Samuel_Tow

So far, I haven't had a chance to try it out. I've been too busy torturing myself.

Here's the paradox, though - I specifically picked a character to play who WOULDN'T need customisation before I16, because it bugged me to play someone who should be customised, but couldn't be. Except, now I like playing that character so much I'm not sure I'll be able to get much out of the Issue for some time still

Here's an interesting question. I have the older version of the editor. Will that self-update to the new one, or will I have to re-download it altogether?

This again, huh? I'm with the Goat (for a change): the game has options. If you want to farm, get on sewer teams, get on scanner teams and otherwise hotwire the lower levels, go right ahead. I choose to do the content, myself.

When I'm at work, I surf the forums, and I occasionally work, too.

When I'm home, I'm currently playing Red Faction: Guerilla. I LOVE this game. Just yesterday I drove an APC into a building and when I came out the hatch, I was on the second floor. Another time, I made my own entrance to a wall with the lovely power hammer, only to find out I killed an EDF soldier who was apparently leaning on it. Oops? And then instead of climbing on the second floor to shoot a bunch of soldiers, I used explosives to collapse the ceiling and bring the whole second floor down to ground level. I also used a huge chimney, blown up with precision, to destroy a large structure.

I just love how this game feels. Doors? Who needs doors when you have a HAMMER?!? That huge rampart protecting that fortress? All it does is slow me down a bit as I hammer through all four layers of it, plus whatever struts are inside holding the thing up. That building with the heavily-guarded, entrenched entrance? Don't need it. A flat section of wall will do. On the roof and you need a way in? Who needs hatches, just hammer at your feet and go. In fact, I had the misfortune of accidentally hammering a roof exactly where the single support pillar connected, snapping that, which caused the whole roof, with me on it, to collapse in.

Fun times.

Really, with the Coralax being half sea creatures, half land creatures, precedent does exist for creating amphibians. They could leave the water and walk on land, they'd just need to spawn in the water to begin with. Might make some of those humongous stretches of featureless ocean a bit more interesting.

Personally, if there's one buff I'd give Blasters and not be ashamed one bit is a buff to Snipers up to 3.56 scale damage (up from 2.7 now). Right now, a Snipe is not worth the time it takes to animate. Unless I want to pull, I have no use for a Snipe, because my regular attacks do more damage in less time. A Snipe's DPA is terrible, and that's assuming you use it as soon as it recharges, which isn't possible with an interruptible power.

To me, Blaster Snipes pay the cost of performance they don't really need. Their recharge is faster than you typically need or want it, and while the range is good, the damage isn't worth it. If Blaster snipes underwent the same treatment as Dominator Snipes, with associated balancing, I'd say Blasters would be just about right.

Now, I'm of two minds about this.

On the one hand, I LOVE the huge hulking monster feel of Granite Armour. If anything, I find it isn't huge and hulking enough. In my mind's eye, it's a 50-foot-tall monster That's a big part of what's good about the power, honestly, and it would kind of suck to lose it. Granted, I hate the specific model used, as I don't enjoy looking like a Quarry, but a different, UNIQUE model would be really cool. In fact, if we can get the model to be customizable, I would like that as the best solution.

On the other hand, I think I can work through this. Provided the new animation for Granite were as covering, as big and bulky and visually as heavy as the old one, then I might be able to deal with it. The BIGGEST thing for me is that it does NOT look like Rock Armour. Rock Armour is incredibly small and uncovering, akin to stone slabs here and there on the body. If Granite Armour is going to change, I want to see something either fully-covering or something that only exposes the head. If it becomes too small and light, it would just ruin the feel of the power.

And if you do want to make it smaller and lighter, see if you can't talk to Castle about removing the movement penalties

The big thing with mixing sets like this is AT modiiers, something everyone seems to forget when making these suggestions. You can give a Scrapper a Blast set, but with an 0.5 ranged damage mod (which is LESS than a Mastermind's), that Scrapper will simply outright suck. Considering that melee sets, in general, have higher damage attacks and a regular Scrapper's melee damage mod is 1.125, a ranged Scrapper would be doing less than half of his damage with powers that do less than his attacks on top of that.

Even worse, giving, say, a Blaster a defence set is a total waste, considering how low the various buff and debuff modifiers are on a Blaster. He'd still be doing Blaster damage, obviously, but at the cost of a secondary which doesn't do much at all.

