Luminara

Depends entirely on the individual character. I have a planned build for a Crab which can run at slightly above 55 mph.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

I've seen Fortunate Seers doing the sneak walk while leveling up my Fire/TA corruptor, but I haven't seen any doing the high speed version yet, or any other critters doing the sneak walk.

I'll keep my eyes open, though.

Loving the Frankenstein walk. I wish we could do that. It'd make a addition for Halloween (imagine entire zones full of heroes/villains doing the Frankenstein walk... awesome!).

Just a heads-up on this, a friend and I managed to isolate part of this bug in a reproducible manner. Low mag KB, essentially KD, causes this bug to manifest. However, it only occurs every other time you're hit with a KD power. In other words, you'll get flipped once, then knocked down, then flipped, then knocked down, etc. It's next to impossible to isolate in regular play because so few foes have guaranteed KD powers. The only reason we found it is because we were testing it in the Arena.

I sent Castle the information and steps to reproduce the bug, and with it being such a definitive pattern, I don't think it will be difficult for the developers to pinpoint the cause.

Props go to @Dorkus for finding the first clue to the pattern. I had him spamming Force Bolt on my hovering Archery/Energy blaster, which wasn't triggering the bug, then he shot me in the face with Repulsion Bomb, knocked me down in mid-air and got us on the right track.

Level 70 human warlock (Montare) and level 70 dranei frost mage (Fallore), both on Scarlet Crusade. I quit playing almost two years ago, but I clearly do know what I'm talking about when I discuss WoW classes in comparison to Co* ATs. I played one of those overpowered warlocks capable of taking on four elites while my group pounded on the boss, and lived. On my frost mage, I watched my entire group eat dirt and was forced to fight five elites alone, and won.

This has nothing to do with comparing Co* ATs directly to WoW classes. I made an analogy in order to explain a point.

In WoW, warlocks are considered a powerful class, with many stating that they are too powerful. One example of this is a warlock who soloed an end game five person instance (not a grossly out-leveled instance, such as you use to show DPS comparisons in your follow-up post, an actual level 70 end-game instance when the level cap was level 70), a feat which no-one else could accomplish at that time.

In Co*, we have no similar discrepancy in capability because all ATs can accomplish similar feats. It would be easier to count the specific number of builds which could not than it would be count those which could.

Do you understand now?

Except that they don't. We have examples of practically every AT soloing AVs and GMs with specific builds. The "support ATs" are not statistically superior for that task. If anything, they're less well suited to that task because they have inbuilt failure points designed to prevent them from becoming tankmages. Lower HP, lower base damage, reliance on multiple powers to match other AT damage output, etc. We also have examples of every AT farming, across a wide variety of builds, and despite the rumormongering, Farm/Kin is not the best, at anything, it's simply the build which requires the least work and input. Farm/Kin is easy, not godlike.

Hard single or soft multiple targets, no specific AT drastically outperforms any other AT, or every other AT. Some builds within some ATs are competitive for the top of the food chain, but they still aren't tankmages and they aren't in an exclusive bunch by themselves. As good as Rad/Sonic or Ill/Rad or similar builds are, they're still not the same thing as, for instance, WoW's warlock class (which, last time i played, was the most grossly overpowered class in the game, capable of soloing five person instances, something no other class could do (frost mages could come close, but without the healing factor that warlocks had, they still fell a little short)). And that's what the OP is looking for. It doesn't exist here. Here, anyone can take any AT and solo the equivalent of that five person instance, if they're properly prepared and informed, and even that isn't restricted to specific builds, it's possible for nearly every build (remember, we all have access to overwhelming advantages, such as Shivans, nukes, HVACs, etc.).

Nor are they tankmages, or even overpowered. They're popular for very specific content and when played in a certain way. Take them out of that content and force them to play differently, and their performance is not significantly better than any other controller build.

They added the option, they didn't add a requirement to use that option. Your system would add that requirement, and frankly, being told, "Turn off XP if you want to experience any of the content beyond scanner missions" would be a miserable, lousy, rotten thing for new players to hear. Which I doubt the developers would support, in any form.

