Chase_Arcanum

Rian's talking about my Cinder, I believe. I've got several cats and while three have loving and playful dispositions with practically any visitors, Cinder's... well... others have taken to call her "devil cat" for a reason. Classic vocal black halloween cat. She's daddy's little girl and adores getting scritchies from me (and she's learned to tolerate the missus), but if anyone else gets close to her they magically start losing blood.

Its funny, she doesn't shy away from visitors, she'll give off this odd chirp and dart between their feet acting all friendly, but its all a ploy to get them to TRY SOMETHING. When they do-- BAM! blood fountain.

I think she likes knowing she can instill fear in others.

If anything, I think we've been stressing that it isn't all PvP'ers. In fact, I'd argue that there are just as many ******* in other parts of the game. I've encountered my share of roleplayers that give roleplaying such a bad reputation and I've teamed with raiders that I'd love to throw out airlocks. (moon zone, pls).

The problem is that PvP is the one place where ignoring doesn't work. We aren't just talking about text in a chat window-- we're talking about how they conduct themselves in-game and how that conduct can impact us. Even on ignore, a single jerk in a zone can make the experience unpleasant for a great many others.

In other parts of the game, I can go do an instanced mission, boot someone from a team, or roleplay somewhere else with someone else. I can mitigate the impact of the jerks I encounter.

I can't in (zone) PvP... except by not PvP'ing.

IIRC, it was said that certain effects, like the metallic shine, are only possible using the pretinting.

ALMOST? That's the problem with you guys. If you're gonna do something, ya gotta commit yourself to go all the way with it.

If this is the SA Goons it wouldn't surprise me. The Goons don't so much play an MMO as they "professionally grief." But really, there are many small griefer cultures and copycats that just notice an advertised event and realize they have someone they can harass. The unpredictability is often as big of a rush as the harrassment itself.

They don't care if they die a dozen times if they ultimately make you quit trying to do a raid or can't get a particular badge. In a F2P game, even banning isn't a big deal, although many try to skirt the line just because they don't want the complainant to get the satisfaction of a banning.

They're there to revel in the power of making others miserable. If you let even a hint irritation show, you've given them what they want.

Some of my best opponents in PvP were great people that had great exchanges because we had chat enabled.

Some of the worst opponents in PvP are absolutly unfun even if they never utter a word in chat.

So problem isn't hearing/seeing the broadcasts. if anything the broadcasts just let you know the calibre of person you're most likely to encounter. If you know you'll be subjecting yourself to an unfun experience just by seeing the chat, you can save yourself the trouble.

The problem is that when those few "bad" foes are present, you can't opt to ignore them and still participate in PvP with the foes you enjoy. Those bad foes can still gank you.



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My suggestion (for a newer MMO without existing PvP baggage) : Player-defined-and-managed "leagues"

I make a PvP "league" and set leaders that are "commissioners" of that league. The league has options for rules and the stakes (team/faction/free-for-all, player-loot-drop-or-not etc) and the commissioners can recruit or kick people as they see fit.

- someone's being such a jerk that several others plan to leave the league, the commissioners can kick the jerk. jerk can no longer PvP with the league and thus becomes as invisible as an ignore.
- if the commissioner thinks that the complainant is being overly sensitive, he lets the complainant leave. Complainant is free to find another league that more fits his sensibilities.
- if people think the commissioners are inconsistent and/or unfair, they can start their own leagues just as well. (Perhaps players can be in more than 1 league at once, too).
- heck, you could even see minor and major leagues forming, where people that dominate the minor groups moving on to more challenging foes.
- eventually, things self-sort, with people only PvPing against people they like to PvP against, using the stakes they wish to engage in, and in a mannerism that they find acceptable. People whose goals are only to grief will find themselves in groups populated with other grief-oriented "hardcore" folk that won't consider their actions (too) abusive, people that want PvP simply for its RP storytelling potential have a safe environment to explore the medium without being ganked, novices and "casual" PvPers can find leagues that cater to their skill level, and the "hardcore" will find foes that meet thier challenges.

• Take mission architect.
• Add the ability to let a designated GM "jump into" any NPC, in the mission or send mastermind-level commands to groups of NPCs, or even switch the NPC's from hostile to friendly, etc.. (this would necessarily invalidate traditional XP rewards).
• Integrate with arena, so one side can choose the "arc" to GM that the other agrees to play through.
• You have classic "Neverwinter Nights" GM storytelling plus a novel "monster play" PvP option.

