Lightfoot

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You're right

I never got that though. Broadswords vs Katana, 1hand vs 2hand. So...odd...

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Not really. The Katana is traditionally wielded with two hands. There are a few schools that teach a "niten" technique (two swords, one wielded in each hand), but whenever a bushi wields just one blade, it is almost always with both hands.

Western swordfighting was most often "sword and board," the sword in one hand, and the shield on the other, or "dueling," with one hand free or holding a lighter weapon intended for parrying. There are a few western swordfighting traditions where the sword was wielded with both hands. The hilt of a longsword or a broadsword was usually only large enough to accomodate one gauntleted hand. The "hand and a half" sword was heavier than the broadsword, and had a longer hilt, enabling the weapon to be wielded with one or both hands, as the situation demanded. Then there were swords that were meant to be wielded with two hands at all times, like the Scottish claymore.

Most of our broadsword models in City of Heroes are based on the one handed blades. The one exception that I can think of off the top of my head is the flamberge, which was usually a "hand and a half" weapon. There may be others, but I haven't made a new Broadsword character since Shields came out, so my memory may be rusty in regards to all of the options.

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A Scythe is an unwieldy, two handed weapon.

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So are Broadswords. Which we're getting.

I'll suggest a Scythe model for Broadswords. Just have to make sure the model is pointing the right direction.

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The Broadsword, as we have it in City of Heroes, is an unweildy, one-handed weapon.

And some of the weapon models are much better suited for Stalking than others.

In the end, the Broadsword has a sharp point, which allows for good, clean, stabbity-death inflicting fun.

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I doubt that defenders or controllers will get Poison, since the big wigs said they would have to revamp the set like they did for villains with pain domination.


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Holding to this stance becomes ridiculous once Going Rogue hits the streets. Within hours (depending on how complicated it is to switch sides, perhaps as long as a day) after Going Rogue is live, we will have Heroic Corruptors with Pain Domination, Heroic Masterminds with Poison, and Villainous Defenders with Empathy running around Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Once this happens, there is no good reason to hold off on either Archetype or Full Powerset Proliferation.

Back on topic:

Blasters: Dark Blast /
Controllers: / Poison
Defenders: / Thermal Radiation
Scrappers: / Ninjutsu
Tankers: Broadsword / or Spines / (want both equally)

Brutes: Spines / Regeneration (want both equally)
Corruptors: Psychic Blast /
Dominators: (Dark) Illusion /
Masterminds: / Sonic Resonance
Stalkers: Icy Melee / Ice Armor or Fiery Melee / Fire Armor (don't want the melee without the armor, want both flavors equally)

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I can see DP being given to Corruptors. I think Defenders may have to hold their breath.

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But....


But.....

I have a name and costume already camped for my Kinetics / Dual Pistols Defender, Annie Dromeda.



(I hope you are wrong )

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I see merit in both ideas.

I like the idea of having a "'hood" to call home. Several of my characters already do, but it would be nice to flesh that out into game mechanics. Maybe if they introduce Apartments, they let you choose which City Zone it will be in. Southpaw lives in King's Row. Lady Crane and Lord Rook live in Steel Canyon (well, Lord Rook haunts Dark Astoria at the moment, but he lived in Steel Canyon when he was still alive). Dag Nabbit and Granny Go retired to Salamanca before Croatoa smacked down on top of it. The Mighty Scarab rents a warehouse in Galaxy City where he stockpiles Twinkies for the long trip back to his home planet.

While I don't think they could do a permanent Contact without turning it into a glorified newspaper, I would support the idea of level 1-50 (or 5-50) Contacts. I had a similar idea a while back where each of the FBSA Contacts would have series of story arcs that would run from 1-50 dealing with the specific concerns of their Agencies. I even started to outline the story arcs, but haven't finished them yet. Similar Contacts could be made redside and grayside.

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The "Epic" in Epic Archetype does not refer to power level. The "Epic" refers to the word Epic, in the literary sense. The Epic Archetypes have a storyline unique to them that runs from level 1-50.

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Thank you, this does make more sense in the epicness. I was thinking that it couldn't have been that way when I did 1 quest in 1 encounter and was told to come back later. I was expecting a lot more of a story line. I took precautions (making sure I was pacted up and had a bit of free time) to do the quest line.


Thanks again for all the responses!

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This is why I said that while the story was there, the quality of the story was debatable.

The Kheldian story on heroside is much better. The VEAT story feels..... rushed (to be polite). Most of the VEAT arcs are mini arcs, two to three missions in length. They all follow the same basic plot through the character's career from level 1-50.

The Peacebringer and Warshade arcs tend to be 3-5 missions in length, have different contacts for the two types of Kheldians, and see the overall story from different angles (until the 30s, when the stories converge).

If they ever get around to making more EATs, I hope their stories are closer to the quality of the Kheldian story than the Arachnos story.

