Dark Quill

By the way, tonight's another 'event' night. It's STORM's weekly briefing in the Citadel which is usually followed by going out and roleplaying some missions. STORM isn't exclusive at all, so anyone can come along. And if we can't ICly work you into the base, then you can ICly meet us 'on the scene'! If you want to get a feel for what kind of RP we do in STORM, this is a great chance! It starts at 9:15 pm EDT, and Gravartol / Fire Scyth is the team leader. Just hop on the Paragon Universe global channel to get connected, or /tell me at @dark quill . I'll be on a bit early in case new folks need orienting/recruited/whatever.

Yep. You definitely need to consult with someone before your plot 'does something' to his/her character. Of course, you can warn a person, 'Hey, by venturing into this territory there may be terrible consequences including x, y, and z. So if you don't want that happening to your character, don't involve her in this plot (or in this way).'

ChaosRed: No, no, that's totally fine! I was just teasing you!

Zeth Blaze: Fantastic! I won't be online then (I've an early day tomorrow), but if you join the Paragon Universe OOC channel, you'll likely find other fine PUers on!

Shucks, ChaosRed, I was secretly hoping all of Alpha Squad was going to join the PU. I'll happily settle for a coalition!

Recla and Trystin: Paragon's Pride has a nice ring to it! And Brock Sampson is great. And I love the robot idea. I guess it's actually going to happen! Now we need some nieces and nephews and cousins who accidentally got super-powers from being too close to one of Prof. Paragon's experiments. . .

TristynD: Great to meet you yesterday! And thanks for the great referrals!

Loony: I'm looking forward to meeting you in person!

ChaosRed: Noodle away, my friend!

And welcome to the land of i16! I'm thinking of starting up a 'Science Hero Family' subteam within the Paragon Universe with my new rad blaster Prof. Paragon as the pater familias. It'd be sort of like Astro City's Furst Family (which is in turn kind of like Marvel's Fantastic Four, but better). Every week, we'd go on some crazy adventure into the bowels of the earth to battle rockmen, explore abandoned space stations, or pop over into another dimension to say hello. Direct relations wouldn't be necessary - son-in-laws, childhood friends, etc. Just enough to give it a family feel with the tensions that it would imply. Enough to differentiate the Science Family from the Tech Team of STORM. I just haven't come up with a name for it yet!

Fantastic, ChaosRed! We'd be happy to have you in the fold! I know you do great work over in the Supreme Society redside!

Definitely come on by, Psychodad! We can get to know you so you'll be good to go first thing when i16 launches!

Name: Paragon Universe

Currently Recruiting: Always recruiting new players and new teams!

RP Level: We're all-RP all-the-time, but we do have an OOC global channel (Paragon Universe). /sg is IC, /coalition is IC.

PvP Level: Sporadic

Theme/Concept: Diverse teams and solo heroes share a sprawling base (The Citadel) and support network.

Activity: Our prime time is from 9-11 pm ET. We've got weekly events three nights a week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday) and ad hoc events on other nights.

Requirements for Membership: log-in every 30 days, introduce yourself on our guildportal forums so we know who is who, maximum of three characters (multiple incarnations of the same character count as 1)

Leadership: We're a semi-autonomous collective, but the folks with the highest clearance are Paladin (Legion leader), Gravartol (STORM leader), Freedom's Arch Mage (Incognitus leader), Imitation, and Lotos Rose.

In-Game Contacts: @arch mage, @cylar, @dark quill, @dr stan, @zethustra

OOC Global Channel: Paragon Universe (this is the best place to see at a glance who is online)

Out-of-Game Contact: You can PM Dark Quill here on the forums or chat us up on our guildportal forums.

URL: http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=231718

Coalitions: Next Gen, Cerulean Legion

Other Details:
At present, we have three mini-sgs within the SG:

STORM: An emergency response squad which tends to address more technological threats. Weekly briefing and mission RP every Wednesday at 9:15pm.

Incognitus: Holding back magical threats from other dimensions. A weekly meeting and mission RP every Thursday at 9 pm.

Legion: Heroes of courage and hope band together to fight evil. The Legion is in a rebuilding phase and a new weekly event will be announced soon.

These weekly events are normally open to anyone -- whether it's a crossover, a guest appearance, or a recurring role!

We also have other special events. Look under Events on the front page of our guildportal site for up-to-date listings!

Thanks for the well-wishes, Joe! It's been going pretty darn well for the last year and a half! If you'd ever like to join us, let us know!

Are you forming a new roleplay supergroup? The Paragon Universe can help!

Paragon Universe is the OOC name of a blueside supergroup. Lots of solo heroes and several small teams all share a base (The Citadel) and a communications channel (IC /sg). And we're always looking for new teams to come share our resources with us!

Generally, if you're making a small SG, you're stuck with your own small base and making a coalition with a more established SG who has the telepads and base facilities that you want.

<Dramatic Voiceover>
But if you roll yourselves into the Paragon Universe, you get:
(1) To keep your own identity! Your leadership stays your leadership.

