Luminara

Start at page 1 and work your way down. One bug fix and two minor animation time reductions don't address the underlying problems with the set.

I bought it last year. It's... nice to have, but delicate. The tail snapped off at the hinge the second time I transformed it. It's also bulky in comparison to a standard USB flash drive.

I miss the days when toys were durable. This is cool, but not something you can actually play with, unlike the old Transformers. *sigh*

It's not an issue exclusive to RoA. In actuality, it can happen with all pets which work similarly, but in practice, it's most noticeable with RoA because RoA only has three ticks and a maximum duration of 0.8s. You wouldn't even know when Tar Patch, Freezing Rain, OSA or other pet powers of that design "lost" a tick to latency or lag because they're ticking twice as frequently, have significantly longer durations (on both the pet and the effects they apply) and do more than just plonk enemies on the head with orange numbers.

They're aware of the bug, and since it's so widespread I'm sure they're actively seeking an appropriate method of resolving it.

Some have.

Either or both can cause that behavior. Try it on a different server and/or with a wired connection.

Several types of spawns outdoors are supposed to have one enemy run away. You get extra influence for most of them if you defeat the ones who run.

Enemies in missions are only supposed to run when they can't hit you for a certain amount of time (to prevent players from extreme range hover-sniping or exploiting a bug in melee/ranged attack behavior), or if they're low on health. But many will run when they're debuffed, some will run as soon as your character aggros the spawn, or even just randomly start running away for no clear reason. Those are the ones which we've been trying to get the developers to fix. Enemies like Mooks lieutenants, who start running as soon as they see you, then start to come back, then run away again, then turn around and come back, then run again... and never fire a single shot at you.

Right. Because you're you, and you ignore facts, logic, quantitative analysis, substantial evidence, reality, and when you're not outright dismissing everything that everyone attempts to get through your skull, you're threatening to report them to the moderators or trying to spin it so it seems as though they're just attacking you for no reason.

You... commonality in every case... hm... no, it couldn't possibly be your behavior, attitude and actions that cause people to respond negatively. Inconceivable!

Because you don't listen.

We've seen your builds, and you've proven that you don't know how to slot. Or compensate. You may understand it in theory, but in practice, you've never figured it out. Of all the things you've tried to prove, that's the one thing that you have proven.

For you. Because you can't figure it out.

"Other threads" similar to the "other threads" you attempted to use to bolster your previous attempt to create City of Ultimo, and which didn't actually support your assertions? You go ahead with that, maybe a first week player will fall for it. I won't, neither will anyone else who's seen you do this routine before.

I'll give you that, you have never suggested redesigning the game. What you have done is attempted to con the developers and players into believing that problems exist when they really don't, tried to convince everyone to support drastic changes which would create hideously unbalanced ATs and all but demanded sweeping revisions to ATs and mechanics for no real purpose beyond satisfying your personal need to play Marvel and DC properties.

But you're right, you've never said, "redesign this game".

Reduced endurance costs across the board. Beginner's Luck (the less you miss, the less endurance you "waste" and the more you can expend in your mad rush to hunt down those free range ex pees). Power 10 enhancements (accuracy, damage, endurance being three of the most important for managing endurance). Rest. +Recovery buffs from other players. +Recovery buffs from pets. +Recovery buffs from Confused foes. Endurance increase accolades. Endurance increase temp power. Endurance discount temp power. Endurance discount APP/PPP powers. +Recovery temp powers (multiple). +Recovery pool and APP/PPP powers. Alterations to existing powers to add endurance discounts or +recovery. Multi-aspect HOs and IOs with */end or */*/end. IO set bonuses which grant +Recovery or +Endurance. Catch a Breath-class inspirations and inspiration combination to make more at will.

How much "relief" do you need before you stop demanding more (and that wasn't even an exhaustive list of all of the possibilities)?

Nor has anyone asserted that it is.

Because what you want doesn't make the game "better", it just makes it closer to your personal ideal. You want to remove or change various aspects of the game because you personally dislike them, find them too difficult to comprehend, they get in the way of your ultimate goal of City of Marvel/DC Copyright Infringements, they just confound you by existing. People disagree with you because you place your own personal beliefs and wants above those of every other person who plays, because you portray a person of selfishness and conceit while attempting to conceal it with claims of "trying to help", and you really don't care about anything more than finding a way to make your favorite Marvel and DC characters, even if it means changing everything that doesn't need to be changed and turning the game into one of two things, a boring snoozefest or a hellish nightmare, depending on whether or not you're following Ultimo's Dream.

