Samuel_Tow

I don't recall doing that, as the issue isn't exactly "fixed." Not in the same sense that the PlayNC store was fixed, which basically added big signs on all their products saying "European Version! Run away!" The base City of Heroes site (that is to say, www.cityofheroes.com) HAS been fixed to where the flags actually matter, which actually does a lot better job than keeping a bookmark. I still wish I could make the site remember my preference, though.

I'm pretty sure they're not in the same places, or sometimes even in the same rooms, since they always shift around on me.

But, yeah. The two things you must avoid killing are the one patrol and the one boss. Everything else is fair game. And if you can grab the glowies first, you can kill those, too, after your mission is complete.

Well, if that's what'll cut it, then I'm all set.

"Anime hair" doesn't really mean anything in particular to anime fans, either. "Self-supporting hair" is only one small subset of a much larger spectrum of hairstyles, and it isn't actually all that common. Most widely seen on Goku, Vegeta and Squall Lionheart, that's by far not the norm. Even if we go by "weird" hair, it's not as common, with just a few men with it and just a few women with impossibly huge bows, ponytails that are thicker than their legs or corkscrew locks thick enough to drill through concrete.

On the flip side, anime has a lot more regular hairstyles, and a look at the less "wacky" anime will show a full list of those. Ghost in the Shell, for instance, tends to have either buzz cut, regular short or medium long. Hair colours aren't always human, but that's another point entirely.

On the other hand, what anime tends to have that Western animation does not is the kind of really long, really straight hair that tends to typify stereotypical Eastern women in Western shows. Owners of such hair tend to have a short, even fringe with the hair extending down to the waist behind the ears. We DO have something like that, but it's actually parted with no fringe and it's parted asymmetrically, hiding one eye. It's a pretty decent style, by the way, but it'd be nice to see a few more like it.

And it'd be nice to see longer hair on men. We already have something kind of like Sephiroth hair, but where ours is shoulder length, his is waist-length.

As far as I'm concerned, Jay really dropped the ball on the new hairstyles back in the day. There were a good bit of opportunities for new, normal hair, like longer hair for men and a few more decent hairstyles for women. Instead we got Spock hair and hairstyles from a bunch of different cartoons and movies, and males STILL didn't get a proper long hairstyle. Sometimes I think it's best to stop adding esoteric pieces that are better for laughs than serious characters and add in a few generic, normal-looking hairstyles to fit in the gaps the costume creator leaves.

Of course, I wouldn't mind a more proper Vegeta hairstyle, too

Actually, you can go off precedent and make a pretty good guess that, unless something major changed, it won't do much than the first time they ran it under 36, when it didn't do much.

What hate of EU people? I live in the EU, how am I supposed to hate EU people? I don't think I hate myself

And, yeah, I've seen that link. It's still a significantly more problematic solution since it requires me to access a page within a site directly, rather than just going to the site. Since I don't use bookmarks for sites with names I can recall off the top of my head and which Firefox autocompletes for me, having to hunt down a bookmark in my messy list and do my best to not accidentally hit a porn bookmark with people sitting around me is not superior to typing www.c

It was harsher and it didn't do much. That's why it's down to what it is now.

And that's actually my point every time this comes along. Name purges free SOME names, but any illusions that "good" names are held by inactive accounts are just that - illusions. The first name purge under level 36 on everyone inactive for 90 days and more freed up a few names, but mostly under level 6. And people were shocked to find that the names they thought it would free up, it didn't. Short of making names non-unique, nothing will change.

I'm just trying to say that, even in the current situation, there is still hope if you really want it.

There's something called "good sense" when it comes to jokes, and if not exercised, it WILL come back to bite the joker. Repeatedly. There's nothing wrong with humour, questionable humour, provocative humour or indeed mostly any kind, but some sense of context and situation needs to be exercise. Throwing around randomness randomly does often tend to be funny, but is just as often a complete crapshot because it's just as often not.

I respect Jay's tendency to joke around and act informal, but I'm not always confident in his judgement in doing so.

Yeah... A Stalker without Hide is only very slightly short of a Scrapper. Stalkers have Scapper defence numbers, almost Scrapper health, almost Scrapper melee and defence sets. I guess if you want to discount random criticals, that might change things ever so slightly, but random Criticals are a really, REALLY minor improvement on overall damage output. The only thing Stalkers do markedly worse than Scrappers is melee damage, which is down by 12.5 percent points, but even that doesn't make THAT much of a difference. They're weaker, obviously, but not weak enough to be called "crap." Not in the slightest since I scrap with my Stalkers pretty much all the time (as the alternative is just silly) after my Hide and Placate are used up, and I suffer almost nothing for it. That was the point of the Stalker changes, in a nutshell.