(2) When your attendance is a little too low, just call on the other residents of the Citadel! There's no need to form a vague coalition where not everyone can hear everyone else. The other heroes in the Citadel share your channel and can answer your calls for help.

(3) A semi-public place to roleplay. The Citadel has been fully furnished to accomodate the arcane, the technological, and the casual. Your team can meet in a variety of environments, from hi-tech briefing rooms to mystical libraries to starlit gardens to fireplace seating in a sumptuous lounge. If Pocket D isn't for you, the Citadel probably is!

(4) Two forums on our paid guildportal.com site -- one for OOC and one for RP

(5) A tab to present your history and recruiting information on our guildportal site.

(6) Full and appropriate permissions within the SG. If your newest recruit has broken your rules, then yes, you can kick them out.

(7) A backup plan. Let's face it, not all small supergroups last. Players lose interest in characters or games. Sometimes you're the only one left in an empty base. Well, if you're in the Paragon Universe, your character has already become established as part of a larger social structure. Your team may have dissolved, but you're still closely linked to lots of heroes with several weekly roleplay events!

</Dramatic Voiceover>

Here's our contact information:
Our guildportal site: Paragon Universe
Our OOC global channel: Paragon Universe
Folks you can contact:
@Arch Mage
@Cylar
@Dark Quill (that's me! Feel free to PM me here, on guildportal, or /tell @dark quill, got a question for you!)
@Dr Stan
@Zethustra

I agree that regular missions will likely be making a comeback. I'm particularly looking forward to how much easier it will be, now that we have super-sidekicking, to get things organized for some good old-fashioned mission-based roleplay. It will help with AE content too, because even though during i14 and i15, one could force everyone into a certain level range, there are lots of nice-looking story-based AE arcs out there who didn't take advantage of that.

Being able to set regular missions to be +4 will also help move folks away from feeling like their only choices for fighting 54s are mothership raids or AE. AE giving reduced rewards if custom villain groups don't have minions and lts and bosses should also put regular content on a more equal footing when it comes to advancement.

But mostly I'm looking forward to SSKing for my RP groups. AE helped a lot. SSK just takes it further!

I'd like to say how very nice this system will make non-AE teams for my RP SGs. We've got a lot of characters of a lot of different levels. And until AE, it was always a challenge to find something for us to do together (if we didn't have half the team in the right level range), and mostly we ended up Flashbacking down to an arc that the very lowest level could do.

When AE came along, that problem was solved by AE missions with limited level ranges. And with i15, it got even better because the designers didn't have to play tricks to limit the range. But now, with i16, we'll all be able to do non-AE arcs with anyone, get xp with anyone, and rp with anyone while still 'playing the game.'

Thank you so much.

How will this affect teams who aren't doing missions? I know that street sweeping is far less popular than it once was, but I certainly hope that one can still manually sidekick friends for purposes of mission-less street sweeping and travel across zones.

But if you can still manually sidekick, then it seems to me that one could still bridge via street sweeping.

I also hope that additional levels of reputation can be added. At mission difficulty 5, one could only face foes that are +3 to the mission holder, or +4 to auto-sidekicks. That would leave street sweeping the only way to face more challenging foes (absent increasing numbers). I know +4 missions are purple, but I also know that some superheroes are up for uber-purple minions.

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About the bright colours on ice- I say allow them. Some people might really enjoy the crystal or gemstone effect, and make some pretty cool character concepts with it.

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I agree. I was looking forward to a whole slew of gemstone-hurling 'ice' blasters. But I think the 'catch' is that Babs says it looks like 'cartoon gemstones.' I'm assuming his choice of the word 'cartoon' was to reflect the idea that the particles would then not look as realistic as the rest of the graphics in the game. Assuming that's true, I can't fault this decision. City of Heroes may be based on comics, but the graphics are not cartoony.

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And of course, walking. (Yes I know it was probably a joke. But I can dream...)

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I'm really hoping that walking wasn't a joke. Ever since the first booster pack, I've said I'd gladly pay $10 for the ability to walk. The blatant inability to walk across a room has nullified dozens of character concepts that I'd have liked to have role-played.

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Or has it become a pretty much a dead artform?

Im just curious.

I mean, consistent, plotted RP with activities and such, and not just Pocket D lounging, or forum Rookery silliness.

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Sure. I enjoy both running stories and enjoying the stories of others in the Paragon Universe sg. In general I keep it to the SG or to our coalition-mates, just because it's good to know who your audience is, especially since they're the ones doing most of the work. I'm just providing basic external factors and plot points for them to react to and resolve -- the story's about what they do with that. And then there's some rock-em-sock-em action thrown in for the folks who enjoy fighting AI critters.

Remember the old days when they were called tinyplots?

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Is the issue with the enhancement screen and the mouse cursor (those of you have have to deal with this problem know exactly what I'm talking about) an issue that might be able to be fixed by the NCSoft team, or is it in ATI's ballpark? Kind of annoying, particularly when I am trying to respec a high-level character and have all those IO's to shuttle around.