Think of it this way:
Hamidon wanted to save the earth and restore it. Humanity was a threat. Humanity is NOT an alien invader, though- it was once a stable part of the earth ecosystem. From a pure preservationist mindset, if it can be returned to a natural part of the ecosystem, that would be preferred over destroying that piece of the ecosystem entirely.

Cole basically agreed to move the remaining humanity onto a reservation and cede the rest of the planet to Hamidon.




This has probably been answered already since then, but please bear with me. I haven't been following incarnate stuff so much and I'm still riding a high about realizing my prediction was right (I've advocated for the "cole negotaiated with Hamidon during the psychic link" stuff ever since his profile text appeared on the website:

EDIT
(Now, my other prediction was that, with Cole gone and humanity's danger fully realized, Hamidon would unleash its full force- one last mega-incarnate Praetorian trial.

Although the heroes will triumph against this threat, with all forces amassed there, nobody will notice the smaller aspect of Hamidon making its way through one of Praetoria's less-guarded portals. It will be free to grow in the greater metaverse unchecked as we focus our attention on the Battallion, Rularuu, and Ouroboros until it becomes the massive tentacle beast hinted at in the Alpha-slot story arc.

So, to prevent that little.... problem... could someone please GUARD THE PRAETORIAN PORTALS and not let anything reeking of Devouring Earth get by?)

Dammit. It was a typo! How long is that incident going to be held against me?

Nobody faults the manufacturer of the spellchecker... which, incidentally, I use on all my communications use. Nobody blames the IT department for not responding to my ticket requesting a new keybooard when things started sticking WEEKS before the incident. Heck, what about the boys at the print shop that handled the request for that "Happy Birthday" banner! Shouldn't they have doublechecked the proof?

Kheldarn, you know better.

It is just not polite to mention on a woman's weight in public.

Psychic defense.

Includes
- read attack (targeted foe is -tohit)
- invisibility toggle (+defense)
- "psychic mirror" power (non-damaging decoys of self % chance to be hit instead)
- mental mirror (mez protection, + chance for mez to reflect back on attacker)
- pbaoe confuse toggle
- drain psyche

was gonna PM Zwillinger and bug him to make up a new redname account of that name, but noticed the name's already taken.

Possessed by the Circle of Thorns, though.

Or superscience beings whose efforts at time manipulation spawned the many universes.

That's more the issue of "no individual story."
"level as story" refers to how your character's level progression is reflected in the timeline.

A timeline tied to the real world would, for example, tie the in-game event with the first moment they appeared in-game. No matter when you took the "outbreak" tutoral, it happened almost 8 years ago. The first rikti invasion... even before that. Faultline was almost 6 years ago, even if you played through it for the first time just last week. Barring temporal warps, if you had a character that was a teenage counterpart to penny yin, under strict ties to the timeline rule, you're likely close to graduating from college now.

Tying the timeline to level, on the other hand, makes things more fluid. To your level 5, the events of the hollows happened right now. To my level 50, they're far in my past. The story advances as you personally encounter it, not through some rigidly defined timeline. No matter how fast you powerlevel, your Praetorian leaves Praetoria at level 20 and comes back during incarnate-ville to fight Cole. Afterward, you roll another Praetorian, who's back to that same pre-cole moment in time and progressing along the same path. No conflict because time is relative to the level.

Level-based story advancement is more flexible for individuals, but can create inter-character conflicts. During the events of the Second Rikti Invasion, my character's pregnant sister barely escaped and later succumbed to her injuries after giving birth. The events that day made my natural hero... more a civilian-that-took-action than a fully-fledged-hero at that time decide to go full hero. By my level 50's perception, that happened several years in the past, with my adopted daughter finally in presechool, giving me time to again battle baddies. By your level 15 hero's perception, it was last week and made an equally valid impact on your life. We encounter each other and, during the interactive storytelling (roleplaying) this difference comes up and conflicts with how we see each character if we're too inflexible to work around it.

Please provide your definition, as I found his narrative to fit what I'd expect. Perhaps we're using the terms differently.

