Samuel_Tow

Hmm... It's not impossible, but this seems like an animation change, or rather a rooting change. Either someone deliberately went out and altered Hover knockback rooting to equal the Hover knockback animation, or rooting somehow disappeared and the power is now bound by animation time, rather than root time. As I remember BABs explanation, each power roots you for either as long as its root time is set to or as long as its animation time is set to, whichever is longer. However, animation time would only suppress power activation, whereas root time will suppress that AND movement.

It's a good change, mind you. It makes sense with the animation. It's just not in any of the patch notes.

Over the last few weeks, working with the forums has been such a chore I'm this close to not wanting to even bother. The forums randomly STOP working and load for hours and hours, spit out garbage or errors like the abovementioned, or just tell me the page cannot be found. This has been happening more and more often and lasting longer and longer.

Wasn't this exactly the kind of thing why they swapped forum software types?

Some of us are posting from work with five people talking over each other in the background. Hardly an ideal position to be thinking of ideas in.

I guess letting them hide in a bathroom and going "Here's Johnny!" is more of a Brute thing?

Thing is, you can't have it both ways, or at least I'd rather not have it both ways. If we get a new system, such as power customization, I'd rather it came either all free or all paid. Adding powerset customization in an Issue but power pool customization in a Booster pack is just... It makes people feel like they're entitled to it, and then turns around to tell them they're not. It's the kind of cheapshot advertising tactics that I really don't want out of my games. Marketing should be focusing on advertising the game to new players, not to me.

Yes, if it came down to it, I would probably pay for it, but you know what? I'm taking notes. Someone once said that all that matters is whether you pay or not, not whether you like it, but I'm keeping score, and if many of these dick moves happen, I may indeed decide to vote with my money.

There's a problem inherent in your suggestion, in that you're trying to put it into the wrong context. What you're suggesting isn't INAPPROPRIATE to the Incarnate context, no, but it is... Irrelevant to it. What you're asking for is interactive stories, and while I agree with you, those don't need to be tied to Incarnates. They can (and probably should) be integrated within the regular game throughout the level ranges, as opposed to locked up at the end behind special content.

Put it like this: What is it about being incarnate that imposes these choices and variance, which cannot be applied to non-incarnates, as well? I realise that Incarnate content is the current best target to apply storyline suggestions, as that's what they'll be doing for a while, but at the same time, it does more to discredit suggestions than it does to help. Your idea is good. Good enough to not have to use the Incarnate system as an excuse.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. Branching story arcs are always an interesting concept. However, they're an inherently complex problem to solve, as even games that revolve around this - such as Alpha Protocol - still branch out relatively little and provide most of their variance through "fake" changes. I think we're much more likely to see "fake" choices presented to us, such as killing or releasing Montague of the Syndicate and arresting or releasing Vanessa DeVore. The story goes on as it would have either way, but it changes how people act and what people say. To me, that is enough, because that's what most games give you anyway.

Minor nitpick, but the game actually CAN tell the difference. /target_custom_next (and its derivatives) has a mypet and a notmypet parameters to either select only your own pets and everything BUT your own pets. Of course, that doesn't mean it's a mechanic the powers system can use, but the concept is already there.

*edit*
On topic, I've never been a fan of making Mastermind buffs any more... Fat, which they will become if they're made into a single large investment, as opposed to a single-use "small" power. However, I still feel it's irritating to essentially do George Jetson's job every four minutes or so. I don't know what a solution to that would be, but I've always been in favour of just prolonging the buffs. Say 5-10 minutes or somewhere in-between. True, there was that problem of relogging to stack buffs, but...

OK, that makes sense. I guess, as much as I claim to want to make my own characters and stories, what I REALLY want in a game (or movie, for that matter) is characters and stories I actually LIKE, be they mine or someone else's. That's why I swoon over Darksiders as much as I do - not because it's a great game (Oni is still better), but because I frikkin' love War and the way he's written. Sure, he's not MY character, but he's written exactly like I'd have liked to write him. In fact, he's written BETTER than I'd have written him, to the point where playing the game expanded my horizons ever so slightly. I know most people would find War to be a cliched, trite, over-macho caricature (and he is), but I just love the purity of his overdone nature. Complex plots are interesting, but sometimes a simple plot which earns its simplicity by brute-forcing through no-win situations can be just as interesting.