Why? A story arc will continue, whether you succeed on the first attempt or suffer defeat one thousand times before you succeed, with absolutely no difference in the outcome, so why should there be a penalty other than the existing one of delaying the player's progress? Because other games penalize the players for dying? Because it's typical of RPGs? Because you personally want one?

I wouldn't be opposed to a penalty system which encouraged the player to avoid dying, but I strongly oppose any system which restricts players from experiencing content fairly simply because they're not as skilled, or focused on team-oriented powers, or just got screwed by bad teammates, or were murdered by a bug, or logged in right when an invasion started and couldn't get under cover in time, or had a slow computer (resulting in them being slaughtered by a patrol while they were still at the loading screen after entering a mission (yes, it does still happen)), or any of countless other reasons players are defeated. It's too binary and too unforgiving of problems outside of the player's control.

A team-oriented build doesn't perform as well in a solo environment as a solo-oriented build does, and it's reliant on the rest of the team, which is highly variable, to ensure its own safety. We already have this issue to some degree, to the point that we were given the ability to switch between two different builds so players wouldn't feel like they were forced to choose between team or solo, PvE or PvP, theme team or regular team, etc. Adding a new system which penalizes players strongly for dying further emphasizes the differentiation between team and solo builds, and I'm quite certain that it would push many players to abandon team-oriented builds entirely because of that variability of teams which I mentioned previously.

So now you've got a hard line being drawn between the team players and the solo players. The team players restrict themselves to playing only with people they know and can rely upon to keep them alive, because they don't want to risk being potentially permanently locked out of their own story arcs and missions by bad luck, and the solo players either avoid teams in order to maintain as much control as possible over the circumstances which may result in them being defeated, or they're deliberately avoided by team players because they're random elements which represent increased risk of dying, and therefore locking them out of missions.

Then you have the question of solo viability for different builds, and even different ATs. Some builds and ATs frequently and easily work through tight situations, whereas others struggle, or sometimes fail outright regularly (blasters before the Defiance revamp, for example). A blaster, for example, doesn't have a team build and a solo build, a blaster has a "MAEK DED" build, and it either works or it doesn't, teamed or solo. Should this blaster suffer the same penalties that a scrapper has to face, when the scrapper has significantly better survival tools and the option to switch between team and solo focus? Is that fair? Doesn't seem like it to me.

Point is, your system doesn't reward team play, it doesn't promote teaming, and it doesn't reward solo play equally, so it leads to the potential of some players being ostracized for not having "the right" builds or ATs and for not being known quantities. It may solve the problem that you perceive, that of a light penalty system for failure, but it compounds existing problems enormously, in ways which make the game less enjoyable for many more people.

Locking people out of content for not having appropriate builds, not knowing how the game works from day one or not having perfect teammates is terrible design. Take it back to the drawing board and try again. Maybe inf* loss would be a more reasonable option (after all, losers are usually less influential/infamous than winners), and I suspect that would be a disturbing enough prospect for many players to encourage them to avoid defeat, but without the potential for making it impossible to experience any of the content, because it wouldn't make it impossible for them to progress or acquire missions, it would simply make it difficult for them to acquire enhancements/temp powers/goodies.

Your question was already answered. The brain behind the keyboard is what makes anything in this game "powerful".

This isn't WoW. There are no "classes" with specific distinct advantages which make them blatantly superior to other "classes" when it comes to performance. Several builds in every AT can be "godlike", but none of them can be more than cannon fodder unless the player knows what he/she is doing.

The best way to accomplish what you appear to be looking for is to play, save your inf* and put together a build with IO sets which grant the types of bonuses which you believe will meet your criteria. Download Mids' planner, read the wiki and learn about the game.

You're not going to find tankmages in this game, characters capable of decimating everything in their paths without any risk at all. In Co*, no-one is a god, despite more than a few of us playing characters which were written as gods. You can, however, try to join a superteam, such as Repeat Offenders, which leverages game mechanics to make entire teams function, as a whole, like tankmages.

Here's the best information I, or anyone else, can give you: try them all.

And then you discover that you out-leveled those contacts because you were stuck doing scanner missions and dying frequently, resulting in you missing out on practically all of the content in the game. Awesome!