Portal Corp-related content- tech/science
Malta- rather tech-based (some argue tech/natural)
Rikti Warzone- tech/science to the point of sci-fi.
The Carnival of Shadows? Well, the official backstory suggest that Giovianna's psi powers were more mutant themed (arising during puberty, as was common with Marvel's muties) rather than traditionally "learned and studied" spellcraft magic, but as with many things, personal definitions overlap a lot and I can see how people would find them "magic-y."
Circle of thorns magic.

I find the "natural" stories lacking at the high level, but let's face it- once you get to really rally REALLY global dangers, even natural heroes like Batman rely on a heavy dose of tech.

The well? I won't argue with you there, but as I indicated in a previous post, Green Lantern is considered tech, though it quite easily fits the "walks like a duck (etc)" rule. the ring's tech-based creators spawned the entire multiverse through their tech... quite a godlike/magical achievement. As with many cosmic-powered things, what constitutes magic vs what constitutes science is often open to interpretation and/or the author's current demand.

Forget the 'one episode' bull.

If you look at the histories of each of these titles, you'll find entire story arcs facing magically-based foes or major plot twists (like magically retconning away Spidey's marriage...). This despite the fact that Stan Lee liked matching heroes against similarly-themed baddies (spiderman's tendency to fight animal-themed products of sci/tech like vulture, rhino, scorpion, lizard, Doc Oc, etc)

I shouldn't even mention things like
- the punisher's brief relaunch as a supernatural agent of angels and demons
- spidy's brief "his powers really came from a magical spider god not a radioactive spider" insanity
- batman vs dracula, zombies, supernatural werewolves, etc.... more than once.
- repeat above, replacing "batman" with x-men
- repeat above, replacing "x-men" with superman
- Speaking of Superman, while 'interdimensional' explanations abound for Mr Mxyzptlk, any attempt to explain his powers in 'superscience' is never fully done, and the implementation of those powers (and their ability to be transferred to the Joker) is more "magic-y" than anything we see in CoH.
- Golden Age green lantern WAS magic-based. Subsequent Lanterns have technically been tech-based by the "guardians of the universe," whose superscience is so incomprehensibly magical and godlike (they CAUSED the multiverse, after all) that the Well of the Furies is pure steam-and-coal-tech in comparison.

Need we go on?


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You're sick of the magical theme. We get it. I tend toward 'natural' heroes in a less "cosmic powered" incarnate world, myself. I would REALLY love new arcs that didn't need interdimensional hopping, time travel, or the mystical power of humanity's collective potential to drive them. I just don't delude myself into believing that the other stuff's not a HUGE part of the genre.

I know. I mean, look at that jet! An F-15 Eagle?

Everyone knows that the T-Rex prefers the F-22 Raptor.

Dynamic IP addresses are the norm in the US, as well. What seems to be different here is the DHCP implementation used by different ISP's.

In DHCP, a dynamic IP address doesn't have to be reassigned with each log-in. When you first request an IP address from a DHCP server, it gives you a "lease" for that IP addresses. You access through that IP address for the duration of that lease. When its close to expiring, your computer will request a new lease. In most ISP's I'm familiar with in the U.S, if it sees you already have an existing about-to-expire IP adress (or sees that the now-expired IP address lease hasnt been re-issued elsewhere), it just renews that lease rather than issue out a different one. This is why most US users keep their IP address for a long time

There are benefits for both the ISP and the user for this, so why wouldn't UK ISP's do the same? Most often its a case of available IP addresses to lease out. If you have surplus leases its ok to let people "hoard" their IP addresses while they're offline. If you don't, short-duration leases free up those addresses for others to use. US businesses, as early adopters, bought up a lot of address space and hoarded them before DHCP was really available. Others made do with smaller address blocks and more liberal use of IP addresses rather than buy larger blocks from the US companies.

Simply "buying more blocks of IP Addresses" isn't always an available option for an ISP right now. There are still many devices in use that only support IPv4's addressing structure (whose address space is nearly depleted) despite IPv6 being first published in '98. IPv6 has a greatly-expanded address space, but if 'net traffic to an IP6 address hits one of these antique IPv4 devices en route to its destination, its not good for the end-user. (I call them antique, but there were devices sold as recently as 2010 that weren't IPv6 compatible). Until IPv6 is a reliable option (its very close- some argue it IS, some say its still too problematic), most ISP's will continue to juggle IPv4 leases rather than risk the bad user experience.