But let's not get too melodramatic here, Ultimo. You aren't being "vilified". You're not that important. You're not the devil. You're not even practice.

It has, steadily, over the years. Despite your refusal to believe that, it has and will continue to do so.

I'm certain it would be worth it, for you, because you'd be one step closer to that Marvel/DC ripoff game that you've been crusading for since you started posting. It wouldn't be worth it for the rest of us, because we aren't you, we don't slot one damage SO in a power and start threads demanding damage buffs, or outright ignore every endurance management power in the game and start threads asserting that we need "relief".

On the contrary, few of us believe that Co* is the best MMORPG, or even RPG, available. But it is one which we enjoy and prefer to others, and we refute the assertion that there's an overwhelming, soul crushing "endurance problem" because we know that it just isn't true.

Endurance management is part and parcel of the game. We are given more than enough tools to accomplish that part of the game. Ultimo's complaint isn't really that endurance management is impossible, or that endurance costs are too high, or even that some builds have trouble managing endurance, his complaint is that he has to play that part of the game at all. And Ultimo wasn't dogpiled because he's right, he wasn't put down because other players are blind to the truth, he isn't being treated with derision and lack of respect he just didn't state his case properly. The reality is, Ultimo's complaint is the same tired old blather he's posted a hundred times before, carefully packaged up in an ever so slightly different wrapper and presented as though it were a brilliant revelation, and when people honestly offer absolutely feasible and currently available solutions to alleviate his issue, he brushes them off and continues to whine and demand changes.

No, what's going on here isn't a bunch of fans telling the realist to sod off, it's just Ultimo complaining, players offering solutions to ease his distress and Ultimo ignoring every suggestion and continuing to push for the entire game to be redesigned in the way he wants it to be. We've been here and done this with Ultimo more times than you can possible imagine. It's a coprolite at this point (that's crap so old that it's fossilized).

Yeah, no-one is telling you, or Ultimo, or anyone else how to have fun. If you don't want help resolving an issue with how the game plays for you, then no-one will offer help, or cram it down your throat. But proclaiming that the game is horribly broken because your RP build isn't working exactly the way you imagined it should, and not because the game is broken but because you actively choose not to deal with your problems with any of the tools which are available, and then dismissing everyone who tries to help, try not to be floored when no-one listens to your ridiculous ranting.

By the way, those prerequisites on certain powers are there not to limit your leveling speed, but to ensure that all ATs and builds progress at roughly the same pace. Why is that important? Because it allows the developers to more easily balance the ATs within themselves and against other ATs, which in turn allows those developers to manage the difficulty of the content to prevent it from being nigh impossible for one AT or build and "stupid easy" for another AT or build. It may seem like an artificial speed bump to you, but it's there so that you aren't running into a lot more speed bumps. It's so you can RP in this game, rather than being forced to follow excruciatingly strict build guidelines.

You didn't "extol some of its good points", you attempted to blame the players for the powerset's failings by suggesting that the deficiencies and problems experienced were a result of skipping powers (powers which don't actually fix or alleviate the issues raised, no less) and insisted that TA was just dandy because you don't need anything from any defender when you're playing your tank (?!).

And now you're trying to defend this gibbering, rambling mess of a position by telling us that it's all about how you "feel", and that you're just bringing positivity to the thread to counter the discussion about the problems with TA, which exists for the purpose of bringing the issues to the developers' attention and gathering support in order to get that attention.

Nothing that you've brought to this discussion has had any relevance or meaning in regard to the subject at hand, and we're the ones who "are out of context" and "problems"?

Psycho much?

That really is quite delightful. One of the most creative origin stories for a character that I've ever read.

Possibly Mutation, since the little girl actually created him. She could have had a mutation which channeled some part of her mind into her fantastical creation(s).

Possibly Magic. There could have been a spell cast somewhere at just the right time to turn this Pinocchio into a real boy.

Possibly Natural. He is what he is, what he has always been and will always be, he's just a little more solid now.

