Samuel_Tow

And so the endless battle to prevent people from pre-purchasing new powers without having played through new content continues. I'm just glad I'm not invested in the system for a whole host of other reasons, but for the people who are - you have my genuine sympathies.

I remember that post

Honestly, I would like to see all three to the point where I'm really not sure what I'd choose. If I HAD to choose, I'd choose for the one that makes Assassin's Strike less situational in general use, but still situational if you want the Assassination Critical, so I guess my call would still go for Idea 2.

Speaking of idea 3, actually, I have sort of a counter-suggestion on the subject. If the system really does support out-and-out swapping powers depending on a "mode" flag, then this presents us with the opportunity to reimagine Assassin's Strike altogether, into what I'd like to call a "speciality" attack. Let me explain.

A Stalker's Speciality attack, rather than all being close of the same Assassin's Strike, is actually unique to the Stalker's primary set such that it complements the set and balances what the set doesn't have, both in and out of Hide. For instance, if you're playing a Martial Arts Stalker, you have NO AoE whatsoever, so this Stalker's Speciality Attack out of hide would be a decent AoE, while in hide, it would be more or less the same as the existing Assassin's Strike, only with a Mag 4 relatively long stun on top of the Demoralisation effect. If, by contrast, you're running an Electric Melee Stalker, then your Speciality attack out of Hide would be a heavy single-target attack, while from hide it would be an Assassin's Strike with a SEVERE endurance drain and recovery suppression attached to it.

One of the big problems with giving AoE to Stalkers is that not all Stalkers need it. The ones who need it, need it bad. The ones who don't may actually be broken by it. If we are able to tailor the Speciality attack such that out of hide it compensates for the set's weakness while from hide it capitalises on its strength, that might be one HUGE step in the right direction.

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As a side note, many of those suggestions have an implicit pre-requisite: That Assassin's Strike, at least out of hide, be made uninterruptible. Right now, the power is thrice-cursed. It's interruptible so you can't use it in battle, most of its damage is restricted to its Assassination Critical from hide, and even when you do manage to use it in a scrap, it's too slow to be of any real use. Making the out-of-hide Assassin's Strike worth a crap would actually go a long way towards making Assassin's Strike as a whole feel like less of a gimmick, and it would actually go a long way towards limiting complaints about the power's "from hide" performance.

Thanks for posting this, Leo. I feel that if this is acted upon in line with any of your three ideas, this might be as big for Stalkers as the ye olde Stalker fixes.

I pay because I like having live Customer Support.

When I find myself burning out, I look for inspiration, either in the form of new characters to create or old characters to reimagine. The Best Costume Designs thread is a great source of these, but it's hardly the only one. Other games, books, movies and even real life provide plenty of opportunities to find inspiration. Maybe you saw a fictional character you really liked and wanted to transfer to City of Heroes or maybe you saw a documentary about a person whose story could make for a great hero with a judicious application of embellishment and outright fabrication?

I've also found that new ideas work best when you run them by other people first, though this requires someone who's either creatively- or logically-minded and has the patience to discuss these things. If such people are absent from your circle of acquaintances, the Costume Redesign thread is great for this (and, yes, I realise the last page is spammed with my own stuff). The thing is that ideas often sound great in our heads and even look good when put to character... Until we sleep on them and wonder what the HELL we were thinking when creating Insane Rick. Getting someone else's perspective helps weed out the bad plots and also helps flesh out the good ones.

I'm not sure that you can stay for years and years if you rely on JUST the base game to deliver fun for you. It's not that entertaining once you've done most of it. For me, the greatest joy in this game comes not JUST from playing it, but from playing it with an amazing character that turns heads (even if it's for the wrong reasons ). City of Heroes is, at the end of the day, a fantasy. It's an action figure come to life, and an action figure of your own making. Maybe I never grew out of the mental age of five, but I can't think of anything more I want out of life

I'm not sure if that's genuine surprise or sarcasm, but thank you, Arcana. That made me smile

And while I've not yet started work on my jarbrain vampire (as I've already made more than enough new characters), I will definitely move forward with it when time permits. I really love that idea, absurd as it may be.

Well, to break with tradition, I'm really not that upset with my inability to log into Beta. I honestly don't give a rat's *** about anything Incarnate (apologies to the system's fans) and I'll buy Titan Weapons regardless of what it actually is, so even if I don't get to test, that won't change the future.

