Ironik

I wouldn't mind if the horns were decreased by 75% or so.

Manticore would be a Green Arrow/Batman mash-up. While there's Hawkeye, I don't think there's an equivalent to Batman in the Marvel universe.

I was going to say that driving 45 minutes away from the city will likely get you... a little closer to the outskirts of the city. Unless you're doing it at 4 am, maybe. Plus, some of the best restaurants in the world are in NYC. Quality drops off precipitously as you leave town. (And that's coming from a guy who has relatives in most of the boroughs, Long Island and upstate.)

I dunno, maybe Fort Lee, New Jersey? Or perhaps Stamford, Connecticut?

I agree that Energy/Energy Blasters are probably still considered the iconic combo.

Back when City of Heroes was sometimes derisively called "City of Blasters," and long before Power Proliferation, Energy/Energy Blasters were in fairly high demand because many of their powers were simply more effective than those of other Blasters. Fire develops later, Assault Rifle wasn't as powerful, Electricity had a bug while Ice has always been more about control than damage output. So a lot of people saw the sheer damage Energy impressively put out at the lower levels and so they chose that over others.

The only other real contender for "most used powerset" back then was Regen Scrapper, because Regen was far, far more powerful than it is today. (In Founders Falls in the early days, I once watched a Spines/Regen Scrapper take on a good twenty 5th Column that were 4-5 levels higher than he was, solo, and he walked away. That day I knew Regen was getting nerfed soon.) But the difference between Regen and NRG is that NRG is flashy and loud -- so not only was the AT more capable of mowing down enemies, it did so while calling attention to itself.

I had been a Defender player in CoH's early days, but my SG was lousy with Defenders at the time, so I decided to roll up a Blaster. I chose Energy purely because I liked how the powers looked. But very soon that character was the workhorse of the SG, racking up more kills than anyone else, essentially relegating all of my friends' characters to support roles. I based his costume on the color of the powers.

Their hearts were in the right place, but the implementation is just terrible. I don't know what their beta system is like, since all of the issues plaguing people are so blatantly obvious they should've been caught. It almost seems like "beta test" is code for "Angelo and his ten friends."

I honestly do not care about the comments by other people; given the choice between those and the artist's comments, I'll choose the latter every day of the week and twice on Sunday. So hiding the artist's remarks annoys me. Losing the obvious and easy-to-find search function annoys me. Losing the icons for Gallery and Profile right next to art annoys me. Having DA load 4 or 5 times slower tips me past annoyance into anger. I once read that people will surf away from a page if it takes longer than 10 seconds to load... the many complaints about loading times means that less art will be seen over time and fewer artists will get the exposure they need.

You need to set the buttons in your Options menu. I usually use the +/= button to toggle it on and off. Others have different gambits.

I think he's funny.

No, the Netherlands is where Peter Pan lives. /joeytribbiani

Echoing what others have said:

Glass skyscrapers!

Distinct NYC / San Francisco types of neighborhoods, such as Little Italy, Chinatown, Alamo Square (the famous Victorian houses known as the "Painted Ladies"), Greenwich Village, Times Square, etc. Also unique smaller places like Dayton, Ohio's, Oregon District, or Boston's Harvard Square.

It would also be cool to be able to go into local landmarks like the restaurants and such.

Plus, can you please turn off the alarms in the police stations?

Obsidius has confused me.

Here's how I envisioned the parallel Earths, using a city analogy:

Each Earth is a building. Each building has a basement (Netherworld) and an attic (Shadow Shard). Portal Corp is essentially building a subway that travels between buildings.

Are you saying that each building *shares* the basement with all the other buildings?

The leather jacket is easy, as any number of places can make that for you, including the color. The pants might be a little trickier to come by if you aren't using spandex, although the football apparel route might work. It'll cost moolah, though.

This site apparently does colors.

For the blades, there must be a fairly simple way to use a button to activate a push-pull solenoid set-up to extend and retract them. Put the button on the outside knuckle of your index finger so you're not accidentally springing them out all the time -- combine that with a flex movement to distract people from seeing the semi-awkward thumb-activation and you're good to go.

The red dot is just to show where the button would go. You'd want it to blend in so as to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Now that you mention it, I do recall someone playing a character they never leveled up. My original rationale for a Terrible Two was just to make that hardcore playstyle a bit easier by training to level 2 in order to get Rest.

Smiling_Joe has a good point about */Kin Controller with a Damage boost from Siphon Power, since I'm pretty sure it also boosts the bonus powers.

I disagree that CoV is better designed than CoH. I feel there are three major design flaws which hold redside back:

1. Zone design is clumsy, frustrating to navigate and just plain unattractive.
2. The story restricts player creativity and relegates characters to minor roles in the overall world story.
3. Players do not feel "villainous enough" and the flipside is that most people don't seem to want to play villains.

Regardless of whether my perceptions are correct, it does seem that fewer people play CoV than CoH, which means devoting resources to it results in lesser returns. I realize this is a vicious circle, but how can this be solved without a wholesale redesign? However, the only people who can say definitively that fewer people play CoV than CoH are the Devs.

I think the only way to fully capitalize on the "hero v. villain" dynamic is to allow full-on integration of the two sides so that heroes and villains are in constant contact. I don't know how to implement that without some form of PvP which the majority of players dislike, but again we're talking about a complete redesign of the game. This is something CoH 2 could address, but that's years away from reality.

All to say I have no answers to a thorny conundrum. Apparently I just want to hear myself talk.

Back in the day we had the MAN challenge, where we rolled characters who were "normal" people and only chose abilities from the Power Pools, with various limitations set by different MAN factions.

Which led me to wonder back then if it would be possible to roll a character who stops leveling at 2 and play the game from there without ever choosing another power. Temp powers would be permissible on "Easy" mode, disallowed on "Hard" mode. I recently received the 54 month Vet reward, which grants you a second bonus power and temp powers would make it easier, as well.

One of the most serious stumbling blocks was always the issue of Hazard Zones, because it was impossible to play the game without going into one or another. However, now that we can drop missions and Hazard Zones are no longer gated content, I'm wondering if rolling a "Terrible Two" character might actually be doable.

What do you guys think? Is there an AT and/or powerset combination which would offer the most survivability if you stopped training up at level 2? I kind of think a Scrapper with a damaging aura (Dark, Fire) might be best.

Go to DA's Facebook page and let them know. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Do you mean the screenshots in your CoH screenshot folder, or when trying to paste from the Clipboard?

Vista is wonky about screenshots saving to the Clipboard -- sometimes it works, more often it takes a picture from a few minutes previously. But they are always in the screenshot folder. I don't know if Win7 has the same issue.

Or after a particularly intensive night on the town you get uncertainly to your feet and remark to no one in particular, "Good, standing."

Also, the servers are all down right now as they add a patch, so don't be too concerned if the game doesn't launch for a bit. Should be back online within an hour, probably.

Welcome to the game!

When you first log on, the servers are listed in order of their populations, from least to most.

Freedom and Virtue have the most. I'd say Virtue is the better one for beginners since it's the unofficial Role-Playing server.

As someone else said, IGNORE the AE (Architect Entertainment) contact in Atlas Park for now. Doing that will give you a false sense of the game.