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know wat id like to see for stalkers? sythe power set... might as well say wat power sets youd like to see in game as well.. id like feedback on a sythe power set idea.

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Welcome to the Forums.

Suggestions & Ideas is this way.

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That being said, while I think a Scythe (correct spelling) Powerset would be visually impressive, I don't think it would be a good fit for Stalkers. A Scythe is an unwieldy, two handed weapon. While it doesn't matter how fast the Assassin's Strike is, the rest of the attacks in the set would be fairly slow.

A sickle, on the other hand, might work. Sickles may work best as a simple weapon skin, rather than as a Powerset of their own. The khopesh skin in Dual Blades is almost there (backwards curving blade, short handle, meant for chopping rather than draw-cut strikes), the sickle would be a smaller, lighter version of the same with a more extreme backwards curve. Now that Stalkers are getting Broadsword, a sickle model might be able to be applied there, too. (And would enable me to fully realize one of my Cold War era supervillains ).

Give us some idea of how you think the nine Powers that would make up the set would work, and you might be able to garner support for your idea.

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Pain Domination is entirely based on mental control. You don't actually 'heal' anyone, you just make them ignore any pain they might be feeling.

Kind of like how someone hopped up on PcP can demonstrate feats of 'invulnerability'.

Which is why it's a villainous powerset.

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Does that make the medics on the sidelines at Football games villains? They give the players a hefty cortisone shot after they get injured and then send them right back onto the field.

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Wow... just... wow...

You, sir, win the False Analogy of the Year award.

(Not that I absolutely agree with BAB, but... yeah...)

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Upon further research, it may be cortisol that is administered on the field, and not cortisone...

But the point I was trying to make that making someone "ignore the pain" instead of healing them is not necessarily evil. Even a hefty dose of the hormones released from our own glands during "fight or flight" situations suppresses our ability to feel pain. Once the stimulus that triggered the fight or flight response is over, we get to feel that pain again.

In the end, the "evil or not" argument is pointless. Somewhere between six months to a year from now, we will have plenty of Heroic Corruptors running around with Pain Domination and plenty of Villainous Defenders running around with Empathy, all thanks to side switching. With this being part of our impending future, there is no reason not to open up all Archetypes and appropriate Powersets to both (all three?) sides of the game.

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The only thing I would like to mention on the epic-ness is that if it takes 4 of a team to become steamrollers that seems a bit unepic to me.


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The "Epic" in Epic Archetype does not refer to power level. The "Epic" refers to the word Epic, in the literary sense. The Epic Archetypes have a storyline unique to them that runs from level 1-50. While the quality of said story is debatable, it is still there. This, according to the Devs, is what seperates an Epic Archetype from the other Archetypes. In fact, it is counter to the goals of the Dev team to make any Epic Archetype significantly more powerful than any of the regular Archetypes. Expect any future Epic Archetypes to follow the same guidleines (Epic != power, Epic = story)

Because the Epic Archetypes have so many power choices, they are far from "easy mode." In order to make a good Kheldian or Soldier that fits your playstyle, you need to make some hard choices. The thing that makes the Epic Archetypes truly "Epic" for me is the fact that no matter what your playstyle, you can find a build that suits you and is still effective.

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Pain Domination is entirely based on mental control. You don't actually 'heal' anyone, you just make them ignore any pain they might be feeling.

Kind of like how someone hopped up on PcP can demonstrate feats of 'invulnerability'.

Which is why it's a villainous powerset.

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Does that make the medics on the sidelines at Football games villains? They give the players a hefty cortisone shot after they get injured and then send them right back onto the field.

Although, with Going Rogue on the horizon, any debate about how villainous Pain Domination or Poison are, or how heroic Empathy is, is purely academic. The first day sideswitching becomes available, we will see characters with Pain Pomination and Poison in Paragon City fighting alongside other heroes, and we will see characters with Empathy fighting alongside other villains in the Rogue Isles.

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Alright, I need to find a server where people still team up to do regular missions.
The three servers I play on...Protector, Justice and Guardian...all seem to just be AE servers now.

It's to the point where I am forced to either solo or team in AE farm missions to level up.

Are there any servers out there that still do regular missions?

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They all do. It is just a matter of refining your method for finding a team. Broadcast ("lvl 8 Magic Scrapper lft") has always been a horrible way to find teams. If you are Broadcasting for a team, and relying on Broadcast to let you know which other players are looking for teams or team members, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

First, get out of Atlas Park. This will greatly reduce the "AE team lfm 4 lvl 54 Boss farm. lvl 40+ only" spam that you are seeing now. Open your team search window, narrow the search to characters near your level, and start sending tells asking if they would like to team or if they have room on their team for one more.