Of course, if I don't get to test Titan Weapons ahead of time, then I'll have to keep telling people why I didn't ask for these extra weapon models in Beta or why I didn't point out those bugs in Beta, but that's really no bother at all

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a story, but I've been working for a bit of a weird concept of late, and I managed to finalise two somewhat weird characters at long last, and I kind of wanted to share. I apologise for flooding the forums with so many "look at me!" posts and threads, but I promise this will be the last one for some time. Their story is a... Long story, but they cost me quite a few sleepless nights all told. I've been burning out of late, and with "nothing interesting" coming any time soon, I needed a fresh new idea.

Enter Stardiver and Lighteater, my "ancient creations!" Sentient automatons made at the beginning of time by one of the universe's original creators researching the phenomenon of life, these machines resemble a humanoid shape, but are comprised of technology and science so abstract that only a creature of omnipotent knowledge of the building blocks of reality could conceive. Unlike human machines based around complex constructs of moving parts interlocking with each other inside an empty shell or even alien technology based around engineered organic life bound to mechanical devices, Stardiver and Lighteater are an amalgam of transcended material science and precise knowledge of exotic high-energy dynamics. With their physical shells comprised of dense, sold mixtures of incomprehensible chemical compounds mixed and separated in bizarre ways, they more resemble living, animate statues given life and sentience by cosmic forces.

The purpose of these eldritch automatons is shrouded in mystery and lost to the ages, gone from the complex minds of even the machines themselves. It is believed their creator made them as research tools in his quest for understanding the concept of life and determining whether there really existed a higher spirit, or whether life was simply restricted by the physical operation of a living creature. The automatons were built, used and then discarded. Too resilient to destroy even by their own creator, they were cast away into space, left to their own fate as the unneeded tools they had become. Driven by the basic urge to survive, Stardiver and Lighteater preserved their own existence by subsisting on the cosmic energies they had been built to harness and exploiting the duability that their bodies had been made with. These weird, mute, powerful aliens were seen as invaders and outsides on the worlds they visited, eventually teaching them to shun inhabited worlds when they could to avoid the physical damage of combat with the locals, as well as the psychological pain of being reviled.

That is, until they came to Earth. This is where the stories of Stardiver and Lighteater diverge.

This is Stardiver:



Stardiver was the original automaton, first created as the "test bed for life." To survive the many millennia of testing, her body was built to be practically indestructible, and to provide her with sufficient energy to function for this duration and operate on the cosmic level of her Creator, Stardiver was designed to - as her name suggests - dive into the hearts of living stars and expose herself to the hideously hostile environment therein. The link between basic matter and the various chemical substance that make up much of the universe, the hearts of stars were the ideal location for Stardiver to craft the materials she needed both construct and reconstruct her own body, should it become damaged. The enormous heat and pressure there permitted the creation of materials that modern science can still not accurately describe. As well, Stardiver's body was equipped with a large, dense, solid heat sink, and indeed entirely adapted to store pure heat energy, which she then used to fuel her existence. A dive into the heart of a star could heat Stardiver's body to enormous temperatures, infusing it with enough energy to run it for an incredibly long amount of time - vital for a creature built with no means of producing its own energy.

When Stardiver dives into a star, she emerges overheated beyond capacity, her abilities weakened and her control of energy suppressed. She must, therefore, find a means for venting that heat from her body. With the vacuum of space being such a poor conductor, Stardiver's regular practice is usually to find a nearby planet on which to reside, convecting her heat into its atmosphere or lithosphere, speeding up the process considerably. It is this need of hers which brought her to our Earth after diving into our own sun. Finding the planet inhabited was a surprise to Stardiver, but the people of Earth proved to have much more tolerance for "weirdness" than any species she had met before, with some even actually attracted to her specifically BECAUSE she was so alien and unusual. Not being met with the hostility she had expected and feeling strangely drawn to the emotional interaction humans offered, Stardiver chose to remain on Earth for the rest of her cooling-off process, minding to restrict her thermal vents down to levels which would not damage the planet's living creatures.

Engaged with other creatures for the first time in her existence, Stardiver's personality began to unlock and her mind began to mature. For the first time, she began to wonder what her purpose in existence was. For the first time, she began to see other life a kindred spirits, as opposed to a nuisance. But also for the first time, Stardiver learned to appreciate life's fragility. She had no concept of death, as she couldn't truly die, but when people she had developed an attachment to did die in an irreversible way, she felt pain. For the first time in her existence, Stardiver had a reason to live. She saw herself in the humans she protected, for they too were made without purpose and cast into a hostile world to survive and carve their own path. And in the happiness they found, Stardiver found her own purpose - to protect these people and their happiness, and perhaps one day even join into it.