Science? Perhaps an entity from another dimension was the actual source of the intelligence behind the imaginary friend, or was following the little girl's discussions and decided to keep some part of her alive by making her imagination come to life after she died.

Even Tech works. A machine somewhere, nanites working together in a fashion similar to the Geth (Mass Effect, ME2), a holograph bestowed with AI...

They all work. I probably would have picked Natural, representative of the willpower of that manifestation and to indicate that no third party or outside source was responsible for its newly developed existence.

OSA has a 90% Slow. Log into the game and actually use the power, rather than right-click on it and read the "real numbers", which have never been correct for this power, and you'll see it in action.

So not only do you not know what you're talking about, you aren't even paying attention to what your powers are doing when you're using them. As such, you have no place "correcting" Trick, or me, on the attributes for any power in TA, nor are you in any way qualified to argue with anyone about the performance or lack thereof.

The fact that it isn't functionally broken doesn't make it "fine". The fact that Traps has a power which is almost identical, but has a debuff five times stronger, doesn't make it "fine". The fact that there are Immobilizations in the secondaries, which eclipse the usefulness and value of Entangling by providing damage or stronger debuffs in addition to not being functionally broken, doesn't make it "fine".

Yes, actually, they do. Web Grenade by itself provides more -Recharge than everything in TA combined, and Traps is capable of exceeding the run speed floor via Caltrops (80%) and Web Grenade (62.5%).

Accuracy bonuses are done on a case-by-case basis. If Castle decides to give all foot attack powers accuracy bonuses, then all foot attack powers get accuracy bonuses.

What Glue did or didn't do when it was on test almost five years ago is irrelevant. What it does now is inferior to a controller primary power, and that's just not acceptable. Glue's -Fly is also broken, making it all but useless against flying enemies.

You don't know what you're talking about.

To make the Sleep functional against higher tier enemies, thus increasing the damage mitigation potential by at least a small amount?

It would at least be an option, which is more than we have now. Now, all we have is an inane restriction which wasn't necessary or, or even particularly useful, in light of the excessive recharge time on the power.

You didn't read the suggestion. -Regen, not -Recharge.

It's called balance. Trading one aspect for another. Look it up some time.

You don't know what you're talking about.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Disruption's pulses have a 5s duration, and we do have those Slow powers and controls to keep enemies in place. Think about it.

It is what you implied, and your attempt at deflection by crying about context isn't working.

When you stated that skipping either of the mandatory tier 1 powers, which are the weakest in the set, left the TA lacking in appropriate utility or mitigation, you implied that all nine powers were required in order for a TA to be effective.

Go ahead, pull the context card out again. See how far that gets you.

Low levels are of the utmost importance. Low levels are when you make your choices on which powers to take, how to slot those powers, how to build your style of play around which powers you have available, how to adapt to situations when powers are not available or not effective and so much more. Every experience at low levels colors a player's perception of the game, and when a player experiences TA at lower levels, what they get out of it is that they don't mitigate damage very well, the recharge times on those powers make them even less useful, the powers themselves are frequently buggy and even the combat debuffs (-Res and -Def) are either unreliable or don't live up to expectations.

So either you're implying that the game begins at 50, or you're simply denying that low level play has any merit, and ignoring the impact that bad experiences have on players. You might as well just say that low levels are watermelons. It would make about as much sense and be more correct.

So has one of mine, and at least one of Trick's, and at least one of Rush's and many of the other respondents here. Some of us spent weeks testing the I7 changes, giving feedback to the developers and sharing everything with every player who reads the forums. Some of us have spent countless hours learning the intricacies of the game engine and systems, just to understand one aspect of a single power in TA and share that knowledge with others. Some of us have been in close contact with the developers for years in an effort to find ways to improve TA and fix problems.

Nothing that you've ever said in any TA thread in which I've spotted you has led me to believe that you know one tenth as much as any one of us do, and nothing you've said in this thread leads me to believe that pretentious little claim of having played TA since I5 gives you any authority on the set.

If you see a TA leading a team, you wouldn't expect that TA to turn you down when you were looking for a team? Really? Gosh, who would've thought that solidarity existed.

Congratulations, you've just grasped the most basic rule of the game, every power has a use. Come back when you figure out the difference between having a use and being useful.

What you don't seem to understand is that other defenders are more effective regardless of the choices or abilities of other players.

