?

And before you say you wouldn't set it to that value in the first place, that's just a means to the end of determining how you value the drop. Ultimately, a reward system designer must place an objective value on the drop, an objective value on the cost of conversion, and calculate the single specific value that the game will decide to value those things at, because ultimately the game has to pick one specific system and go with it, no matter how subjective that system may be.

I agree, which is why I suggested adding these recipes in the first place. We just have a different opinion on what "cost prohibitive" is.

Although technically speaking I suggested 10%, and 150 is slightly higher than 10% (136 would be 10%, and 120 would reflect the relative value of rares and very rares).

The problem with that outlook is that it effectively values the actual very rare drop itself as being zero. In other words, you get a VR, you pick X, turns out you needed Y, so now that drop is costing you 150 threads. So downgrade it to a rare if that 150 threads is a high cost. You should be able to do that for nothing. Oh, but then you'd be throwing away a very valuable component.

So how much more valuable is that VR relative to 150 threads? I'd contend its massively more valuable.


Plus, isn't this slightly contradictory:

Its actually only about 10% the crafting cost of the item per item. Which means a sideways conversion preserves 90% of the value of the item.


With those conversion costs you could argue that the system rewards foresight, but only by ten percent. Even if you pick the wrong thing every time, your costs will not be more than ten percent higher than the person that picks the right thing every time. That's not a huge disparity to provide a meaningful but not excessive benefit to either being lucky and getting what you happen to need or planning ahead enough to pick what you need consistently.

The players are, in general, proving to be smarter and more competent than the worst case nightmare scenarios speculated about in beta. But every group seems to have someone that can't find the big green button, or doesn't know left from right, or thinks if they try to solo Marauder everyone else will automatically follow them. The trials are showing the wide range in competency that is our playerbase.

Not every team is strong enough to do this. Some teams I've been on come close to wiping just on the initial support surrounding Marauder himself because they are not coordinated enough and go running around all over the place trying to practically solo the spawn.

If nothing else, its teaching people that soft-capping, perma-dom, and whatever else they think makes them singularly indestructible isn't infallible.