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I'm having this problem with my new HD3850. It happens with both the Catalyst 8.12 Drivers and Omega 4.8.442.

Using the supposedly obsolete -compatiblecursors 1 in my shortcut stops the problem, but gives me ugly black-and-white low-rez cursors (except for the default one).

(This post is for informational purposes)

Objective: As Kristy Tracer stated above, the South and West walls do not allow placement of objects directly next to them anymore. While there are workarounds to get Wall Details put up on those walls, they are not actually up against the walls, but instead floating out (the same width of the trim, curiously). I suspect this will be a bug with the no-things-in-doors-or-inside-walls pathing rules that were implemented after the general raid-pathing rules were removed.

Subjective: My experience with the new base changes have been overall positive -- I love the new ability to stack off the floor, off walls, and off ceilings.

Objective: On the downside, my base now has so many decorative objects in it that I get a lot of lag when in the Base Editor (presumably because it loads every single object in the base instead of obeying normal 'draw distance' rules (for good reason)). But this is, for the most part, a happy problem.

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Times 6 for the various 'modes' to both cover the different hand/arm positions and to properly transition back into the appropriate 'ready' stance when you stop walking: Ready, Combat Ready, Weapon Ready, Dual Ready (used by katana and archery as well), 'Shotgun' Ready, and Shield Ready

15-90 animations needed to do a 'walk button'. (Or 105 if we wanted to accomodate the two-handed club stance as well.)

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I'd be happy with just the initial 15 to get *something* in there. Transitioning from a walk to pull out my pipewrench from my invisible back can't be any worse than transitioning from my "/em yoga" pose to pulling it out.

Yes, I quite take what you mean about people not being happy with a single walk, and I've long wanted an MMO to have different animations for different walks and moods, but right now we can't walk at all. So, you know, baby steps. Just as we had fly long before we had custom fly poses, we can have walk before we have custom walking animations.

Thanks for the reply, Brawler!

If I had to choose between shields (which I love) and walking, I'd have chosen walking! I might be in the minority.

Base Repricing
1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?

Greatly. All three SGs for which I'm a builder will be positively affected by the changes and so be able to afford a larger base.

For two of the three, rent will go down. For the third, the rent will increase (from 0), but that's okay.

2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?

Definitely. However, I would be dismantling anyway in order to take advantage of the new building tools (elimination of raid pathing restrictions, intersecting objects).

3) How long would this process take you if you were to engage in this practice?

Approximately 12 hours per base.

4) What are the positive and negative concerns regarding repricing?

Positive: We can now afford much larger bases.
Negative: For one of the SGs, someone will have to pay upkeep occassionally when they didnt' before.

5) How will this feature affect you long term and short term?

Long Term: Positively. (Much prettier bases.)
Short Term: Positively. (I cannot wait to re-do my bases under the new rules! Stacking is so much easier!)


Base Salvage Exchange to Invention Salvage
1) What is the negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?

The responsibility for getting salvage for building will fall solely in my hands. Previously, everyone donated their Base Salvage because there was nothing else to do with it (but Empowerments).

And because we can store such small amounts of Invention Salvage in the base, there's no way to actually store *usable* quantities of Invention Salvage for future use in either Base Item Crafting or Empowerment Stations.

We have several players who do use the Empowerment Stations, but because they will now use Invention Salvage instead of Base Components, they will have to rely upon personal inventory for storing salvage instead of the Salvage Racks (30 pieces is not large enough to cover every single empowerment).

2) What is the positive effect on your base for this feature implementation?

None.

3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system?

None.

4) What side effects to this system do you currently see from transitioning the old to new system?

Empowerment Stations will be used less.

It will be much more difficult to obtain the Fabricator Badge when the "Covert to Base components" recipes are taken away.

Immediately after i13 launch, the price of Rare salvage will drop because Brainstorm Ideas converted to salvage will flood the market. Then the prices will equalize.

The donations of players who wish to donate Invention Salvage to the Base's Construction will be indistinguishable from those who wish to donate for the use of other players.

5) What security concerns do you have regarding this change?

No direct security concerns.

Additional Notes:

I believe much of the Base Salvage problem could have been avoided if "Base Components" were kept in the system. And so all Recipes for Empowerments and Base Items could stay the same, but Base Components could be constructed out of Invention Salvage, possibly using the same recipes that are currently live.

Has anyone been able to determine whether Lightning Reflexes has +FlightSpeed in addition to +Recharge and +RunSpeed? The description of the power doesn't seem to be explicit one way or the other. It would make sense for it to be +Flightspeed considering all the Mu red-lightning flying about.

If things were literal, Grounded would require you to be in contact with the ground, but we all know that even Rooted doesn't keep you rooted, so let's hope that LR has +Flightspeed!

I suppose the only sure way to test it (since it's an auto), is to Gain A Level, measure your flight speed, then get your power, and measure again. Has anyone been able to do this?

thanks!