FlyingCodeMonkey

Thanks for this. It was needed.

-FCM

I can't honestly recall the specific GMs with which I've interacted over time, but in general they were great. Once they even went an extra mile to refund a ton of in-game influence taken from me by a copy-paste bug at the auction house, back before we had a very-large-transaction prompt (for which I personally begged).

They could easily have said sorry, we can't alter an in-game transaction, and honestly that's what I expected would happen. However, it didn't hurt to ask, and they were kind about it.

5:30 pacific? Gah, day job? Traffic?

6:30 or later, I could possibly make with a bit of luck. 5:30 almost no chance, which is irritating since I'm desperate for a fraps of a Magi with my Cold defender.

We'll see what happens, I guess

WAHOO! Movies, Halloween, and Winter Event all on the list.

FCM is slightly more happy.

Very nice.

I'd set aside my standard practice of guarded pessimism for one day, during which I would conced that although I don't understand them, perhaps optimists serve a useful purpose.

After that, back to cynical business as usual!

Jeezums, this thread turned into a dissertation on the nature of cautious optimism, somewhere in the middle.

Indeed, the Cybertech pieces were/are accessible on Beta.

They're really good.

Good stuff.

I've often remarked that one of the best decisions ever made while designing City was to decouple appearance from skills, so that even two characters with identical power selections may look totally different. Add to that probably the second-best decision; i.e., the enhancement system for improving aspects of a power (or not) according to your personal priorities, and the fact that we all play with different styles, and you'll probably never see two characters that look and behave exactly the same ... ever. This article adds another interesting layer to that argument that I hadn't considered.

It's funny. At this point, Bright and I do (inevitably) have several characters with similar power sets, and yet the way we go about playing them is often quite different. I doubt we could possibly have more disparate techniques of Masterminding, but it works. Even when placing enhancements in similar powers, we have different strategies based on personal priorities. If I felt the urge to try a different combination of forms on a Peacebringer, I'd use a second or third build. She prefers to create different characters instead, because she more closely connects a character's identity with its style. I love crunching numbers and working up set combinations; she's only willing to invest that much time in a few favorite characters, yet the game accommodates us both.

If you go to Atlas and see a group of people assembling a DFB, they're probably already individually distinct in appearance. Go over to the equivalent zone in Aion, and everyone's wearing the same lowbie gear. In fairness, Aion gets better in that respect as you go, and the appearance of an item can be skinned. Some of the later weapons/armor/robes have quite lovely designs. Nevertheless, the impression sticks. City has ruined me in that I really dislike having functional details tied to specific gear. Anyway, at this point I'm rambling. I'll stop.

The times are a bit awkward for a Pacific TZ person with a day job during the week, but I'll make a best effort.

Intriguing idea (I might be willing), but what would make the story of particular interest to this region? I'm most likely missing something obvious.

None of my classes were ever that awesome.

Several years ago, my Force Fields Defender was part of a team on one of the Oranbegan maps. Entering one room (the crystal jail, I think) we got in way over our heads with at least two full groups aggroed, and most of the group was killed in seconds. I retreated around the corner, threw Force Bubble, and with it kept the boiling mass of Thorns at bay while recalling team members into the safe area. We got everyone rezzed and buffed, then recovered to win a very hard-fought battle. I felt pretty heroic that day. Most folks consider Force Bubble useless. Yeah, it's very situational, but I love that power.

Long before then, sometime in the first year of the game, I was with a trio of my first SG the first time we discovered a Circle portal room. Having no clue that the portals would start spawning critters continuously, we aggroed at least two of them and were quickly surrounded. So there we were: my Illusion/Storm, an Empath, and a Blaster, huddled in my Hurricane disk, making a desperate last stand. Eventually, we were overwhelmed by more demons than any of us had ever seen. It was awesome, though.

Back before aggro caps and target limits, I remember an Eden run where our Granite Tank quite literally collected every devouring earth critter in the Crystal Titan room. He herded almost every one of them into an enormous mass. Of course, I threw Fulcrum Shift, and the buff icons from the cast crowded out everything else. Our crazy fire blaster leaped into the group and cast Inferno, annihilating almost every crystal critter ... and replacing them with an even more enormous mass of crystal midgets, almost none of which were aggroed to the tank! He was killed in about two seconds. None of us could help him. We were too busy laughing.

Ages ago, I was in some zone with my (still) favorite Earth/Rad controller, going about my business. Abruptly, I get a frantic tell from a friend. They're down in the bottom of the old Sewer Trial, time running out, in trouble. This was long before Ouroboros, unified trains, mission teleporters, etc., so after joining the team I go blazing to Steel, to the Sewer, to the Abandoned Sewer, to the trial door at the bottom of the sewer, and leap into the abyss of catwalks, all the way down to the Hydra head. We get the situation under control and win the trial with a few seconds left on the clock. Heh, we still occasionally mention that rescue, to this day.

Much more recently, Bright and I taking our Scrapper/Stalker duo through the Dark Astoria content. My titan sword, her dual blade, taking on the army of Romulus and the hordes of Mot. As I've said in another thread, that level of fun is addictive.

Also, the combination of my Robots/Time Mastermind and her Ninjas/Force Field Mastermind. We didn't set out to create such an exceptional Mastermind duo, but they have incredible synergy with complimentary buffs plus debuffs and good damage. Fully incarnated, we've duoed pretty much every GM and routinely aggro multiple mob groups for the sheer glorious spectacle of it.

There's been more. I could go on, but that covers it pretty well. I find that many of my best moments have been on missions, trials, task forces, etc., where it looked like the whole team/league was headed for humiliating defeat, but in sheer defiance of numbers and chance we actually struggled back to even footing and then to win. That doesn't happen too often, beyond a certain point of no return, but when it does occur the satisfaction is grand.

I'm still a little burned out on high fantasy, as well. I blame that mostly on a very intense Diablo 2 period several years ago. I think that's why I never spent much time with the original melee sets (Broad Sword), though I've had good fun with the more recent ones (Titan, Staff).

Anyway, to the OP ... glad it's working out for you. Enjoy while it lasts, knowing what you know.

HA! Thanks for putting the winged characters in the air of the final-final version. Because my Virtue guy happens to be one of my few fliers, I finally found myself. Front left side, from about 1:30. A tiny orange-and-black lightning bug would never have been visible otherwise.

Too awesome. Any person not moved by that video has no soul.

I was really, REALLY looking toward 24. So much good stuff in it.

Wind Control on the somewhere horizon, too? Damn, damn damn.

And quit finishing your final run for the evening just as I'm getting online.

I can't leave work any earlier, nor make my bus leave earlier, but I simply must have a good Magisterium in the fraps collection.

Also, they're fun ...

Well, you know I'll be there.

There's simply too much good stuff in the Underground. It must be in the archive.

Now who to bring ... that will be the difficult part.