But that's neither here nor there.

I guess I just liked Redemptions' Cristoff too damn much to dislike the game. I LOVED his voice actor, and the guy - like War - was pretty much a stoic figure, and pretty powerful by the end. Love how a great sword becomes twice as strong when it becomes ancient Bloodlines, by comparison, didn't really sit well with me, and I will admit that this was because of graphics and gameplay, and probably not a little because of mood. Never was a fan of "realistic" settings replete with intrigue and politics. As it ought to be clear so far, my preferences lie in the more pure ("pure" in the sense of "simple" and "uncomplicated") concepts.

Well stated, and it's something I keep neglecting to get into. Too much information becomes too much when it is no longer interesting enough for me to care. If the information is interesting enough to keep me wanting more, then I probably wouldn't complain. However, it seems a bit hard for me to imagine truly extraneous information being all that gripping enough. Different strokes for different folks, let's say.

This actually puts one of my BIGGEST turn-offs in fiction into tangible works. Thank you, Neko As much as the author wants to give me is a very good measuring stick, and what really gets my goat is when a fandom at large starts digging so deep into a work of fiction that not only are they digging up information the author never really intended to expand on, but end up "finding" themes in his works that even he never suspected were there.

While how much information is too much can be relative, I think we can define a pretty hard line based on how much the author wanted to give out. If an author is prodigous and stuffs his work with tons and tons of lore, such as the makers of Baldur's Gate did, then I can't really complain. It's all down to personal preference. However, when an author has given out only so much and then people start writing expanded universe books and spinning elaborate theories, that's where I start to grumble. And the real problem with that is that this tends to happen OFFICIALLY. You have a good book, movie or game that does so well a sequel is greenlit. However, this sequel then features FAR more plot analyses and far more extraneous info to appease the fans and sell well, effectively turning it into a different work altogether.

I keep talking about Soul Reaver, but just look at the shift in narrative from Soul Reaver to Soul Reaver 2. In the original, there was almost no plot. Raziel is wronged, and he must kill his six (was it?) brothers and then Kain and... That's pretty much it. There's a Sarafan tomb along the way, too, but that's literally the entirety of the plot. It hints at more, but doesn't say more. It's an old game from an old age where story wasn't a big thing. Then Soul Reaver 2 opens with backstory, conversation and infodump, and there's so much background on the world my head spins. Now, that's not complain about Soul Reaver having too much story - it has just the right amount - but it's to describe how a franchise's plot tends to balloon over the span of its sequels. Hell, look at Metal Gear!

Of course, I wouldn't support the reverse, either - that being a game's plot becoming dumber and less interesting in its sequels. For instance, Dino Crisis was a derivative but good-natured Resident Evil clone with a cliched but cute plot about a research station run over with dinosaurs. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. Then Dino Crisis 2 turned the game into challenge shooter counting your combos and scoring you at the end of each level, and I was not able to sense plot anywhere in there. While I may grumble at plots getting thicker, that, at least, is inoffensive. But when plots drop out of games between releases, that actually insults my intelligence, and THAT I could never support. I'd sooner have too much than too little.

This much I can agree with, easily. I'm not really a fan of extra info, granted, but I don't actually so much mind to HAVE it in the game as a general thing. What I do mind is when it's hard to ignore, either because it keeps coming up in the main plot or because I keep tripping over it even when I want to pretend it doesn't exist. In the case of Arkham Asylum, for instance, I kept collecting Riddler maps which kept bringing me to audio reels, which kept showing me interviews with Zsaz? I don't care about that guy, but if I wanted to track down the Riddler, I had to collect his riddles to make him call me again and again. That qualifies as "in my face."

I think Mass Effect's Codex is a very good idea. It collects all of your extra info there if you really cared about it, but it doesn't actually paste the info on your screen before it saves it. If I get a codex entry, my Codex lights up to tell me I have an entry, but it doesn't pop up with the entry in my face. And, to boot, most of those entries had something to do with things in the actual game, at least.

I guess it's not so much extra info that I mind as the lack of segregation between that extra info and the main plotline I'm currently following.