Go down to the server forums and join the Forum Chat Channels. These server channels are where most of the folks who are sick of the AE spam find their teams. They turn off Broadcast so the server channels are the only chatter they see.

The team and players are out there. You just need to hone your team seeking skills. Except to make or check my own missions, I rarely set foot in an AE building. The rest of my time in game has been doing non-AE content.

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I'm guessing you're new here.

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Sad thing? I just earned by 6 month vet badge..........



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Well, my only question is, what prompted your post? Have you noticed large numbers of players on the teams you have been on ignoring their "roles?"

These roles are the very basic roles of each archetype, pretty much described in the loading screens when you are installing the game.

Experienced, good, inventive, or crazy players (take your pick) can go beyond these roles with impunity. The most important things any AT brings to the team is that they contribute towards the enemies' defeat, and that they do not contribute to the defeat of the team.

As long as you do those two things, you have a place on my teams.

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That will likely never happen. Anything that requires a new skeleton would require a lot of work. And the options really wouldn't be used by that many people. It wouldn't be worth it for the Devs to devote the time to make animals when he majority of players don't want to play a talking dog. (That's really a guess, but I don't think the majority of players here are into that sort of thing, this isn't toon-town)

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Given the ability to create an anthropomorphic dog, I'd be on it in a heartbeat.

A real dog? Not so much. Some things just wouldn't work / look ridiculous; i.e., Battle Axe, Martial Arts, any melee Powerset, etc.

As far as development time, it just isn't worth the effort. Every single animation in the game would need to be worked for each animal skeleton. Even just the running animation would be a pain in the kiester because a dog runs differently than a cat, which runs differently than a horse, which runs differently than a lizard, which runs differently than a.....

Too much work for too little effort.

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Stalker - Shields or fire melee

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Shields doesn't mesh with most stalkers sets or the stalker theme. Fire melee functionally double but breaks theme since how stealthy is a man on fire?

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Where there's fire, there's smoke...and smoke hides just as well as being invisible. I could easily see a Fiery Melee or Fiery Aura Stalker work. Especially if Placate and Hide involved vanishing into a swirling mass of smoke and embers, and then reappearing in a sudden blazing flash when you strike, like a backdraft.

That could be pretty darn cool.

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That sounds awesome, and you are awesome enough to make it look as cool as it sounds.

/signed to your suggestion.

If Positron wants to know why you have started working on these animations for Stalker Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura, you can tell him that we said it was okay.

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I love how so many people read "we need a break from nerfs" as "there shall only be buffing from now on." And then proceeded to belittle me because of their poor reading comprehension. Bravo!

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Just to put this out there.....

You seem to be too emotionally invested in your suggestion. I just reread the thread to this point. One person laughed at the idea, and then provided a clear, rational analysis of why the idea was flawed.

Everyone else left out the laughter, and did exactly the same thing.

At no point were you "belittled." You were disagreed with, but never dissed. At least, not until you accused everyone else of having poor reading comprehension. When you made it personal, others challenged your reading comprehension and memory.

You did ask for "a break from the nerfs." Your next paragraph then proceeded to ask, "Why no more nerfs?" At the very least, this is a mixed message. If we follow the logic, and apply your solution, then what we would get is, "there shall only be buffing from now on." Our Devs have shown that they are commited to balancing the powersets and archetypes. If "nerfing" is off the table, as your question suggests, then all that remains is buffing.

Go back over the history of the game. With a few notable exceptions (GDN, ED, Purple Patch, Brawl Nerf), buffs outnumber nerfs by a wide margin. The reason the nerfs seem so much more dire is that they usually only nerf the overpowered, and as a result of being overpowered, Flavor of the Month Powersets. The vocal powergamers who flocked to the FotM then come here and complain that Energy Melee got nerfed, completely ignoring the buffs that lifted Assault Rifle, Dark Melee, Invulnerability, Archery, Sonic Blast and finally makes Regen's Tier 9 worth taking. The noise from the "don't nerf me, bro!" crowd seems even louder becuase the folks who received the buffs aren't there to dull the noise, they are playing the game and enjoying their newly buffed Powersets.

You could always go to Pocket D and save at the Tailor right there in the Tiki Lounge. I have done this on several occasions prior to a reroll when I wanted to keep a costume, but use different powersets.

edit: Not that I'm opposed, and I think it would be a nice QoL feature, just giving you a workaround until it could possibly be implemented.

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so how are Io's gonna work in this process....???

are all power switches gonna be transferable??

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What power switches? How will having new Powersets available have anything to do with the IOs of existing characters?

Powerset Proliferation is going to be opening up new Powersets for players at Character Creation.

You will be able to create a new Archery / Trick Arrow Corruptor. You will not be able to (and never have been able to) Respec your Assault Rifle / Traps Corruptor into an Archery Trick / Arrow Corruptor.

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Please do not allow Posi to write the story arcs for going Rogue.