To this day, the "weird little alien" is still something of a social outcast. She doesn't speak - she can't - and keeps her distance from most people. After having spent an eternity alone with nothing but her own thoughts, she is never quick to open up to strangers, and will happily ignore the advances those she hasn't chosen to bond with. She will protect their lives, of course, but much in the same way an errant storm will protect the shores of a bedraggled nation from an invading fleet - as an incidental gesture and nothing more. It is only her small circle of real friends that she will seek to interact with, and with their help, protect the lives of the innocent and the unaware as best she can. And as her body cools down from the heat of the sun, her true power is slowly revealed.

By contrast, this is Lighteater:



The second, last, and reputedly greatest creation of their original Creator before the great cataclysm which ended his existence, Lighteater was meant to succeed Stardiver after she no longer had a use to her creator. Though Lighteater's body was similar, his design was far more ambitious, as he was intended to dive into the cores of black holes. Designed with a small, super-dense dark matter core, Lighteater houses a genuine gravitational singularity within his own body. A complex alloy of unknown metals provides powerful gravitational shielding to contain the singularity's energy field within his own body while the super-massive dark matter core at the centre of the singularity serves to keep it from collapsing and channel its energy outwards to both animate Lighteater's body and manifest as raw energy outside his body. This grants him the power to fold space transition between any two points quite literally instantly, as well as the seemingly impossible ability to leave the interior of a black hole cross back out past its event horizon. As the dark matter core expands over many aeons, Lighteater's internal singularity loses power until the material is so disperesed that it produces such a small gravitational force that cannot be felt past his internal shielding, forcing Lighteater to see another black hole with which to re-condense his singularity and return his energy to usable levels.

The complex physics involved with the solid dynamic of materials which make up Lighteater's body causes his energy levels to weaken for a long time after he has emerged from the core of a black hole, forcing him to wait until his singularity stabilises into a usable form. Unlike Stardiver, this is best accomplished within the vacuum of space away from both the natural gravitational fields or normal matter and the disrupting effects of dark matter. Though Lighteater normally preferred to avoid planets entirely, and inhabited planets altogether, it was Stardiver which drew him to Earth. Sensing her erratic energy patterns, caused by her forcibly regulating the venting of her heat, Lighteater found himself curious for the first time. The one constant in his cognition had changed, so he felt compelled to investigate. Finding himself on Earth where his unusual appearance and powers were not just tolerated but even embraced, however, was a novel experience for the automaton. Like Stardiver, his emotions were forced to awaken in an effort to deal with the unfamiliar, irrational environment, but Lighteater's emotions took a drastically different turn.

Where Stardiver had approached humans with a sense of kinship and emptahy, Lighteater approached them with a sense of rivalry and apathy. He saw himself as the greatest, most perfect being in the universe, the finest work of the best of the Creators, and with that arrogance came disdain. He saw humanity's affinity for happiness as quaint but demeaning. Though Lighteater found himself searching for the purpose of his existence, the purpose he chose was quite different from that of Stardiver - his purpose was to rule over the inferior life forms, those which occurred by chance and were flawed at inception. His purpose was to be the master of existence. Though Lighteater had no interest actually subjugating lower life forms and creating a governing body, he still saw it as his right to do with him as he pleased. Rather than empathetic happiness, he chose to busy himself with cruel entertainment, forcing his power over those weaker than him. People's lives, Lighteater felt, were worthless and free for him to do with as he pleased. Just as his creator had used him and thrown him away like garbage, so he would use and throw those lower than him away. Such, he felt, was the nature of the universe. And the more he thought about it, the more Lighteater became convinced that he was greater than even his Creator. After all, the calamity which had claimed the existence of that Creator had left Lighteater completely unharmed, had it not. Clearly, the creation had surpassed the Creator... Surpaseed everything.

And yet, Lighteater's ambitions were not without their problems. Relics from the Creators still lingered, such as the Guardian of Creation and the Avatar of Destruction. But most dangerous of all was Stardiver, herself, his inferior twin. Though her power was never supposed to exceed his own, Lighteater had recently been forced to travel into a black hole, and his singularity was still not yet stable, and his power still not yet at its peak. If Stardiver could return to full strength first, she could pose a legitimate threat. A threat which could not be allowed to come to pass.

So, Lighteater and Stardiver were pitted against each other, with our Earth serving as their battleground, as it has for so many other cosmic conflicts. We have weathered the others, but this one may prove to be different.

I wish demo recording were more supported. I remember having TONS of fun recording some of my weirder stunts in Carmageddon and generally having a blast rewatching old races in racing games. The thing is that when you're playing, your camera is locked to your character and your focus is on what you're doing. Running a mission as a player gives you tunnel vision, more or less. Pulling back and actually watching the events you recorded and possibly having a look at what other people were doing is a whole different kind of fun all its own.

What are you people talking about? I read the I21.5 changes and I see nothing of the sort.