Yeah... no. Directly tying contacts to your willingness to abandon your team or exclusively solo, or a player's understanding of the game's systems and mechanics (i know, it sounds shocking to experienced players, but there are actually new players joining every day, players who have no idea what X does or how to use it, which can lead to defeat quite frequently), not to mention emphasizing solo-friendly builds over team-oriented builds even more than the game already does, and making normal game content potentially inaccessible to new, unlucky or just plain bad players (who still enjoy playing, despite being debt-capped, because they like the stories/missions/enemies), just doesn't seem like a wise course.

January 4, 2005.

Less AE baby whining, more veteran butt kicking.

That's sort of like asking how many people would jump at the chance to be given free proctological examinations by someone with hands as large as Andre the Giant's.

I'm anxiously awaiting the Halloween event. Last year was the first time I had a chance to participate, and I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in Co*. The Zombie Apocalypse was delightful, and trick-or-treating was so giggletastic, I spent three days doing nothing but clicking doors and fighting. I wish we had more events like this one.

Also looking forward to the reopening of the Ski Chalet. I love sliding around on the snow and ice.

Medicine is survival of the fittest. It is one the ways in which we use tools and advanced brains to improve our chance of survival by controlling our environment. It is no different from putting a leaf on a cut to stop the bleeding, in principle. We do what we have evolved to do, use tools to promote the best survival conditions and thereby determine our own success in an evolutionary sense.

Hospitals are an extension of that. There is no imperative to leave a wounded member of the species behind now, because there are no predators which threaten our daily existence, but there is a strong imperative to advance our knowledge of medicine and ensure that as many members of the species are as healthy and productive as possible, because that ensures that we continue to advance at an evolutionary pace which we control. So we heal the sick and ill and care for the infirm until they can care for themselves again, and we learn how to improve our methods of care and healing and how to improve our species further, thus improving our control over our evolution.

Can you record information from every person on the planet, from the moment of their birth until the moment they die?

No? Then I suppose we need to keep those people around so they can give us the benefit of their experience, insight and wisdom.

The existence of technology is not the application of technology, and simply having the ability to record knowledge does not imply that all knowledge is recorded.

Because simply knowing does not imply understanding, nor does it imply experience, insight or wisdom. I can e-mail you a .pdf of how a Dellorto 14mm PHVA carburetor works, but unless you've actually worked on that carburetor or a similar one, or understand how carburetors work, or are extremely intelligent, you won't know how to repair or rebuild a carburetor simply by looking at the information. You would need instruction from someone with experience.

Because events which are witnessed by different people result in different points of view from each person, which gives you a more complete picture by interviewing every person, but it's next to impossible to get every detail in a single question and answer session. No matter how advanced our information systems become, the weakest point is still human memory, and sometimes it takes years, or decades, for all of the details to be revealed.

Because recorded information is like a telephone signal, in that it distorts with interference. Every layer between the reader and the original observer increases the chance for error. There's nothing as good as having the actual source, such as the original observer, to clear up inconsistencies and mistakes.

Because some things simply can't be recorded on a computer. You can't computerize how dirt should feel when it's ready for planting, or what the wind feels and smells like when a tornado is coming. The best you can do is give a description which may or may not be accurate and may or may not give the reader enough information to understand what he/she should feel in similar circumstances. A surprising amount of what we "know" is reliant on actual experience. If you think it's that easy, describe a third degree burn for me. I know it's hot, and I know it hurts, but describe it in a way which will tell everyone exactly what the experience is like, to such an extant that no-one could mistake it for a second degree burn.

Because even when people speak the same language, they may not understand each other. Different regions use different figures of speech, idioms and dialects, and they use different words to represent the same thing in different places. With text, there isn't even the buffers of body language, facial expression and gestures to assist in transmitting information, which makes it even more difficult for some types of information to be exchanged. Ever notice how often sarcasm is mistaken for seriousness right here on these forums?