Signed,

Someone Who Has Played Through the VEAT Arc

P.S: Or the guy who wrote the i15 Strike/Task Forces.

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In Horatio's defense, these were the first arcs he wrote for City of Heroes, and there were parts of the City of Heroes Bible that he missed. He has taken the criticism in stride and made changes to those Task Forces.

I fully expect that his storytelling abilities will grow, and that the inconsistencies will come fewer and farther between the more he studies that bible.

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I had an idea to turn away from the farms in the AE, the idea is the following, the AE would still have XP, but this would only be given at the end of missions, while the influence and prestige could run normally.

What does this change?

The lowbies return to normal missions and know the great game they have in their hands, so only the chars level 50 would make the AE, to raise prestige and influence, I bet that the number of lowbies doing AE decrease 95% and the game would have the grace that was before ...

This is the only salvation I see for the game at that time ...

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Actually, this doesn't work. Unlike the farming in the rest of the game, when farming in the AE, it is most advantageous to complete the missions. Since you can simply reselect and run the mission again, there is no reason not to, and you get the ticket bonus at the end. Reserving the XP until the end would have zero effect, as anyone completing the mission would still get the XP.

The only difference would be that instead of a bunch of little dings throught the mission, folks would get a bucnh of dings all at once at the end.

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Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!

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QFE.

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Will AE missions also get double XP rewards and double Influence rewards?

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Since AE missions don't get Patrol XP, I would be surprised if AE missions got Double XP.

Put me in the "I hope not" camp.

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I will say this.. I hope that make a secondary as well. I would like to see some more complete sets rather than just a primary and thats it..

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Well, the most thematic secondary for Demon Summoning is Thermal Radiation.

Here's hoping for some Proliferation in Going Rogue, as well (or as one of the as yet unannounced features of Issue 16: Going Rouge).

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Wouldn't an "earth spirit" be concidered magic?? Unless...you captured an earth spirit and scientically extracted/engineered the magical energies.

Just sayin'


Oh, make both!!

Oh, and I'm sure others will say to post this in the AT threads.

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But...but...

If Crey can mess with Magics...why can't I *whimper*

And I'm only restricting myself because I only have one good name to use... >_>

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Make both, and use the same name for each. All you have to do is make them on different servers.

These "should I make X or Y" topics always confuse me. If I have a concept for X and a concept for Y, they both get made. I never have to choose because I don't need to choose, especially not when there are 11 servers (12 if you count Test, and I do, I have eight characters who were born and live on Test), with a potential 36 slots on each.

I'm an altaholic, and proud of it. I simply don't understand mainalomaniacs. To each their own.

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All the details are here.

And I'm posting this in this forum for one very good reason...

'Our players -- and this is probably true with most MMOs, but moreso of City of Heroes -- because of the costume creator and the level of detail people get into it, you kind of get a different mindset of player. You get a very creator-centric mindset. Now we've added on to that with Mission Architect. Now they can become creators of their own stories and everybody wants to be good creators with each other. So it builds this positive feedback where you see all this stuff going. You know, if I ever need to hire a new mission writer, guess where I'm going to look? I'm going to look at the highest rated guys on there. Because that's your resume. You've done it and people love your stuff.'

(no, I'm not able to apply. I'm in the UK. ;P)

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Looks like I need to step up my MA game. I'm going to be unemployed come October, and I would love to get my foot in this particular door.

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The ability to keep or re-use Enhancements I've already earned are worth the time to earn the respec needed to replace them without losing them. In the course of earning the respec, I'm playing the game by actively participating on a team, engaging enemies, etc. Having fun in general.

The Enhancements are getting to the point that (for me, anyway) they aren't worth the tediousness of going through the process of steps that completely respecs a level 50 character just for the purpose of non-destructive replacement of a few Enhancements. I find the act of respeccing itself to be tedious (are there some that enjoy it?).

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Then, since Enhancements were never meant to be reused, things are working as intended. If you have gotten to the point where the remaining enhancements are not worth the effort of doing the respec, then you are contributing to the influence sink as designed.

For the record, I'm not fond of the Respec process. At the very least, it should mirror the normal leveling process the way it does with changing Builds. I also would like it if the game told you which power you picked at which level, and where those slots were assigned at each level in the previous build. I know I can take a screen shot or work with Mids, but some folks don't alt+tab out as easily on their machines as I do.

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How about this: when I go to use an earned or purchased respec, give me the option of doing : 1) the "normal" respec process (i.e. re-choosing ALL powers, ALL slots, etc.) or 2) the option of non-destructively replacing 10 enhancements without having to redo all the other steps involved in a respec.

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I'm not sure how the tech would work for this, but, since the end result is the same as going through the full respec, I don't see anything inherently flawed in the idea. It would be a Quality of Life fix that I would not object to, even if I rarely, or never, used it myself.