As for a Brute, when I say "a Brute without Fury," I mean a Brute who isn't running around like a spastic monkey with its head cut off, e.i. a Brute which is not built and played around the need to build and maintain Fury. That is still a perfectly decent Brute, partly because Brute damage isn't THAT bad even without Fury, and partly because, as you said yourself, it comes up on its own.

It needs to be 50 or more for me to feel it in practice, is what I said. Yes, obviosuly, 20 Fury is better than 0 Fury, but from experience, I can't tell it's there without looking at my Fury bar or doing maths in my head. Enemies don't feel like they're dying any easier and I don't seem to be moving much faster. It's there, but I just can't feel its effect. When it gets into 50-60 and up, then I start feeling like "Hey, these guys are going down fast! Why is that?" then I'd look to the Fury bar, slap my head and go "Duh, of course!" But 20 Fury? Forget it. I can't even tell it's there.



I'd actually describe that as a Stalker, but it's obviously your character, so you get to choose. It's actually pretty close to one of my own Brutes, an Energy/Energy woman, on second thought. I guess to avoid contradicting my own character, I'd say it can go either way, but that just shows it's not all Juggernaut Headcrush to Gamma Crush.

I don't mind Claws as a concept, or indeed even as a powerset, but I mind them as a benchmark for how a Brute should fight, e.i, with lots of small attacks. That's fine for some sets, but it REALLY sucks for others, specifically heavy weapon sets and heavy strength sets. One of THE greatest disservices Champions Online did to comic book heroes in general wa introduce an auto-attack into a game that turns what might otherwise be a large, hulking might brute of a character into something more reminiscent of a little kid trying to punch a big man who's pushing him back by his head. This might befit something like their single or dual blade, or even their RIDICULOUS martial arts, but a Might character needs to feel mighty, and Might simply does not, since half the time you're flailing around like a sissy.

Brutes, as Fury is currently designed, are encouraged to do just that - do lots of fast, small attacks to build up and maintain Fury. In fact, ALL attacks give the same 5 points of fury per attack, irrespective of their speed or the damage they do, so a simple dinky Brawl will do as much as an earth-shattering Energy Transfer. That's just not right. In fact, if I go by Fury Per Power, some sets end up CLEARLY better than others, as do powers within the same set, and in a very counter-intuitive way. You'd expect a huge, slow, devastating attack that all but turns an enemy inside out would, to stick to the in-game description, infuriate a Brute who couldn't take that boss down with it much more than if his little pimp backhand didn't manage to take down that huge hulking robot.

To go back to Dragonball Z, that's exactly what Vegeta does... Shortly before getting killed by Freeza. He basically fights him as hard as he can, doesn't do anything, and in a moment of desperation, he freaks out, flies up and does his best to summon up all his strength in one spectacularly over-the-top fireball. Oh, sure, it fails as a plot device, but the point remains - big attacks ought to give more Fury than small attacks, at the VERY least so that it's balanced. And if we go by my example of pulling your punches, when would I decide I need more power? Would it be when I backhand an enemy and he doesn't explode into ludicrous gibs? Wouldn't that be just a simple example of me not actually doing anything? Wouldn't I REALLY tell that I need to power up when I throw my big, powerful, show-stopper punch and see that that's STILL not enough that I decide that, hey, I might need to hit EVEN HARDER?

Personally, I feel that Brutes would have been much better served by giving each power an amount of Fury comparable with its animation length, possibly scaled a little in favour of animations that do more damage. Just as a fun exercise, here's what Fury Per Second of animation Energy Melee has:

Barrage: 3.759
Energy Punch: 6.024
Bone Smasher: 3.333
Whirling Hands: 2.000
Total Focus: 1.515
Stun: 2.778
Energy Transfer: 1.873

Pretty much anything that isn't part of the first three attacks forming the basic attack chain is crap for building Fury. And when you consider that Total Focus has a DPA of 44.994 and just Energy Punch has one of 51.458, big attacks aren't even all that good at padding up maximum damage attack chains. To me, that's an *** backwards way to balanced an AT which does, at times, need to be all about the raw strength.

*note*
On the subject of Brutes without Fury, the numbers I'm getting for DPA surprise me, in that they're not too much worse than the Scrappers I've dealt with. No scientific or numerical comparison at this time as I have neither the time nor the inclination to do a full workup on Energy Melee, but JUST its base stats are not as low as I'd have expected a Brute to be. I guess the smaller attacks just have good DPA.