And because we have people who fail to avail themselves to the information that has been made accessible and proceed to enter into debates with nothing more than absolutist opinions which are directly contrary to scientifically proven facts, and argue endlessly from a position of emotion and, frankly, lack of education. People who don't read, but they'll darn sure listen to an old person who's fired up and tired of hearing the younger person yammer on with their foolishness. People who can't be bothered to spend 30s looking things up at Wikipedia or in Google because they're in too much of a hurry to tell everyone else what they think, so they have to have the information spoon fed to them, or, just as often, beaten through their thick skulls.

Lastly, newer does not imply better, regardless of what you might want to believe. Not for information systems (cuniform on clay tablets and stone tablets still exists from thousands of years ago. how long do you think a DVD lasts?), not for anything. Even the oldest things still have value and usefulness, for those who value them and know how to use them. This includes our pensioners.

Clues. Random foe drops a strange bit of salvage, or leaves a clue in your notes, or in some other way leads you to investigate something on your own (rather than simply popping up a new mission). You research the clue, such as by visiting contacts, clicking objects in universities or perhaps even using that salvage to craft something. One clue leads to another, larger clue (from which you can backtrack and find smaller clues, for the complete picture, but such would not be required), which in turn leads to yet another bigger clue with just enough information for you to deduce the crime and location, at which point you unlock a mission (which you can choose to accept or decline). The number of clues can be anywhere from one (for "quickies") to ten (for long, complex cases).

Hacking. In order to enter that locked warehouse or laboratory, or ferret out the information in that encrypted computer, you would go through a mini-game similar to System Shock 2's hacking. Simple, but effective in adding an element of interactivity and giving the impression of actually working on something to achieve a goal (rather than just showing up and walking in, or having a simple progress bar for computers). Hacking could be used to unlock new missions and contacts, such as optional "hack-discovered missions" in existing mission computers, as well as set up random doors which could be hacked and lead to robberies, kidnappings and/or corporate espionage for villains, and rescues, investigations (could tie in well with Clues) and/or raids (like, raiding drug labs, or Crey/Aeon facilities. not multi-team raids like Hamidon) for heroes.

Scavenger hunts. Once or twice every two to four weeks, an event triggers. Every player has a random object appear in one mission (randomly selected) per character. The player is tasked with locating that object, which gives him/her a list of other objects to find, and is tasked with going around the city/isles, locating and clicking the objects on the list, some out in public zones, others inside missions, perhaps even some being salvage drops or clues. If the player completes the list, he/she gains access to a special mission, or a random tier 3 salvage drop, or a random recipe roll, or a badge, or some other nifty little token of his/her success.

<derailment of the topic choo-choo>
Three weeks after my 18th birthday, which was only two weeks after I was released from the mental hospital, my mother and stepfather demanded that I leave. "We're not required to take care of you any more. Pack your <censored> and get out."

I had a small settlement from an accident (which had left my right leg paralyzed for almost a year) when I was 14, so I bought a used mobile home and moved in. One afternoon, when I was sitting outside, trying to figure out how I was going to survive (with no vehicle, no driver's license, no job and no-one to help me), I noticed a web next to the steel shed which had come with the mobile home, and like most people, I was terrified of spiders at that point, so I went over there to squish the spider.

To my surprise, I saw something one of the most beautiful and wondrous things in my entire life, a female black and yellow garden spider, her long, delicate legs splayed out in the center of the web and that vibrant yellow on her abdomen contrasting delightfully with the black.

I learned, that day, to love spiders, because as creepy as they can be, as deeply entrenched in our primitive minds that fear of them is, they can also be some of the most fascinating and lovely creatures in the world.

P.S. I also find bees, hornets and wasps to be quite magnificent, and very friendly.
<puts the choo-choo back on track and gives it a gentle push>

Incorrect. Preservation and care of the elderly was not a development due to morals, but instead because the elderly are repositories of information which aided in survival and allowed family and tribal groups to prosper. Grandpa knew the best method of trapping prey, the best hunting grounds, the time of year when planting was optimal, etc.

With the burden of survival eased by advances in civilization, care of the elderly gradually became an act of kindness and appreciation, but even today, the elderly provide valuable services for people, such as remembering how old technology works or being able to give observations and insights into historical events.

So you believe hominids are vegetables, minerals, fungi or energy, then?