And let's not forget Castle's direct refusal to port Energy Melee over to Scrappers until changes were made to it. Precedent exists to proove that certain sets are just broken (be they broken bad or broken good) in the hands of certain ATs. Simply opening all sets to all ATs willy-nilly is going to case people to either gimp themselves or make ridiculously overpowered tank mages.

Kelenar, I would like to congratulate you for being one of the VERY few people who view evil as something more than just killing civilians and killing your contacts and generally being an always stupid evil jerkass for no apparent reason. Seriously, I opened this thread thinking "Not another suggestion to kill and rob bums!" but I was pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly, and I congratulate you on bringing a suggestion that is not only quite good, but in fact very in-keeping with the source material.

Let me just get one negative aspect out of the way before I get to the positive: I really don't like the second idea. Spawning events by player actions SUCKS! I like neither Rikti nor Zombie invasions, so whenever someone happens to trigger one of those, it just ruins my fun for a while, or forces me to switch zones. Inconveniencing other people isn't really something I can get behind, specifically since unlike redeeming Halloween Salvage or completing a high-level TF, these are missions that I can foresee being done a lot, and indeed missions which can allow a villain to grief the hero-side. Not a good idea, in my opinion.

To go to the positive side, however, I LOVE your idea of an Evil Genius inspired turf or island fortress. Especially the island fortress, mind you. If anything, that's what base building should have been like all along, in my opinion. I love the progression aspect of starting with, say, a barren jungle chock-full of ghosts and monsters, clearing it out, building it up and eventually turning it into a base of operations. Personally, I'd stray away from having TOO fine a control over your environment, definitely not going into as heavy a micromanagement as placing individual trash cans. Personally, I like editors that strike a balance between power and simplicity, so I'd actually stick to something more along the lines of Tribes, where you can place entire pre-fab buildings, kind of like in an RTS. If you want, say, a tower of evilnessnessness, you just have to make room for it and stick it on the terrain.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to attach any kind of practical gain from this, like teleporters (helicopters, jets, etc), medical bays, inspiration dispensers and so forth, though if these are unlocked by specific lair-related missions, rather than by plain old grinding prestige, then I would very much get behind this.

It really comes down to the missions, though. If those are made well enough, I think this has a lot of potential, even for relatively little customization, if it comes down to that. Let's look at, say, a jungle island and how that would work in my mind:

1-5: Earn it. You go on a mission where you actually find, buy or take the island, but that's it. You unlock the consistent instance and you can go there and streethunt, but enemies would just keep respawning.

5-10: Claim it. You go on a mission to create your first outpost and take over the bulk of the island. This removes enemies from the beaches and clearing, as well as from the majority of the island, but it still leaves the powerful monsters lurking in the forests. You can't do much there yet.

15-20: Secure it. You go on a mission to set up an actual outpost with supplies and personnel, possibly stealing said supplies and proving yourself to said personnel. Monsters hidden in the woods still exist. You can place small encampments, but no big buildings.

20-25: Conquer it. You go on a mission to assert your dominance over the entire island. You raid the monsters out of the forest, root out a hidden base or two, stock the island with some serious firepower and can now begin to build larger buildings that have an actual benefit.

25-30: Prepare it. This is where focus shifts. You won the island, but now you go on a mission to start building up your grand master plan. This needs... Stuff, let's say. Machines, magical artefacts, experts, more soldiers and so forth. And what better way to get than than to TAKE it? Or, alternatively, make it.

30-35: Keep it. You're finally big enough to warrant attention, and you have to keep what you have by guarding it against rival villains and heroes. You go on a mission (possible more, possible repeatable) where you defend your island from attack while your plan is in motion.

35-40: Use it. Though your plan is still not ready, have a serious staging ground from which you can now begin to launch your own assaults on your enemies. Go on missions where you attack other lairs of other people (NPCs) and take their stuff to get bigger and better buildings to make.

40-45: Finish it. Your grand master plan is almost ready, and your enemies know it. Alternate missions to gather resources to finish it and defend your island while it is happening.

45-50: Success. Your plan is complete, and it is time to unleash it. Protect your fortress while it activates, then go out into the field to put it in motion or mop up what's left. All in instances, obviously.

Something like that

*edit*
I should not that I'm much more interested in the missions themselves and with seeing the lair improve than I am with my ability to customize it, honestly. As a first step, I wouldn't at all mind a selection of lairs that progressed and were built up like the towns in Heroes of Might and Magic. You don't really get to choose what goes where or how it looks, but you still choose to build it when resources permit.