To expand on this, I don't feel happy for people who can't get the names they want, don't believe they deserve it and don't sit back in my chair, stroking my cat with my robotic hand and smirking when people complain they can't get a name. I try to offer compromises, alternatives, ideas and possibly sources of names, but what I get back is rarely pleasant. Even so, I recognise that it's unpleasant and acknowledge that these people are indeed quite unfortunate.

Yet I still think there are options there for those who want to look for them, and under no circumstances would I want a non-unique name system in any incarnation that I have seen with my own eyes or seen suggested here. I have sympathy for people who can't get the names they want, but not quite enough sympathy to ruin my own game for their sake. If a compromise can exist (and I somewhat doubt, given the contradictory requirements for such balance), then I have no problem with such a system. Yes, I know some of us like the fact that names are unique, but I personally do not put much stock in that. It's just that no such system exists to make it both clear and not fugly.

And in the meantime, there are still plenty of good names out there for those who can and want to look.

You should have quoted a little more of that, since I can't recognise my own post the way you cropped it.

For me, that would have translated into a "Holy crap that sucked!" moment, myself. Coming into a zone for a hunt mission only to discover it has been turned into a free-serving buffet for every Archvillain in the game except any from the cation I am hunting would not go over well with me, and would likely send me off to another zone to kick my heels, sit on my hands and eventually log out to play a better game. I've done just that during Zombie invasions of zones I need to hunt stuff in, and it never leaves me with a pleasant memory to take home.

In the purest sense, messing with places I need to work in or pass through does nothing for me other than cause an inconvenience and most likely a delay. I will not feel better and more alive for it, I will feel the same way I do when I drive into a intersection that has half a mile of traffic backed up against it so I have to sit on my *** for 10 minutes until I can even come within view distance of the light. It'll make me feel the same way I do when I arrive at work with a bunch of documents to work on and the power dies for two hours while they fix the apocalypse somewhere along the line. It will make me feel the same way I do every time I want to do something, but either can't or I have to jump through ten hoops just to get to it.

Where people see "dynamic content," I tend to see "PITA" in their descriptions of it.

There is enough of a person's mind in them, though.

On a different note, Becky, the Tarantula Queen would like to have a word with you. She didn't say what it was about.

Yeah, but Spines don't use weapon customization last I checked. They use power customization, and each power slot can only take two colours, which is why he said what he said. Spines are a very different beast from practically all other weapons, which is why applying the mechanics behind Spines to, say, Broadsword, is not a safe bet. And, as a matter of fact, there's nothing stopping the toxins from being tintable if only there were enough colours to tint them, but those were used for the Spines, themselves, with the toxins left green because it's thematic and pragmatic at the same time.

That's one thing. For everything else, he did say he was "lazy," which is to say he physically did not have enough time to do everything and had to choose between giving customization to sets that had none or doubling up customization on sets that already had a fair deal. As such, his decision to not mess with weapons is a pretty prudent one.

No, you could very much not have your sword change colour between attacks, because weapon customization is not controlled through power customization. Your sword depends on your powers no more than your cape or your hair does. It's a pre-defined model called through an external effects script. All a power does it call it, it does not define it in any way, shape or form.

Spines are different, because the weapon customization portion of Spines has to match up to the power customization portion of them. In fact, I'm not sure the new Spines are a costume detail like Weapon Customization at all, and rather feel that they actually use the old weapons system where weapon powers did not work in tandem with an invisible costume piece, but rather summoned their own graphics as part of their effects. I don't know how they're set up precisely, but it would explain why you can alter their colours from power to power like you alter the colours of your fire or ice, which isn't possible with weapons.

Either way, I can boil down to a simple notion: "Spines are not weapons." It's not entirely accurate and probably not entirely factologically true, but it's a very good rule of thumb when looking to figure out what weapons can and cannot do. Spines are not a precedent for weapons, they are an exception to the rule.

I am very much not assuming. This was discussed at length both before and after power customization came out. Every time he has discussed this, he has been very explicit that weapons and effects are two entirely different things. Weapons are a costume piece, controlled and defined by the costume system. Effects are completely different, and they are controlled and defined by the powers system. Not only are the two not interchangeable, they are actually only tangentially connected at all. The powers system can make certain requests of the costume system, of which appearing and disappearing of the weapon are two that have been confirmed, but to this day I've seen no confirmation that it can alter costume definitions. Inversely, the costume system can only offer costume pieces to be used for powers, but cannot affect anything that is not a costume piece and that isn't spawned on your character.

I won't hold it against you if you choose to dismiss this, but it has been discussed at length.

