Captain_Photon

Well, clearly the thing to do is approach it from the other direction. The power those characters need to have isn't actually "water breathing", it's what the old Marvel Super Heroes game called "Life Support". Maybe that means they don't need to breathe at all; maybe it means their superhero rig already contains a means of sustaining life in a hostile environment; doesn't matter. That's tinsel; what matters is that, for whatever reason, the character can survive in that environment where a normal person couldn't. (Sounds like a fifth option for the Fitness pool to me, the way they recently added another power to the Ancillary Pools.) Under those mechanics, if you've got a robot character and it doesn't need to breathe, well, better find a spot for Life Support in his payload, or avoid going to places where it'd become an issue. I don't really see it as very different, mechanically, from going to the Shadow Shard if you can't fly.

For those that can't, like I said, there's always the "NPC sells a temp power to cover the gap" option - again, taking the Shard as an example of a nonstandard environment that's covered in this fashion. Not everyone can fly before they get there, but they're pretty well beached without it once they arrive. The same would be true of Life Support in an underwater (or outer space) zone.

The problem is that it's a bit late to be imposing this mechanic on players retroactively; you'd get a lot of pushback from people who've had a robot for years and suddenly are expected to take this power to make their concept work properly. Kind of like how I feel about those people who say "OMG nerf Knockback and then make Energy Blasters who want their powers to keep working properly blow slots building it back up."

Yeah, I got that once with Professor Neutrino, who is trapped inside a containment suit to prevent his uncontrollable radioactivity from fatally poisoning everyone around him. He was forced to conclude that the woman didn't like her kid very much.

Apart from not drowning to death in the hypothetical fully-underwater zone.

... I think the thread has just come full circle.

They'll have to have an NPC who sells aqualungs to the PCs that don't have water breathing, like the guy who sells Raptor Packs to the people who can't fly in the Shadow Shard.

Dunno. I just assumed it was supposed to be doing it.

To be honest, I don't really give a damn if banners are vulnerable. Not today, anyway.

What, at level 20? Pff. KB will already have wasted too much of my life by then.

Anyway, "no sale, at least not to me" meant just that - that's the one hole in a defensive set I'm not willing to tolerate (I'm looking at YOU, Dark Armor), but I don't care if other people are. I just won't take it.

You don't have to play a badly written player-made mission for that to happen. Just go up against the Malta Group.

To be fair, if you're an extremely obvious ninja, you're not doing it right.

(I know what you meant, I just really like the phrase "extremely obvious ninja". )

I'd like invulnerability that actually makes you invulnerable, but I can accept that it's not practical within the framework of a risk/reward-based game.

Every time the "what do you mean it's time served?" complaint comes up, it reminds me of those people who whined and complained that they hadn't had accounts when the first iterations of various seasonal events happened and the devs haaaaad to give them some opportunity to get the badges from said events because it wasn't faaaaair. I always felt like asking them if they were writing to the Defense Department demanding that they be given the campaign ribbons for Operations Torch and Overlord as well. I mean, yes, obviously they weren't there for the invasions of North Africa and Normandy (at least, I would be deeply surprised if we have any players who were - I suppose it's statistically possible), but stiiiiiill.

And the really annoying thing is that the devs caved and did it.

Yeah, I always assumed he was there because Crey salvaged and is now providing those decommissioned Rikti drones you can use for target practice in that parking lot. That would suggest that Professor Hoffman works for Crey as well.

And, when you think about it, that's just the kind of thing Crey would do. They can give the appearance of Trying to Help with the whole Outbreak situation, without actually doing anything useful or running any risk.

Fair's fair, then; I want a Katana Defense set.

... why is he wearing the mouthpiece (but not the tanks) from a SCUBA rig when there's no way to go under water...

That kind of thing wasn't limited to PvP, either. A friend of mine once had his Gravity Controller on a PUG, and things were rolling along nicely until he suddenly, without warning, got booted off the team. While he was wondering what had gone wrong, he got a /tell from the team leader rather pissily informing him that said leader was going to petition him for leeching XP by joining the team and then doing nothing to help...

... just as soon as he finished filing the bug report about all the bad guys in that last mission just standing around doing nothing.

... which is pretty much what I said. The software's working the way it should from the computer's point of view, which is why I say it's not a bug; the situation we're seeing (PCs ending up dead before the players know what's happening) is - one would hope! - an unintended outcome of something that's working properly but not quite configured properly (i.e., patrols work, but shouldn't be routed into the vestibule). The code's working as intended, but the game mechanic isn't.

(As for the whole issue of "loading screen is lying to the player", that's probably down to some unavoidable technical limitation or another. Standard code rant applies.)

It's a fair point.

Not to player characters, anyway.

Yeah, they're pretty much set up as the Bad Supercorp from 8 o'clock, Day 1. Countess Crey is very much in the "latter-day Lex Luthor" mold - a pillar of the community who will lie, cheat, steal and kill to get what she wants, but who has more media sockpuppets and better lawyers than anyone who tries to expose her to the general public, so that the best the crusading hero can hope for is a bloody draw. (q.v. the story arc where she SPOILER REDACTED the player character for SPOILER REDACTED.)

As a bonus, you also get the goofiest costume pieces ever made with that pack! Don't believe me? Check out my man CryoPhreak as he models the Valkyrie armor for you!



The l4d13z! They're hot for the CryoPhreak right now!

(Also: Yes! That is a legitimate(?) use of the Greek letter vet chest deco you're seeing there!)

Who looks at melee combat and thinks, "Oo-hoo, this could be a little more sonic"?