Samuel_Tow

Case in point:



I find gender to be easy to assume, as whether people say "he" or "she" is entirely dependent on what said people see you as. If they get it wrong, then they have quite literally gotten it wrong. Mistaking a man for a woman or a woman for a man is not unheard of, especially if you're stupid, drunk or under pressure. In fact, a lot of leeway can be given on how NPCs refer to us and what they describe us as provided these references are written as their impressions, rather than placed into the disembodied narrative of the game, which generally represents the objective truth.

When Levantera says "Don't like it? You should have joined Longbow!" this is can be interpreted less as a case of writer brainfart for forgetting villains would play too (even though that's what it is), and more as a case of Levantera being a condescending ***** who speaks without thinking. A self-respecting villain could easily set her straight by explaining Longbow probably wouldn't employ him or her, and I expect Levantera's reaction to be a mixture of irritation and embarrassment. On the flip side, when the mission entry pop-up tells you "It sickens you to see these butchers in Paragon City." then you, as the player, are well justified to turn to the screenwriter and say: "No, it doesn't. What are you thinking writing this?"

In short, NPCs can be wrong when it's clear they're just getting the wrong impression, rather than giving exposition.

Oi... OI! DO NOT WANT!

Ahem... Sorry about that. Tying heroes to Longbow and villains to Arachnos would be a very, very serious mistake, and one we've gone to great lengths to fix from when CoV came out. The single biggest story-related complaint levelled against City of Villains was and is that we are so strongly railroaded to "usually work for Arachnos." The simple truth of the matter is that many, many villains want nothing at all to do with Arachnos. Mine, for instance, are all too happy to work with all the other contacts without collecting "brownie points with the Spiders," even if they don't mean what I thought they meant.

"Longbow vs. Arachnos" is a railroading storyline of the highest accord, easily comparable to the Well of the Furies. It's just bad in a different way. It paints the world as a conflict between two factions of people I want nothing to do with, that I'm drafted into because apparently I want to have a stake in this fight. Even though I don't want to. It's even worse in PvP zones because we're not even allowed to have our own side objectives and stories like we are with Vanguard. All we do is for the war effort, like regular soldiers in an army. Because we all care about the war effort in Bloody frikkin' Bay, don't we? Because obviously, villains want Arachnos to win since a win for Arachnos is a win for all villains, right? What happened to "You will no longer need to bow down to those who deem themselves your superiors?"

Heroes and villains are not the same thing as Longbow and Arachnos. The terms are not interchangeable, the conflicts are not interchangeable. Hero and villain are states of morality. One is on the side of good, protecting the innocents, the other is on the side of evil, abusing the innocents. Who heroes and villains align themselves with is sideways of their morality. Some villains want to serve Arachnos. Some villains want to be allies of Arachnos. Some villains want to COMPETE with Arachnos, and thus helping in their war effort is counter-productive. Some heroes want to align themselves with Longbow. Others see them as a vigilante force with no real authority and would rather work with the PPD or Vanguard or the Midnight Club. Some heroes don't want to be part of a larger organisation to begin with.

I can't stress enough how important it is to NOT assume loyalty, belonging and allegiance. Offering Vanguard as an optional path where we can focus on helping or focus on our own agendas anyway is a good solution. Hard-coding the game to where every villain belongs to Arachnos, by contrast, is a mistake, and one that dates back to 2005.

I'd like to dodge the underlying issue and instead focus on how happy I am whenever the game uses the $heshe variable. Context-neutral narrative is lovely when used in situations where context really couldn't and shouldn't be inferred. That's why we don't have $race or $personality or $religion. On the other hand, there are limitations to context neutrality. Certain situations just come off as weird if context isn't assumed where such context should be obvious. That's why we have $name, $heshe and so on. After years of the game being hilarious in saying "It's Samuel Tow! They will not escape! Get them!" I presume much of the game's original text just defaulted to expecting a team of heroes half out of MMO convention and half because the game couldn't tell gender. But if I bring an obvious man into a mission, having the bad guy tell his goons to "Kill him!" just makes things flow smoother.

