Biowraith

As a Brit I did wonder if that was deliberate...

From what I recall your options in that area are more powers that'd give your character e.g. a full-body fiery aura, rather than add a fire effect to your other power activations. Most of them are either slotted passives, or 'click' buildup type powers. I think there's a fieryish aura in the supernatural pool that is a toggle rather than passive or click (it doesn't do much besides look pretty though).

There are/were also items that when equipped produced a proc effect of e.g. chance for fire damage, and in the case of weapons they gave a visible costume change when equipped (e.g. a flaming sword). I'm not sure what the current status of those are (whether they survived the crafting revamp), and I think the ones with the flashy elemental effects only produced the visual so long as you had the item equipped, which wasn't practical if you were still levelling or just didn't like the stats on it.

http://youtu.be/UMJvmW5O2qA

I was dismayed when I learned the crafting system is gone too, and I'm not sure I like the new system even after using it a bit (though I'm still a little hazy on the details).

Gear with slots turns up relatively early on - I think maybe even in one of the tutorials (the crafting tutorial I'm fairly sure has you add a mod to a slot). But from what I played it's not that common until later on, and earlier gear only seemed to have one type of slot (I think there's 3 types, with associated mod types - and I don't mean the offensive/defensive/utility categories - this confused me when I tried to slot the mods I'd converted from old crafting components and it wouldn't let me in my crappy low level slotted gear). As I say I'm hazy on the details though.

In my experience fending off larger groups is doable by most of the defensive passives, even sometimes the offensive passives (my namesake uses the darkness offensive passive and can usually mow down big groups, but it's kinda a knife-edge scenario), but you're going to be spending the bulk of that fight blocking, only releasing block briefly to click heals, active defenses, and big aoe attacks. Blocking is really key to survival in that game, to the point that when I've been playing it a while and come back to CoH I find myself constantly trying to block for a few days.

Just to clarify, there's a second type of passive that I don't think was mentioned, which don't take up the passive slot: energy unlocks. These are powers/skills that are always on, and generally refuel your energy based on certain conditions. e.g. Killer Instinct gives you a small amount of energy every time your Munitions attacks score a critical hit (max of once per 3 seconds). You can only take one energy unlock, but that's in addition to the slottable passive. I think the one energy unlock rule is relatively recent though - I'm sure I remember being able to take as many as you wanted (there just wasn't usually much point since they tended to tie in with effects or powers specific to certain sets).

There's also a few powers that are toggles, but due to the different way energy works in CO, they don't have a constant energy drain the way CoH ones do. Usually instead they increase the cost of all your powers by a certain %. You can have as many of those as you want.

Neither are as powerful as the slotted passives, which are a big enough deal that you should generally always take one on any build (maybe more than one if you want to be versatile enough to switch roles).

One or both of those might be what you were remembering.



As to the thread in general and the game itself, I have a lifetime sub and I dip in and out of it periodically. I find the game to be fun in small doses, but it generally doesn't ever hold me long term. My primary complaint is that teaming isn't as readily available as it is/was in CoH. That's improved a bit in recent times with all the adventure packs and the alerts, but it's still not where I'd like it - the alerts are quick 5 minute affairs that are pretty fun to start with, but get very repetitive, and the adventure packs are more like task forces (in most cases more in line with CoH's older task forces in terms of length and propensity for padding the content via repetition of sub-goals), so teams only really form to tackle specific goals, not just for the fun of teaming in every day normal content (where frankly, it's massive overkill to even duo it).

Good to hear they're being all supportive and welcoming though - I haven't been on the forums much since the early days when it was all jaded and disgruntled ex-CoH players.

Depends.

The use of chi is certainly very similar to the use of magic - you're learning to harness energies to create extraordinary effects. I only really see two potential differences. The first is that usually chi is seen to be utilising internal energy, while magic is seen to be utilising external energy. For me that's not really enough to separate them in terms of origins - they're still basically doing the same thing.

So that brings me to the second potential difference, which is whether chi and magic are things anyone can learn to use if they just take the time to study and train, or do they require a special something such that even with all the training in the world those not "gifted" will never see any results.

If chi is something anyone can learn to use then that makes it a candidate for Natural - it's just a training issue, with nothing further required. If magic is something that only special individuals can ever learn to use then that's enough to separate them, and so I'm happy to say chi falls under Natural origin.

However if magic is also something that anyone can learn to use then that makes magic a candidate for Natural too - again, it's just a training issue. But since we've been given a specific Magic origin we should probably use it, so magic = Magic origin even if it also fits Natural. Since there's so little difference between magic use and chi use I'd say it'd make sense to keep chi in the same origin as Magic.

On the other hand if chi is something only a select few can every learn to use - it requires there to be something special about the individual - then it's no longer just a training issue, no longer something any of the species could learn to do, and so no longer a candidate for Natural origin. At that point I'd be inclined to call it Mutant origin - they've been born different in some way and can access extraordinary abilities as a result.

But if magic is also something that only a select few can learn to use, that brings them back to being sufficiently similar that I'd feel silly having them in separate origins. So I'd move it back over to Magic (unless we want to say wizards are Mutant origin ).


In summary:
Chi = anyone, Magic = anyone => Chi = Magic origin
Chi = select few, Magic = anyone => Chi = Mutant origin
Chi = anyone, Magic = select few => Chi = Natural origin
Chi = select few, Magic = select few => Chi = Magic origin

Yeah, experienced this a lot when I played too. I remember there being a *lot* of conversations where the text you were shown looked like it was meant to be heavily sarcastic but then turned out to be sincere when the character put it in their own words. Though it wasn't just the (lack of) sarcasm, plenty of other instances were still baffling even in hindsight.

Although personally I was still able to have fun with it - with a perma-duoed friend we could then delight in mocking each other as our hitherto cartoonishly evil and/or badass Sith suddenly decided to be all noble and benevolent against our wishes (to be honest though, much of our enjoyment overall came from playing it all with tongue firmly in cheek).


As to the article in the OP, I know nothing of the author or the site, but I didn't get beyond the first paragraph before giving up on it.

I've played a lot of MMOs and your definition isn't one I've come across often. Far more common in my experience is the definition that you're receiving outside help to level much faster than the normal content would allow and/or running the content in an abnormal way (and DFB etc are part of the normal content in this context). It's not generally something you do for yourself (besides perhaps dual boxing or exploits), hence requests for somebody to "plvl me". Although, colloquially (though I suppose the term itself is that by default, but hopefully you know what I mean) people may declare they're going to powerlevel themselves, I've always taken that to be a slightly tongue-in-cheek deviation from the core meaning. Possibly we just move in different MMO circles though.

Yeah, I came very close to using the Batman comparison myself.

I'm inclined to include intellect and craftiness when considering how powerful a character is though, even if that does push us all closer to that debate Blood Red Arachnid is leaving aside for now.

(and I liked the Azrael vote, though it does make me wonder about the other Old High Ones, but I don't imagine we'll ever get any details about them)