Memphis_Bill

* Note, Windows Mail (or windows live mail or whatever the little app is called) is not tied to Hotmail - you can set up other email accounts with it and it'll work just fine.

That said, yeah, Thunderbird. (And Firefox, and Mozbackup to preserve the settings and back up email - makes moving to a new computer very nice.)

Yes. I will not deal with webmail unless I have no choice. I cannot stand the slow, clunky way most webmail sites are presented. I far prefer being able to get to my email, refer to past email, etc. whether or not I have a connection. (Thunderbird user here.) Plus some of my email gets large attachments - I'd rather just download it once instead of each and every time I go to that message.

Email app > any webmail for me. (And yes, I even use it to get Hotmail from the account I've had since before MS owned it, as well as my Gmail accounts.)

IIRC, he *eats dimensions.*

That fits the "bad guy" category - or at least "major threat" - pretty well in my book.

Take it. You'll be glad when you're pulling a void away from his buddies, right in front of you into your Inky Aspect and slapping him in a hold before beating him to a pulp and extracting his soul into a floating kooshball of doom.

I wouldn't look at the overall market - a business that buys 10,000 PCs isn't going to matter as far as gaming. I'd look specifically at gaming sites.

For instance, yes, you're showing Win7 at only 8% of the market - but heading to Steam and looking at their (pretty heavily gamer-leaning, I'd say ) stats, DirectX 10 OSes (Vista and Win7) are used by 49% of the respondants. I'm sure there are other sites like that as well that'd give you a better idea of your target audience.

Hmmmm....

Illusion predates COV as a whole, yes. It's been in since before Issue 3, when I started. I'm 99% sure it was a launch set, and checking ParagonWiki doesn't have a "This set was introduced" note like with other sets (Plant, /TA and the like.) Had there been a "pet class," similar to masterminds (who do, after all, share the Controller theme of support secondary,) you could put money down that they'd have had it.

Windows 98, actually, yes.

However, with the large Windows XP installed base, they'd likely write for that as a minimum if this theoretical COH2 were coming out soonish (a year.) There's little to nothing in Vista or 7 *exclusively* to write to. At worst, I'd say - assuming they started development on it *today,* planned release in 2-3 years - THEN they take Vista and Directx 10 as a minimum, as that's the only thing Vista/7 support that XP does not. (Simplifying matters a bit there, there ARE other things, and they'd likely take hardware support in various OSes into consideration. After all, eventually there's not going to *be* a new driver release for XP from the big manufacturers.)

Look at PC sales of Halo 2... can't remember seeing it in stores long, even though the Halo series is popular on XBox? Know what one of the big issues with it (and IIRC Shadowrun) were? They required - artificially - Vista. They locked out Windows XP. And subsequentially tanked. Some people did actually hack it a bit and run it on XP - and found it ran perfectly fine.

Regardless, making it "7 only" would be artificial, as the underpinnings are further development from Vista. So your base, there, would be Windows Vista.

Edit:
See comment above about PC sales of Halo 2. And with what I do for a living, I talk to people who are running everything from the latest-and-greatest computers to ones that are hitting their decade of service. (Not much we can do for those, but we DO get Windows 2000 and Windows 98 users.) In this case, I'd say you were wrong - think like *both,* because a not-insignificant number of people aren't just looking at a $109 Windows 7 Home upgrade disk, but a several-hundred-to-several-thousand-dollar computer purchase. Just browse through all the Ultra Mode question threads and Tech Questions here. Some of these systems *won't* run Win7, or won't run it well enough to game on.

If you stop your consideration at "Oh, well, they can just wait a month 'til they can get a Win7 upgrade disk" (ignoring that you can't upgrade in-place from XP to 7) you're not looking at it realistically *now.* A couple of years, sure. Now, no.

Oh, no hate for it here. I do actually use it when the situation calls for it. Misuse is what generates the hate, IMHO.

But it's so much fun to corpse-bomb with it! >.>

Though I would make one other point - consider using your dual builds. When teaming, grab your build with the shields, rez, etc. When you're solo, use those slots that would go for "team powers" for stuff to help *your* survivability (or that fit your concept better) - Leadership, Stealth, Presence, whatever you want. Thermal can free up quite a bit in a solo build. (Or at least put them off, since as earth/therm, you'll probably decide to buff Rocky at some point. Still, he doesn't need a rez.)

/second, third, fourthing Ice Slick, hop in with AA and whatever followup you like. (Being ice/psi, one of my next moves tends to be Drain Psyche to get buffed up while they're flopping around, barring KD-resistant mobs.)

Dimension Shift! >.> What?

Can you get $100 together?
If so, you can pick up an external hard drive, go grab dinner, see a movie, and still have some change left over. Then you can back up your documents, your COH folder (realizing, of course, that even if you DID have to reinstall, the only stuff you'd lose would be local - say, screenshots, saved costumes, etc. and not your characters or progress,) and when Win7 is done installing, you can use its (far nicer) backup program to back IT up as well.

Though, personally, I tend to go for a clean install over an in-place upgrade anyway. Far less trouble and generally better results (plus some needed housecleaning.)

Guess what, sunshine - not your forum, not your place to tell anyone if or when to "go away." You don't like that I have objections and doubt it'll work as a concept, that it won't mesh well with doms? Throw me on ignore. Or just go away yourself. Because you're sure as hell not winning me over here. And with that little attitude, I'm sure not going to take anything you say about me "not getting" Illusion, or any other set, the least bit seriously.

Make Illusion an interesting mastermind. Dom? Nope. Still don't think it'll work particularly well.

I was going to write more up in response to your 'points,' but with that little response at the end, you're not worth my time.

/this, a stand I'm in full agreement with. Level cap raises really don't do much, and with that dev stance, talking about them is pretty much moot.

Hmm, did I mention controllers anywhere, other than mentioning how you get containment? No? Re-read what I said instead of trying to put words into my mouth.

CONTAINMENT (and "overpower") is completely self contained. You don't have to "build up to" it. Land one hold or immobilize (hope your Ill/ took something that has one in the secondary) and boom, containment. It's a completely different beast than Domination, which DOES need to be built up.

An Ill/anything dom would be building domination MUCH more slowly than a dom with any other control set. The three pets wouldn't be helping you. The two Invisibilities wouldn't be helping you. You'd have very little in the primary (really - as lousy as the AOE hold is, we might as well ignore that) that would help. Have fun trying to survive with that sort of playstyle "pre-perma-PA."

Now, if you want my opinions on Ill/ as a controller - and I'll start this with saying I've played *every* control set to primary completion, and several to high 40s to 50 (Plant, Fire, Ice, Earth, Grav) - if I'm looking for control, I'll look for any controller other than Illusion. I'll take an Ice/ blaster over Illusion if I'm looking for control. Calling Illusion/ a control set, to me, is like calling a tricycle with a bucket of water on the handlebars a fire truck. Sure, it can get some water over to the fire, but it's far less effective than the real thing. (And that IS directly related to Ill/ having so little hard, direct control.) Illusion's the only control set that I've gotten disgusted with playing, to where I don't *want* to get it to 50. I'd have thrown it out into an AT of its own.

Start in Galaxy.

Oh, no, I got what you were saying, I just wanted to separate Hellgate and ChO a bit as far as "why this idea gets dragged out." I'd say more people who mention it are looking at COn (heh) and saying "Do that here!" than ever are thinking of hellgate.

And yeah, I'd lay blame for both on (mis)management.