RemusShepherd

I've been on Virtue for almost seven years, and I read people's descriptions constantly -- I'm all about character concepts, and I like knowing everyone else's. I have never, ever, seen a sexually explicit description. However, note that I do not go into Pocket D.

If they're out there, it's simple to avoid them.

For some of us it isn't repressed. I'm a total yiff-crazed furry and proud of it, and I say bring on the four-legged heroes.

On the other hand, I really want to link to the Whamadoodles Online parody to show how bad anthropomorphic games can get, but I suspect that providing a link will get me banned.

This one tweet, from a personal hero of mine, means more to me than all the advertising and all the hype there ever was.

If Paul Dini said THAT, then I am officially salivating to see this movie.

But some players love the knockback in Energy Blast. I depend on it with one of my defenders.

What they need to do is make a new IO set in the Knockback category named 'Suppression'. (Or 'Swan's Suppression' if you want flavor.) It should be a set with heavy +damage and +accuracy, with one proc IO that restricts the KB magnitude to 0.67 in the power you slot it in. Everyone who wants to convert KB to KD will buy and slot that proc. Problem solved.

I think a lot of the 'problems' in these powersets can be solved by new IOs. For example, Electrical Melee has several powers with a small chance for sleep, so it can be slotted with Sleep IOs...and there's a Sleep IO proc with a chance to heal self. That makes the entire powerset better. My Elec/Energy stalker has slotted all her attacks with a chance to heal; it makes her unique and much more effective.

Similarly, Electrical Blast powers could be slotted with the chance for stun proc in one of the End Mod IO sets. If we want to make the set better, give us more cool proc effects in the End Mod category. A chance for hold (which would stack with the ranged damage chance for hold proc), a chance for confusion ('who tazed me, bro!?'), or a chance for damage would allow more customization for the Electrical Blast character.

You want to make the powerset really cool? I always thought that robots should shut down once their endurance goes to zero. Have some enemies who can be defeated by sapping instead of damage, and Electrical Blast will be the hot new flavor in the game, without changing the powerset itself one bit.

My Ice/Dev blaster Cryomino is optimized for Trip Mines, because she was my soloing character for a long while. She has maxed recharge, with a rare Alpha that affects recharge, and Hasten and lots of +recharge IO bonuses. She even has a chance for fire damage proc in Trip Mine, if I recall. She can put down 14 Trip Mines solo before they start to explode. My max is 28, when assisted with teammate speed boosts. I consider myself an expert in Trip Mine use.

I generally lay down 8-10 Trip Mines, then lead off with Surveillance and then Freezing Rain, both of which debuff resistance. That's enough to kill most EBs. Sometimes they need a single finishing shot. I haven't fought Terra in forever, but this is the strategy I used to take out the Keres in the new DA arcs. The Sentinel, if I recall correctly, took a few finishing shots after he hit the mine field but he still went down in about three seconds.

That's not counting the two minute lead time in setting up the mines, of course.

You can use Trip Mines on regular spawns, but it's like killing cockroaches with claymores. I agree with you that Trip Mine is worthless on a team. I do use it sometimes, but often the team pulls the enemies somewhere else and the mines never go off.

No. A good Trip Miner needs invisibility...which isn't hard to get, considering Devices also has Cloaking Device.

Generally you want to use Caltrops as a barrier between you and the enemy, so you put it on your side of the mine field. I haven't had much luck using Caltrops to bunch up enemies either, but part of that might be the Ragnarok knockdown proc I've slotted in them.

Device blasters are slow. But extraordinarily safe for a blaster. It's not a playstyle many people enjoy, but I'm glad it's there.

Devices does need some love. Smoke grenade isn't worth taking. A chance to confuse would let that power shine. Time Bomb is useful solo but not very much. (My favorite opening is Time Bomb, count to 9, LRM Rocket. Then they hit simultaneously.) They should change Time Bomb to a trigger bomb; hit it once to lay the bomb down, hit it a second time to make it explode. They've proven that they can do that now, with the new Stalker Assasination Strike behavior.

But other than those problems I love the Devices powerset. It's different and it is the best there is at what it does.

Wikipedia adds Spider-Man 2099 to that list. There are also some non-canon examples, including Rogue (after absorbing Thor's power), Superman and Wonder Woman (in a DC/Marvel crossover). There are also a ton of androids in the Silver Age who were able to lift the hammer after imitating Thor...but the Silver Age was a strange time.

DC's higher power level is a relic of their Golden Age roots. And it might be a part of reason why it's so hard for them to modernize their heroes. You can't have the Silver Age stories, where superheroes have real-world problems, if your heroes are so powerful that they have no problems. When they tried adapting Superman to the Bronze Age, they got John Byrne to drastically de-power him.