No, actually, he could very well not put the spines on the costume screen and the toxins on the powers screen for a simple reason - the spines that stick out of your body are (or at least cold be) a costume piece, but the spines you throw through the air and the spines that stick into your enemies are not a costume piece and as such cannot be controlled by the costume system. At best, you could have metallic spines, but still throw bananas and still have bananas stick into your enemies. That's why Spines have not been customizable until now. In essence, what you see on the power customization screen is all effect, including the spines on the body, I would wager. As such, you can only alter the whole thing and assign two colours to it. Where these colours go is controlled by effects definitions, and he simply chose to put both colours on the spines and neither on the toxins.

Personally, I enjoy predictability and abhor consequences. That all sounds like very interesting stuff, and I'm sorry to be a downer here, but it also sounds like a lot of busywork for not much of a gameplay improvement and, to a large extent, for a lot of gameplay detriment. Turf wars sound like fun, up until you accidentally end up in the middle of one when you have a hunt mission and get repeatedly swamped, and arcs ending prematurely can actually be a BAD thing if you're like me and prefer longer, more involved arcs but do not enjoy failing missions on purpose.

I'd probably stretch as far as dialogue trees and branching story arcs, but I've never been a big fan of the "dynamic content" suggestions, specifically since things like Rikti Wars and Zombie invasions are some of my LEAST favourite things.

I wasn't offering friendly advice because I didn't post to offer advice, partly because people like you always turn around and throw it right back in my face, and partly because I didn't post to offer advice, but rather because I was happy I got a name when I was CONVINCED I would be completely unable to get a name without switching theme entirely. I'm sorry my happiness is such a sore spot in your eyes, but if you'd actually read my words rather than my tone, you might have seen that. Let me explain, just as a saving throw against being a total dick.

I was convinced that good, obvious names had long since run out. If you've participated in any of the recent threads that I have, you might have seen me claim that all the obvious names went on day one. Not last week, not last year, not "recently." On day one as soon as the door opened and people poured in to make their characters. That's the day when all the "Ultra Man" and "Flame Lass" and "Icegirl" names went. Poof, just like that. They have not been back since and they will never be back because, on the off chance they are freed, someone snatches them up pretty much on the spot, so you're never going to get an obvious name. Ever.

Or so I thought. However, having gotten a decent name without diverging from concept, that changed my mind. I no longer believe that all the good, obvious names are gone, because I now have proof that they are not. If I can find a name like this, anyone can find a name like this. Obviously, if someone has already found a name he can't use, then this discussion is completely inappropriate for that, because it's about FINDING names, not griping about names you can't change. If you can't change it, there's nothing to find. If you can't budge or yield or alternate a bit, then you have my condolences, but I was never talking to you to begin with. In fact, I wasn't talking to you at all. I was addressing my own belief that the obvious names were over, which you will see plain as daylight if you actually read my original post.

I never claimed anyone who can't find a name was uncreative, and rather than misquoting me on that, I would appreciate if you could find a direct, real quote that has me saying it or stop insisting I did. I never claimed it was easy, I never claimed it was always possible, I never claimed that it would work for anyone. In fact, if you'd read my original post, I never claimed my own name was actually any good. All I said was that I liked it, and I was confident there are still names left out there that other people will like. In fact, the only thing that original post said was "Look what I found! I'm happy with it! If you look, maybe you will be, too!"

And, forgive me for the harsh tone, but I'm getting a little tired of passive-aggressive people who can't see past their own noses reading every thread or post about how someone has found a good name or how good names can be found as some kind of hidden insult against their intelligence. And, yes, resorting to using "tone" as an argument is pretty dang low, because it's basically an impregnable argument. "That was your tone." "No it wasn't." "That's what it sounded like to me." Well, yeah, but it wasn't, and unless you can bring out a tuning fork to prove it, I will trust myself.

If you've ever found yourself not being able to use a name you wanted, I'm sorry. You have my honest condolences, because I've been in the same boat more than once. Nevertheless, do avoid inserting yourself as the victim every time the topic of character names comes about. It may not seem like it, but not a lot of people lie in wait for the perfect opportunity to call you uncreative. Most of us are just happy with the names we've gotten. Why does that bug you?

That would, on one single move, bring me half-way to cancelling my account on the spot, and that is a feeling that never goes away. Right now, the "you cannot play this" content in the game is mercifully small, self-contained and, most importantly, does not cut off any vitally interesting parts of the game, other than the Inventions rat race, which is itself well self-contained. But if this is the equivalent of adding a 50-60 game with forced teaming and/or min/max builds that are specifically designed such that someone like me cannot participate... Well, that's too large a chunk of the game I am not welcome in, and it gets too close to making me feel like a second-rate citizen.

Harder tasks, certainly. Hell, I can overlook even proper raids and classical instances. But an entirely separate zone with its own storyline only for the "elite?" No, thank you. Current hazard zones PITA enough.