Something like seven of them, and they're actually pretty good, believe it or not. I'd shoot for the later 3D ones, though, the ones that have you solve an actual crime via actual (if fictional) forensics. The older ones are more like unrelated minigames.

In fact, most user agreements include a "We can change this agreement at any time, and we will inform you when we do." clause in them. PayPal keep e-mailing me changes to their user agreement all the time. I believe the basic EULA we agree to every day has this, as well, but I haven't actually read it since 2005 so I don't know.

Even if things aren't removed, bad things still happen. "Oh, we won't remove anything you had access to before... But we won't give you anything new, either, unless you pay extra. See, your service is just the same!" Only it isn't.

Yes and yes. As of right now, there is no conceptual reason for Scrappers and, indeed, Stalkers, to not have axe and mace, other than that powerset proliferation is and has always been the lowest priority imaginable. Well, OK, probably higher priority than fixing text typos.

As mentiones, a Stalker with an axe would be just seven kinds of cool and creepy, especially if you have the right costume (when are we getting hockey masks?). A Stalker with a Mace may seem odd, granted, but I'd look at it in the same light as a thug with a black jack.

And heaven help you if you decide those aren't the powersets you want to play after you've cashed in the recipe. I hate when the game becomes about hard labour and time investment as the de-facto currencies. When I'm terrified of using a costume recipe on a character because I'm not 100% positive I may not want to reroll this LEVEL ONE character, something's wrong here.

I still feel the same way about this as I always have - make these global and make them harder to get, if need be. It doesn't matter how hard they are, as long as I only have to unlock them once. Having to "do the legwork" on every single character over and over and god damn over again is just absurd when it comes to cosmetics.

This is pretty much what it comes down to. Mastermind henchmen have some level of intelligence with which they can accomplish tasks given to them. Controller pets, on the other hand, are almost always unintelligent, a mere fancy of their creator's power. After all, if you can create a ring of fire, why not create a fire monkey? It doesn't mean that monkey is any more intelligent than the ring of fire, however.

Precisely the reason I hate Diablo 2 with the hatred of a thousand burning hells. The primary reason I bought City of Heroes was because it was described as a game where I didn't have to take the same power over and over again and where powers would scale up with me. I bought the game because I didn't have to choose between having more powers that suck or having too few powers that were good. I did not and DO NOT WANT a game which encourages me to have FEWER powers.

Because they've said as much. I forget if it was Castle or BABs or one of the other red names who posted an apology that this was not working as they'd ideally like it to, but they had no way to change it to work any better.

The reason the Crab Spider backpack doesn't disappear on alternate builds is technical, not a design decision. Offering solutions to it is largely pointless because we'd need to offer technical solution, and Standard Code Rant always applies to those.

That's what Air Superiority was originally intended to be, until it was found to be technically infeasible.

"Charging" powers in general are impractical in the world of City of Heroes, because a lot of the terrains we fight in have many things which could snag you and MANY things you'd need to jump over or run around. Trying to do a dashing attack in your average office or warehouse just means you'll run into an immovable chair, a crate, a piece of velvet rope, a cubicle or just miss a narrow door. Charging attacks work in most other MMOs because their environments are large, open and flat.

Furthermore, an attack that requires you to fly is severely limited in areas with a low ceiling or narrow corridors, of which there are more than you might think. As a permanent flier, I can tell you that a great many environments are not conducive to flight. Easiest example I can give is that conference room off the side of office corridor turns. You come in the door, the ceiling is low, and there's a large conference table with chairs between you and the enemies inside. It's fiddly enough for a human to do. I can't imagine auto-fly would do any better.

That said, I'm still in favour of that old Combat Teleport idea. To expand on that, I'd like to see a short-range, no-hover teleport power which has NO activation time and is completely instant, but has some degree of recharge on the neighbourhood of two to four seconds. It would give us a cheeky teleport to use in combat without the hideous end cost and mile long animation of travel power Teleport, and I'm pretty sure it would look really cool from a distance.

As far as the rest go, I'm ambivalent, other than Resilient. It seems to violate the developers' cardinal rule of making non-melee characters suck by making them weak to all common status effect, so for this to even exist outside of melee powersets seems overpowered. I'd like to use it, of course, but I don't see it as being feasible.