Your main point is inane and meaningless. TA is a defender primary for one reason, because the powers were categorized together and flagged as defender primary powers. If Castle decided to flag the powers in Martial Arts as a defender primary powers, then Martial Arts as a set would qualify as a defender primary.

You say that as if either of those powers makes a significant difference in any combat situation. They don't. You don't see threads with titles like, "Boy, it sure was lucky that our defender had an Immobilize!" or "6.25% -ToHit and 'free' Stealth saved our lives!". Why? Because they aren't true.

You also appear to be suggesting that a TA defender is required to take all nine primary powers in order to perform on par with any other defender. Why? Why should we be required to do that when every other type of defender can get away with using half or fewer of their primary powers? Why should one defender need nine powers just to be considered almost as useful or effective as another defender using four or five powers?

TA is not suitable for low level play. The recharge times are too long on the key powers, the mitigatory effects are too low and there's just no way to buffer the weaknesses until much later in the game.

TA is not suitable for large team play. The mitigation it offers is so intricately linked to recharge times that any team which is not struggling will find that the TA is contributing little to mitigation, because the available powers simply can't be recharged quickly enough to keep up. And any team which is struggling is going to continue to do so because even when a TA's powers are recharging quickly enough to be used more than once during a fight, they either don't stack or weren't mitigating damage or contributing to "kill speed" sufficiently (if they were, they wouldn't be used more than once during a fight).

TA is not suitable for "only defender on the team" play. The alpha mitigation is horrendous and the design of the set requires the player to risk that alpha, or exploit weaknesses in the critter AI, in order to provide mediocre mitigation for the rest of the team. That's stupid. It's badly designed and in desperate need of a review.

And TA doesn't even offer combat improvement well enough to offset the lack of appropriate mitigation. Acid's radius is idiotically small, Disruption's endurance cost and 10 target limit are just moronic in light of what it actually does and OSA has never been reliable (and is detrimental to teams with pets), nor is it available frequently enough to compensate for "everything else".

Yes, many of us who are considered "experts" can cite examples which refute those conclusions. The problem with that is that the vast majority of players aren't experts on TA, nor can any information passed along in a guide grant them with the expertise needed to circumvent the enormous flaws in TA.

Nor will telling people that they just need to take every power in the primary solve anything or make the set perform better. You do more harm than good with that kind of foolishness. The set needs to be fixed, not downplayed as just being underrated and "fine, as long as you take every power and use them all". And teams need to want a TA along because they're just as useful and effective as any other type of defender, not because they felt sorry for the player behind the TA and decided to "bring them along" as a virtual pity ****.

Unqualified opinions based on extremely limited experience don't alter reality. If they did, the world would be flat, the moon would be made of green cheese and you'd be right. It isn't, it isn't, and you aren't.

There are no homeless people in the Lumiverse. At the moment, there are also no floors, which is making dancing rather awkward.

In Richmond, VA, however, there are many homeless people. Most of them are more interested in conning strangers out of money than in improving their situation. Most of them are homeless because they don't want to work. Not because they can't, because they choose not to. Since night is the only time I'm comfortable going outside (i have to leave the house for work, food or to pay bills, but i don't do it happily or willingly), I run into them frequently. They seem to gravitate to me for some reason. -_-

Having been homeless (for a few months, shortly after i moved to this city, eleven or twelve years ago), I understand the difficulties they face. But I also understand that all but the most severely mentally or physically ill can change that situation, just as I did. It's not easy, but it's possible. Most, though, don't bother. And I doubt they spend much time at whatever charitable organizations exist in this city, either.

There should be one. This isn't a fan-operated and moderated website, it's an official, company-owned, operated and controlled website and as such it requires that company presence at all times. For their own protection, if for no other reason, they should have at least one moderator on duty, monitoring and policing these forums, at all times.

Not having a moderator for even a few hours leaves them liable for anything that happens here. Legally liable. Which is bad for them.

Well, since they don't have valid addresses, they can't get mail, so no food stamps, welfare assistance or unemployment checks. They also can't get jobs. At least, not locally. Some weird crap that employers seem to enjoy doing, insisting that potential employees have places of residence which aren't constructed of cardboard. Or on wheels. Not sure about cardboard on wheels...

