LittleDavid

And suddenly, the ability to have Clockwork as pets takes on a disturbing amount of sense ...

... Would you believe I hadn't checked out the Vanguard base yet, until you said that?

Still, the VIP badge could technically be quicker than going to the Vanguard base, since you have to travel to the building, enter the portal, and find the tailor. In comparison, when you use the VIP teleport, the tailor is in the same room, up a flight of stairs.

Nice to know that there's quick non-GvE access to a tailor, though!

I've got to admit, I take that benefit for granted more than I should. I use the jump pack almost all the time whenever I'm using other travel powers.

And now that you mention it, the VIP card does let you have easy access to a tailor ... No need to Solid Snake your way through Cap Au Diable or Steel Canyon as a low level character if you want to change your costume!

That's weird ... I did call Visa at the time--well, I had called them prior to that when I found I couldn't use my card for an online purchase elsewhere. They didn't see anything wrong with the card. I registered it with the Vanilla Visa site, too--I'm not sure why it doesn't work. Blast.

Well, I guess I should try PayPal, then. My only worry with that is that I've heard a lot of bad things about PayPal and how they can freeze your account for little or no reason.

The Ecco games also have some of the best ambient music I've ever heard.

Man, I never saw this before (20 years before my time!). I was expecting a Super Mario game in that link, heh.

Somehow, given BaB's remarks and what I've heard about the difficulty of making water-based powers, it seems to me that swimming/water-based powersets and locales would be best served with a full-on expansion dedicated to that.

... which would take years and ultimately look stupid.

But hey, the shader-enabled water looks cool, so anything's possible!

Oh man, I like this one. Politically incorrect or not, it's full of wit!

Dame Mascus would be great for a character with an actual sword made of damascus steel, but ... I don't know if we can get that look in the game.

TV Tropes to the rescue!

They explain a number of the reasons why there's people who loathe the comic so much. In regards to Wintereenmas, check the list of examples for "Anvilicious," "Strawman Political," and "Strawman Has A Point."

So I gotta agree with Fredrik up there--I don't need a phony season just to play games! Especially with how Tim Buckley handled it.

No no! I was enjoying the thread's silliness!

Rant about how the United States has gone to Pittsburgh instead!

That's pretty wild. When you first said that, I was expecting to hear that they replaced it with a South Korean flag.

Wow. The thread went two pages before comments like this popped up.

And here I was thinking things would have gone sour within the first few posts!

... It just occurred to me that Primal Earth's Hamidon Pasalima may be the direct descendant of Bolbox!

And here I thought it had to do with wine ...

In seriousness, it could have something to do with the Mandelbrot Set, a kind of fractal.

Or it could have something to do with Johnathan Coulton's song of the same title.

Seconding that.

This makes me really want to dig deep into Praetoria Earth and learn of the superpowered political intrigues that boil under the surface.

Heh ... yeah, you're kinda right. I think it's mostly in the fact that Statesman's face guard looks kind of out of place with the rest of his costume, whereas Tyrant wears plenty of regal gold-trimmed armor that it all fits.

Maybe States should get a few more plates of armor to wear on his costume?

I'll sign this!

That's something they could easily fix, if they wanted to ... just crank up the perception or aggro range of enemies and such. They probably don't do it because they don't want to overwhelm players with hordes of enemies. It's that TV Trope about Mook Chivalry in action.

Maybe a compromise could work; flag certain groups as "busy," "idle," or "on patrol." and depending on which type of flag that group has, they might come running to help fellows of the same group if they get attacked.

For example: Hellions that're busy trading, breaking into a place, spaying graffiti, purse snatching, or mugging hapless citizens might be too preoccupied to notice their homies getting pwned 20 feet away--but a group of Hellions lounging about wondering what to do might easily aggro that same hero.

On the same token, the devs have some fun with the realization that groups of foes won't aggro just because they can easily spot a player. I overheard some amusing dialogue in Faultline from Arachnos soldiers to that effect!

If anything, foes that are actively patrolling ought to have much higher perception or aggro range. Compared to some guys glazing over with boredom or those busy doing villainy, they're the ones who're actively looking for a threat.

Oh heck yeah. Citizens that burst into cheer emotes when they see you in combat would be great. I've actually seen one passing citizen say "YEAH! Go get 'em, Little David!" ... but I think that was a trigger from completing a contact mission.

On that note--I'd like to see the citizens of Paragon City say as much diverse and interesting things as the people of Rogue Isles. Hearing them say "Nice day, isn't it?" when you click on them all the time (well, almost all the time) isn't as cool.

They did what they could for the time City of Heroes was released, so I wouldn't exactly call it broken ... However.

City of Heroes has a physics engine, right? I wonder if they couldn't take a page from City of Heroes' contemporaries and make physics-enabled vehicles. Nothing too fancy, just enough to look believable, like the physics-enabled vehicles in Garry's Mod (which seem to have a simplified or streamlined--yet still believable--physics model when compared to Half Life 2's).

Maybe this is why we have Dual-Origin enhancements, given that Mutation can share DOs with Science or Magic; the lines between origins can be blurred, and elements of a second origin can influence the primary one.

Still, I don't know. What if he didn't ask that question? What if he had an accident, fell into the green goo? If he didn't think about touching it or didn't WANT to touch it but did anyway due to events out of his control, that doesn't seem so much like a scientific experiment to me. Especially since this isn't a laboratory setting or prepared experimentation.

Oh, I can think of ways for the first. You could, for instance, think of it as a fledgling hero getting sponsored by a more well-known hero. Maybe something like a Batman to Robin (as Chase Arcanum demonstrated just now).

Interesting to note, however, that you could give a character billions of influence and it still wouldn't count towards influence/infamy badges, which you must earn yourself outside of market and player transactions.

That could easily be taken to mean "reputation by the company you keep or the good fortune of being given aid by more established heroes/villains does not translate into reputation earned from one's own deeds."

I'd chalk that up as "sweating the small stuff."

If you're going to ask why heroes and villains have a fee for conducting transactions at Wentworth's or the Black Maret, you should take that to the logical end and ask why they're conducting transactions with influence/infamy when buying or selling things on the market at all, or even better--why they do so to buy inspirations and enhancements, or to craft inspirations.

In other words, I honestly don't think the market issue is any more damaging to the concept than the other basic functions influence and infamy serve. Which is to say, it doesn't damage the concept at all.

And since influence and infamy have been a part of the game since day one ...

Which was never doubted.

But since it is a conceptual currency, mudflation doesn't hurt the logic circuits as it would if it were Gold or Dollars or what have you.

Heroes!

It's the lack of punctuation and capitalization that's the problem there, not the spelling.

It still counts.

heroes

Wow, I didn't know SWG went that far. I haven't checked the thread in full--is there some information on how/why SWG's economy model fell through? I never got to play it ...

Yeah--I'm talking about a toggle buff power that, rather than consuming endurance like all other powers, consumes influence/infamy.

How does that translate to a Blaster's nuke suddenly consuming all his/her influence (or having enough influence left over to fire off another nuke immediately)?