The timeline of City of Heroes is a bit wibbly-wobbly. Every character has their own personal timeline. You can start a character in Praetoria, and the city won't be destroyed until that character escapes, gets to level 50, and goes on the new Trial.

In other words, just RP your praetorian with the concept that you escaped before the city blew up.

Yep. It's a line from The Dark Knight, and he was surprised that anyone took him seriously...but they did.

They released him on $1,000 dollars bail. He's lucky they let him go. Since he's known for dressing up as Batman and wandering the streets of Bar Harbor at night, a judge could easily have decided he was insane and locked him up for a long time.

'Prostitution' is the word you're looking for. Or close to it. The actual word, which starts with 'W' and rhymes with 'boring', is bleeped by these forums.

I've been a Tier-9 VIP since day 1 of Freedom. I haven't spent a dime on microtransactions -- I refuse to. I've used my points to buy power sets, one costume set (barbarian) and I think a costume slot. I still do not have Street Fighting. I could get it, but I'm saving points for Staff Fighting. I will not be able to get both until June (by which time more powersets may be offered). It *might* be possible to get all the powersets using only the VIP stipend, but only for Tier-9 VIPs, and only if they forgo everything else on the market.

Conversely, a Premium subscriber only has to pay $5-$10 per powerset -- please correct me if I'm wrong. They can get all of the new power sets for one half the price of my *discounted* yearly subscription. If you're only interested in power sets, it's far, far better to be a Premium player. (In fact, it's better to be a Premium player in all cases except incarnate content.)

Both CoV and Going Rogue were huge expansions. I don't think anyone minds paying a one-time price for those.

I did not like the booster packs, mostly because I knew that they would end in a vile microtransaction system. But I bought them because I wanted to support the game. That kind of goodwill fades after time unless renewed, and they've done nothing to renew it.

But it is a fact that VIPs are being treated better than Premium players? I'm not sure, but I think not.

I'll grant that 'City of Heroes: Freedom' has a lot to offer above and beyond the old CoH. But the main beneficiaries of the new content are the microtransaction-happy Premium players. Loyal subscribers -- the VIPs and long-term vets -- are being treated like cash cows who will stick around no matter how much they milk us. And milking us they are.

This *is* a valid line of argument. It is true that because CoH is soaking its players with microtransactions, they are able to create more content than before.

But there is a balance between soaking everybody and just wringing money out of the Premium players. That balance is off. VIPs are already giving the company money, they should get benefits that are demonstrably superior to Premium players. They're not. Instead, NCSoft is trying to grab as much money as they can from the VIPs. They are creating more content but subscribers are being asked to pay more money for it. That is not an improvement over the old model.

A fairer system would give the VIPs every new costume item and powerset for free *and* 400 PP/month to buy vanity items like rocket boards and frizbees. The VIPs are already subscribers and should not be asked to pay more for core parts of the game.

If $15/month isn't enough to cover that, they should have the courage to up the subscription cost to $20 or $25/month. Being a VIP should mean more than having a colored name on the forums. There should be no question that it is better to be a VIP than a Premium player. Right now that's very much in doubt.

Yes, but how many? You can be sure that Paragon studios management is combing through the statistics of who buys what and how frequently.

Premium players, who purchase microtransactions at essentially random intervals, are much more likely to act on impulse. VIP players have monthly stipends, so they're more likely to plan ahead and more likely to feel entitled. This translates to few or no microtransaction purchases. If a Premium player spends more than $10/month then he's spending more than a default VIP player. (Most VIP players are old guard players, and they have a yearly subscription.) The VIP players who purchase additional points in addition to their monthly subscription are a very small minority.

With their impulse purchasing habits, lack of a PP stipend, and majority population in the game, Premium players are much more attractive to the upper managers who make marketing and pricing decisions. Why cater to the smaller population of entitled and stingy VIPs? Drive them into Premium; you get to train them to be impulse buyers and soak more money out of them.

You're laboring under the assumption that they WANT more people to go VIP. In reality, they make more money via microtransactions, which mostly come from Premium players. From my perspective as a VIP they are doing everything they can to convince me not to subscribe any longer.

They don't want subscribers. They just want money. The way that they are pricing new content proves that Premium players are worth more money to them than VIPs.

The Colony was a scary show. It was a reality show where the contestants were engineers and scientists tasked with building a colony after the fall of civilization. But even though the people knew they were on a TV show things got out of hand. There were several occasions when I thought they were going to kill somebody. I'm not surprised they didn't get a second season; there's nowhere else they could have gone without bloodshed, which in reality shows is generally frowned upon.

On the other hand, from scraps the engineers built a working solar array, a water collection and filtration unit, and a wood-fueled truck. If I was in any kind of apocalypse I'd want those dudes on my side.