Lothic

That's why I suggested GC as a zone to have an airport reworked into it. As it stands almost no one goes there or stays there so it's easily one of the emptier blueside zones that could use an overhaul.

Also when considering where they would put an airport GC is really one of the few existing zones that actually makes sense. They aren't going to put a major airport on the island where the city's power plant is (Terra Volta) and they aren't going to put it in a perpetually dark ghost area (Dark Astoria). Many of the other zones either have too many tall buildings or other reasons to discount them. The south side of GC is really one of the better places. Other candidates include Boomtown and even IP where a long north-south runway built on the west side of the zone make sense.

Then let's talk realities shall we?

There is a significant difference between the Devs saying something like "we'd like to do Power Customization but it'll take literally years to do" and them eventually doing that and them saying something like "we don't want to provide any more Origin-gated content because we don't want anything to be limited to certain subsets of the playerbase based on Origin".

One was desired by the Devs, even if it was very hard to do.
The other the Devs don't want to change even if it's the most trivial thing in the world to do.
Get the difference?

Here's one of several problems with this you keep dodging: What if the idea of the particular random bonus I'd get from an Origin goes AGAINST the character concept I have in mind? As I said before what if I really want to use the Magic Origin but the bonus it provides is one that makes absolutely no sense for MY character to have? That has nothing to do with min/maxing and more to do with something along the lines of giving a Magical Empathy Defender a +4% DAM bonus because everyone knows magical healing powers lend themselves to being able to do more damage.

There is simply no way to escape the "inconvenient truth" that linking arbitrary bonuses to Origins would set up a dynamic where some people will agree that the Origin bonus in question makes sense and others won't. Instead of trying to divine what everyone agrees are the most appropriate bonuses for the Origins the Devs made the smart decision to avoid that "nerdrage" altogether by NOT assigning in-game consequences to ANY Origin.

I continue to be amazed that you keep arguing for changes that would inject far more angst, prejudice and discontent into the game than any perceived benefit it could provide. As I said before "less" really is "more" in this case. Complicating Origins with Origin-based bonuses is the wrong way to go with this. You keep asking why Origins aren't more significant in this game - the rest of us keep asking why they should be. It's on you to show why the current system which has existed for almost seven years needs to be changed and I'm simply not sure you've done that yet. *shrugs*

This just goes to show that no matter how clearly established things seem to be there are always other people who can see some kind of merit in hopeless causes.

The irony in this case is that someone can look at one of the singular strengths of this game - the fundamental concept that things like costumes and origins are NOT linked to in-game stats thus freeing us to assign these details to our characters in any way we wish without fear of affecting how our characters work in-game - and consider that strength a "problem" that needs to be fixed.

The fact that things like costumes and origins are not tied to characters stats in this game is one of the major factors that sets this game apart from almost every other MMO past or present. The idea that you'd want to give up that uniqueness and shackle Origins to some hardwired, cookie-cutter scheme based on arbitrary and highly debatable bonuses is very, very sad. If you can't see that what you're really arguing for is to have the Devs take away our freedom of character design choice in order to gain a few randomly assigned buffs then there's not much hope of us ever agreeing on this issue.

Thankfully we don't have to agree because the Devs will continue to uphold the wisdom of their decisions in this matter regardless of what you or I think about it.

Obviously the problem of sucking up flying superpowered individuals into jet engines doesn't happen as much in Striga Isle, Cap au Diable or Neutropolis.

That "game canon" was established back at the beginning of CoH when they either couldn't or didn't want to deal with creating the graphics for airport-like objects such as airplanes or runways. There would likely be very little trouble "re-imagining" that canon if the Devs wanted to reconsider giving Paragon City a proper airport zone.

Based on all the attention with the Issue 20 sneak peek and the Animal Pack it's starting to look like there'll be nothing new for the Spring Event this year. On some level that'll be alright because I'm going to be busy with the WSTs regardless. *shrugs*

Go figure. I don't have any Corruptors with Lingering Radiation so if there was a problem with that version of the power versus other AT's versions then yeah I would have never noticed it myself. Good luck with it regardless.

Never said it wasn't a good idea.
I just never agreed it was absolutely necessary either.
As always YMMV.

I once ran a Dr. Q TF that took something like 8 hours. Of course that was like 5 years ago before IOs, most temp/veteran powers and the like. At this point I can't really remember the last time I ran a TF/SF that took much more than 2 hours. Often times they're more like 1 hour without even seriously trying to rush through them. Basically seven years of experience has its advantages.

Given what we know about George Takei's personal life now do those scenes in that episode really seem -that- shocking?

I always liked that saucy bit of suggestive dialogue between Sulu and Uhura in that episode where he grabs her by the waist and says,"I'll save you fair maiden!" and she dismissively responds with, "Sorry, neither".