And pollution, and greed, and murder, and torture, and...

Centuries of scientific study of civilization, congregation, sociology, mobs and herd mentality disagree. Humans are herd animals.

I should have been a bit more clear when I said I disagreed with the depiction of Recluse as Tartarus. What I meant was that the use of a second generation deity for one Incarnate and having the other Incarnate as a fourth generation deity was inappropriate. Zeus and Tartarus didn't exist in the same way at the same time, they should never have been used in the way that they were. It was just... sloppy. One of the two should have been changed to properly fit the other. I suggested Recluse because Tartarus was never depicted as doing anything other than simply existing and being used as a prison, but Statesman could also be more appropriately represented as the Incarnate of Ouranos.

Hequat was an ancient Egyptian goddess of frogs and childbirth, from the era before Upper and Lower Egypt were united. She fell into disuse when the dynasties began and is almost unknown today.

Tartarus was one of the gods before there were gods. He was both a being and a place, as all of the primordial gods were.

It began with a single deity. Some Greek myths say it was Ocean, some say it was Night, some say it was Chaos, some say it was Time. But from that first deity sprang others, one of which was Tartarus. This second generation of deities were all both gods and places or concepts.

In time, a third generation of deities was produced, the Titans. The Titans overthrew their progenitors. Again, exactly what supposedly happens differs from myth to myth. One myth will state that the Titans slew the second generation deities, another myth will state that they locked them away in their respective places or concepts, etc. At any rate, Tartarus then became only a place, the underworld, and not a deity any longer.

As the Titans wrested control from their parents, so did the Olympians, with Hades becoming the new god of the underworld. Tartarus was then renamed Hades, but Tartarus still existed as the lowest, deepest level of Hades, where the worst enemies of the deities and the people who committed particularly vile acts were confined forever.

So yes, Tartarus was both a god and a place. The myths revolving about Tartarus were later adopted by the Romans, who were at least partially successful at building their empire through the means of incorporating every religion they encountered into their own Roman pantheon. Still later, when one particular religion began to sweep through the empire, tales of Tartarus (and many other similar myths from other religions) were reworked to fit that new religion, Christianity, and the place was renamed once more, to Hell.

But why Recluse grew spider legs, I have no idea. The only Greco-Roman myth concerning a spider is the one about Arachne, but that myth didn't come into existence until well after the Roman empire had subsumed Greek culture. It's a Roman myth, essentially, not a Greek myth, and it's not even remotely connected to Tartarus. There were also the myths concerning the Moirae (the three sisters who determined destiny, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, also known as the Fates), who were weavers, but not spiders and not connected to Tartarus either. So I'd have to guess that Stefan Richter growing a set of arachnid legs would have to have been a result of his own inner corruption, not a transformation specifically tied to the powers he gained, and it was symbolic of his true nature. It could have just as easily been his lower body transforming into that of a snake, or a goat, or his head becoming that of a hyena, or any of the other representations of fear or evil which have been used by different cultures throughout the world.

Having said all of that, considering Mr. Emmert's (the lead developer at the time) background in mythology, I'm rather disappointed at the hideous mish-mash of having one Incarnate as a pre-Titan, the other an Olympian. Recluse should have been the Incarnate of Hades, not Tartarus. I don't have a college education and I spotted that mistake (and i've been waiting to get it off of my chest for years). Shameful.

I know. It's deliberate. The extra slot in Hurdle gives me more +Jump Speed/Height than another 5% +Movement bonus would, if I could even find a way to cram one more 5% bonus in, which I can't. And I do love my boing boing.

The fourth slot in Hasten gives it as much extra recharge as a 7.5% global bonus, which I couldn't otherwise obtain unless I either sacrifice a Thunderstrike set in exchange for an Apocalypse set (don't want to do that, it would mean losing 4% +Jump) or picking up the PvP healing set for Life Drain and Armageddon for Soul Drain, neither of which is really viable since I don't farm or PvP. With that slot in Hasten, though, it is perma if I pick up one of the +Recharge bonuses from a day job, and that is much easier to acquire and doesn't cost me any of my preferred bonuses.

Plans. I has dem.