Anyway, we know they aren't leaving Paragon City, so they aren't working. We also know that there aren't any small rodents or mammals for them to catch and eat, or if there were, they've caught and eaten them all and now have nothing left to catch and eat. The only birds around are seagulls, and they seem to have either eaten all of those, too, or driven them away with their foul stench (no, seriously, they don't have homes, so they don't have showers, and it never rains, and they seem to have an unnatural fondness for sewers...).

They do panhandle (now), sometimes, but that's usually inside missions... where there are no civilians... just other Lost... who are presumably just as broke, smelly and overwhelmed with craving for squirrel flesh as the ones who are panhandling...

So we're back to the cannibalism possibility. If they aren't hungry, it's not because they're successful beggars (they aren't), or catching squirrels (they aren't), or being supported by the state (they aren't), or hard-working members of the lower class (they aren't), it's probably because they're nom-nom-noming on Soylent Green.

I'd rather think of them as starving, personally. Last thing I want to have to worry about is what might happen if I get jumped by the Lost in a sewer mission and my medi-port beacon goes on the fritz.

Wake up the moderator who's on the clock and supposed to be monitoring the forums tonight.

I'll also add that most spammers are like ninjas. They come out of nowhere, strike and disappear. This one showed all the subtlety of a circus clown, and the intellect of a can of soup. One or two messages might have flown under the radar for a while, half a dozen might have even gone unnoticed by most posters, but blowing your wad by starting a thread so obviously spam that Hormel tried to put it in a can, that's dumb on par with covering your body with chum and going swimming off the Great Barrier Reef.

Rikti don't use revolvers or shotguns, they use their own weaponry, so the Lost aren't getting these guns from the Rikti. No, not even as spoils of war. If they were handing down spoils of war, the Lost would be using assault rifles and more advanced weapons, not antiquated revolvers and coach guns. The Rikti War occurred in the 21st century, not the 19th century.

Skulls, Hellions, Trolls, Outcast, none of them are shown to be willing to give anything away to another enemy group, so the Lost aren't getting free weapons from any of them.

The Cabal, Carnies, Devouring Earth, Ghosts, Hydra, Minions of Igneous, Nictus, Red Caps, Shivans, Tsoo, Coralax, Tuatha de Dannan, Warriors, Winter Horde, Vahzilok, the Clockwork and CoT don't use guns, nor are they cooperative with the Lost in any way, so they aren't giving "randomly liberated" guns to the Lost.

The Council, 5th Column, the Family, Sky Raiders, Knives of Artemis, Malta or Arachnos might be willing to finance the Lost with guns, but nothing in the game suggests that this is true. Most of those listed would be just as likely to kidnap homeless people and use them as test subjects, target practice or something equally insidious as they would be to finance an enormous effort to arm tens to hundreds of thousands of people.

Crey may or may not know exactly what the Rikti are and how they're connected to the Lost, but they definitely wouldn't pour money into an empty venture, such as arming the homeless en masse.

Escaped Prisoners aren't loaning out their guns to anyone.

Freakshow... that's really the only group that's even conceivable as a potential source of revolvers and shotguns for the Lost, and it would fit their modus operandi to incite chaos by giving homeless people guns and encouraging them to "have a little fun", but this is the Freakshow we're talking about, they've proven to be hostile even to enemy groups with whom they work cooperatively, so I'm calling this one too much of a stretch unless you can link up some evidence of it being true.

That leaves only the groups which have never been shown to have any contact with or interest in the Lost, groups like the Praetorians or the Cimerorans. If there were arming the Lost, there would be at least one indicator somewhere in the game, and there isn't.

Nemesis and Void Hunters don't use the types of guns that the Lost use, so they aren't arming the Lost either, beyond the occasional "loan" of a Void Hunter Rifle.

So the Lost aren't getting their revolvers or shotguns for free. Nor are they hiring out their "services" in exchange for guns (who's going to hire hungry bums and give them guns as payment when they could just offer them a hot meal, which costs 1% of the price of a gun (if that much)?).

They're paying for their guns.

Uh... any of the dozens of gun and ammo shops scattered all over the city? Some of which are even used as enhancement stores for players (examples: Future Dynamics, Image Inc.)? Or any of the enemy groups who might be willing to sell weapons to other enemy groups (which would be numerous)?

The teleportation grid based on Rikti technology is a new development in Co*. Teleportation itself is not.