It bothers the Devs when we use the term "butt cape" as well.
What are you going to do? *shrugs*

Uncanny Valley and Technological Singularity for teh win!

You seriously didn't even have to add this sentence.
It's only news if something like this DIDN'T come from Japan.

I've loved Leonard Nimoy's portrayal of Spock for several decades now. Spock is easily one of my most favorite Star Trek (or even sci-fi) characters of all time. But despite all that I think Abrams' decision to bend-over-backwards to force the story of his Star Trek movie to become absolutely silly just to pander to having Nimoy on the screen as Spock for 10 more minutes almost singlehandedly ruined the movie.

I loved pretty much everything about that movie that had NOTHING to do with its main plot - I think the new actors were great and their personal interactions and backstories were decent enough. It's just anytime anything in the movie had anything to do with the actual "story" of the movie it fell flat on its face. Hopefully Abrams will decide to actually come up with a new Star Trek story for the next movie that doesn't make me want to cry. Maybe he'll realize Star Trek != Star Wars as well but that might be a bit too much to hope for.

I'm not claiming that your suggestions for Origin bonuses are "gamebreaking or character breaking" in and of themselves. I'm just making the point that -any- hardwired unique bonuses related to a system of choices where you can only choose one of those several choices is going to be fundamentally problematic in a game like this. Especially when you introduce such a new set of choices to a system that's never had to cope with those kinds of choices before.

I understand you've attempted to come up with options for Origin bonuses that would "keep things equal". All I'm saying is the scheme that's the "most" equal is actually the one that we have right now where there's absolutely nothing different about Origins from a game mechanics point of view. Sometimes less really is more.

Bottomline your idea is not strictly a bad one. It's just seven years too late to be worth the effort dealing with the problems it'll cause. The phrase "more trouble than it's worth" fits perfectly here.

There's always going to be people who are just plain rude, regardless if they are actively trying to grief other people or not.
About all you can do is try to avoid these people in future.

But as to your idea that TF/SFs should tell you the type of AT/powersets you need to succeed I think that would not be as useful as you'd think. While it's true that a "well balanced" team can typically finish a TF/SF easier than badly balanced one if the badly balanced team is composed of experienced players who know how to run their characters they can pretty much finish almost any TF/SF. Harder yes, but not impossible. If the game provided an exact list of what it thought you should have on a team there would likely be people out there who'd get so mesmerized by that that they would not even try the TF without matching that list exactly or even worse discriminate against people who didn't perfectly match up with the "posted recommendation".

I just used the DEF Origin bonus in my example just because most people could relate to it. It's not because it's the only Origin bonus that has a "problem" associated with it.

Again I think this whole thing boils down to a matter of choice. The thing about hardwiring specific unique bonuses to specific Origins is that it ultimately limits our choices, not expands them. For another example let's say I picked the Magic Origin for my Fire/Fire Tank 5 years ago because in my concept the magic spells cast on him provided the basis for his awesome defensive capability. But given the suggestion above if I wanted to go with Magic I'd have to reconcile why the "Magic" was giving him the out-of-concept +4% DAM instead of a +2% DEF that Natural would provide. I don't want my Tank to be Natural origin - I want him to be Magic. But nothing in my original character concept implied that the Magic would let him do extra damage.

Keeping Origins "bonus-less" allows people to fit any concept onto any character for any reason without the extra baggage of getting semi-random bonuses that may or may not apply to a given character. It may not be the perfect solution to keep Origins as "game neutral" as possible, but it certain solves more problems along these lines than it creates.

Well at least you realize this is only your opinion. *shrugs*

Likewise I can see some of what your saying on this. As I said before I probably would not stop playing my current characters if they suddenly got a new Origin bonus whether it was useful to them or not.

Your analogy with the Devs adding new powersets is almost applicable to this situation. But it still doesn't quite apply and I'll demonstrate that with an example: Let's say I made a Fire/Fire Tanker 5 years ago with the Magic Origin. Nothing wrong with that. Now after your Origin bonus change I could make a new Fire/Fire Tanker with the (suggested) Natural +2% DEF bonus. In both cases I could equip both Tanks with identical builds/IOs but ultimately the newer Tank would have a +2% DEF bonus the old Tank, again through no fault of its own, might never have access to. The only difference between these two otherwise identical Tanks would be their real world creation dates, and that should NOT play a factor into what makes one a potentially better Tank than the other one.

I'm actually not absolutely opposed to the idea of Origin bonuses being added to the game AS LONG AS Origin respecs were also included as a new feature. But if we ever got Origin bonuses WITHOUT Origin respecs then I think there'd be a serious problem with this especially amongst the many people who like to min/max their builds.