Samuel_Tow

That's why I don't watch movies based on anything I liked. They may be perfectly good movies, but they will never be even close to the source material, so there really is no point.

For this reason, I don't intend to see the Mass Effect movie (if it ever comes out) unless there's some specific reason to, and why I don't intend to watch the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie. Both of these are best fit within their own genres and don't need movies made out of them. I'll probably see the Prince of Persia movie just because they seem to have gotten so much right (and I have a friend who will insist anyway), but I do so with apprehension.

Would that I could.

Well, to be honest, I think a lot more people would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it didn't have Sherlock Holmes' name attached to it. It wasn't a GREAT movie, but it was basically a comedy with action, so as a base movie, it was decent.

Now imagine if it was, instead, about a war veteran cyber super soldier Hercule Poirot, accompanied by Grandmaster of magic and the occult Arthur Hastings, and together they battle Mecha Godzilla on the moon. Wouldn't that have gone over so much better?

Duuude! Tails don't go on the waist, they go on the bottom of the spine

While I'm not a fan of the idea itself, I like the basic concept behind it. Killing with damage shouldn't be the only way to defeat things, specifically since other games have historically allowed for permanent (at least until specifically cured) status effects. The original Baldur's Gate had basilisks that turned people to stone permanently. As in, it never wore off, and you could spend an eternity as a statue, at least until someone used a Stone To Flesh scroll on you. In fact, one party member is acquired like this - restored to life from a sea of Basilisk victims that may have been there for years. Baldur's Gate 2 has the Cowled Wizards, who can imprison your characters underground, and they will stay there until you return with the right scroll and cast it in the general area where the character was imprisoned.

So why can't we do that? Petrify an enemy enough and they turn into a statue and count as defeated. Then they fade and are assumed to have been teleported to the hospital where magical doctors de-petrify them. Or how about choking someone enough to where he passes out and counts as defeated? Or freezing him solid so that he won't break out on his own? The concept is there, it's the game's combat mechanics that make it implausible.

Well, one has to assume that a new set would have to be reworked and adapted to the Architect, which wasn't part of the pre-pruchase deal. Wait for Going Rogue, probably.

Sweet, that'll be good to cheer up my own mother. Thanks!

You can still find the PlayNC store link on the site, it's somewhere in the amorphous black, but the store is down for maintenance.

*edit*
Actually, searching for the black-on-black link to the PlayNC store kind of reminds me of scanning planets for minerals. I'm just missing the clicking scanner

Aw, that's so sweet of you

Well, then I was right. Maintenance is at 3PM my time. Alrighty, time to go have some lunch and with any luck, I'll be able to at least log into the game when I'm back.

The animations can't just be recycled, because they need to match the Rooted times of the existing animations, or the set can possibly LOSE effectiveness in specific combinations. In particular, just pulling animations from Dual Pistols ready-made will increase cast times by almost 50% in some cases. Animations will, at the very least, have to be customised to match current Rooted times.

As well, cloning the powerset is something Castle has been shooting down pretty much since he's been with the game. This triples the workload involved in keeping the powerset straight, it makes bugs harder to track and opens the doors to all sorts of problems with the different versions desyncing. This was suggested as a possibility for Power Customization as far back as the beginning of the game, and it has always been turned down. Redundant sets will not do for customization, especially not now that we have an actual system to handle this.

But again, animations are not the problem here. Even at the worst of times, they can just be redone. It's what BABs did for Shields. The problem is the rig itself, in that I don't think it can do what you want it to do. Swapping power props is already easily possible and power customization does that even now. Swapping costume piece weapons and the stances that call for them does not appear to be something which is changeable, however. Anything we customize retains its activation sequences and only alters its attached animation or effect. And, yes, fire swords are actually effects. That's why they don't scale with model.

Now, a question comes up that I'm sure no-one wants to ask, but... Are we sure that weapons as a costume effect is the best way to handle weapon customization now that we have greater power customization? Might it not be better to instead go back to the old system of using power effects for weapons, now that we can actually alter these effects? What does having them as costume pieces actually give us?

The original answer was to add customiation, which is now possible via other venues. An auxiliary answer was that this allowed BABs to scale weapons to the model size, so women have weapons that are really just far too small. Power customization ought to be able to handle that with the introduction of several sizes of props for players to select from. Another thing we actually see with shields is that having them as costume pieces allows more customization options, with more colours to go around. I'll give that to shields, but all of the other weapons have uni-models and only two colours, which the current power customization can already model. Furthermore, this seems to be a UI concern more than anything else, as the power customization UI has only one category with everything dumped into it. I'm not sure if it can be broken down into several to affect different aspects, but it might not actually be able to do that without newer tech.

I guess there could be some kind of programming solution that makes it better to have one and only one weapon defined as one and only one costume piece that powers always reference, rather than having nine copies of it for each power to write down separately and then try to keep consistent. That's kind of why I'm asking - is it the best solution to keep weapons as costume pieces vs. calling them as effects?

I thought you meant a system that already does this

This sounds plausible. The /assist command (I think it was called that) basically does the same - takes your target's target and makes it into your current target. No-one ever uses it, but it exists. It's also possible to target through ENEMIES, as powers will skip your target if they can't affect it. This means that trying to heal an enemy will actually heal the ally that enemy is currently targeting.

Currently, we (as players) actually have a way to check a target's target, in sort of a roundabout way. Mastermind players can order their henchmen to /petsay $target, which causes the henchman to either call out what it has targeted or return $target if it has nothing. This is done via chat, but it should be safe to assume that this information can be dumped back into the system, instead of being dumped into the Pets channel, and it should then be possible to compare that to the Tanker. I'm not sure how the system itself identifies target, but I doubt it's by name. However it does this, it should be possible to capture this and boost damage if the Tanker's target's target is different from the Tanker's own identifier. I hope that whatever this call returns when no target is active is something that no player can ever have assigned as his identifier, so technically speaking, this should work both with a different target and no target at all.

Obviously, Standard Code Rant applies and I've no idea how the system is actually rigged. I'm also positive a new subsystem will have to be integrated into the powers system specifically for this and this alone, and what effect this will have on server load (server, not connection) I can't say, but if the system can check which toggle you have active and then alter the chances of power components to fire based on that, I can't say this particular issue is out of the question.

But again, I have to ask - how do you handle the problem of two Tankers swapping trains to ensure they're always fighting against things not aggroed on them?

It's an unfair advantage because it's a paid-for perk, rather than a legitimate power pick. Paid for perks should NOT give people a distinct advantage in combat over regular players. That's pretty much the worst thing you can do with microtransactions. Ninja Run provides a cool power of limited use, as well as some basic utility. It does not make you more powerful exactly because it cannot be used with other powers AND it costs as much as it does. I do NOT want to see its utility expanded.

Again, I have nothing against retaining the animation, but I have everything against retaining the movement buffs unless this were instituted as a legitimate travel power and a power pick.

Blade was. Blade 2 was not.

Why, are you in I17 Closed Beta?