As with most things, either extreme is a bad thing. Go too context-specific and people will recoil, insisting that you're assuming things about their characters that aren't true. Go too context-generic, though, and you end up having to say really silly things that break the flow of the story. It's a question of finding the right balance between things the story can assume (name, gender, archetype, level, alignment, previous exploits within the actual game, etc.) and things it can't assume (race, motivation, personality, speech, ideology and so forth). I firmly believe that striking this kind of balance will make the story much easier to accept by most people while still retaining much of the narrative flair of the current, much more specific storytelling.

Yes, I realise I've been arguing for generic storytelling up until now and it seems hypocritical to turn around and argue against it, but it is a very real fear of mine that we might go overboard with the argument and end up hurting the story in a different way.

Probably. A Nuke still has a to-hit check, then it has a 3.0 scale damage component guaranteed, which is just below Total Focus level, then a 1.5 scale damage proc at 75% chance to occur, then another 1.5 damage proc at 50% damage to occur. If you don't use Aim and Build Up, if you miss or if your damage procs don't trigger, you don't kill an enemy. I've had many instances where I've failed to kill a significant number of enemies, specifically enemies who could hold me, sap me or straight up instakill me. With Nove, I've had many instances I'll nuke, miss five of the 12 guys I was trying to nuke, get immobilized and killed while I scramble to down inspirations.

Well, then don't design a power that's like Unstoppable or Elude. There are a ton of T9 power frameworks you could have used. You could have used a mini God Mode like One With the Shield or Strength of Will, you could have used a self rez T9 like Rise of the Phoenix or Soul Transfer, or you could have gone with a "trutling" power like Hybernate. If you want something "unique," I'd suggest starting off a less common baseline, instead of taking arguably the most conventional power design and trying to twist it.

It just comes off like you're designing a power you hate.

I wish we had Duel Pistols, myself. As for Dual Pistols, the set is simply weak, and it's weak by design. As a direct result of its gimmick - Swap Ammo - the set's power is valued to be much greater than what it is, so the set is counter-balanced to be weaker to compensate. Dual Pistols pays a heavy price for having Swap Ammo, but Swap Ammo does not contribute nearly enough to the set to compensate for this price. If the set had a conventional Build Up mechanic, it might be slightly less "interesting," but its stats would have been significantly higher.

None of that would have saved the glacial animation times, but that's a separate issue.

It's your idea. You sort it out. If you're going to post on a public forum and solicit feedback, learn to deal with it. Look at any of the official Feedback threads on any of the recent Betas. Much of the feedback is "This, this, this and this are broken. Fix them." If you don't consider having questionable design decisions pointed out for your consideration to be constructive, then you simply don't know how to handle feedback.

I'm not trying to yank control of your suggestion out of your hands, Mafia. You don't have to change things just because I said so. I'm simply saying that the rest of your set feels very solid, and the one thing which sticks out as FAR too esoteric is the T9 power. If you want it to be unique, that's fine, but if you really want it to be unique, then don't shoot for a God Mode power. Those deal with stats so high they're all effectively the same power anyway.

That's the real kicker - we WERE at that point when we were level 50, and then all of a sudden we're not. Zwillinger's now infamous and oft-quoted "you need to learn to walk before you can run" is the real problem. We should never have been put in a position where all the game's canon enemies race ahead of us and we're left having to catch up once again. What, really, was the point of the last 50 levels if we're going to wipe the board and start the coming of age story all over again, but with bigger stats?

Incarnates should have been bigger, better and more impressive than the heroes before them, but instead they're a step down, with the eventual promise that maybe, at some point that's still not in the game, they may break even and return to where they were at level 50. That's what I don't like about how the story is being sold, at least through Trials.

As you say, though, Dark Astoria seems to be a step in the right direction, at the very least in terms of presentation.

While I don't disagree with what you're saying specifically, this interpretation speaks to me of a desire to belong, and it's a desire I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that I do not share. I don't want to go into why and just by how much I don't share it, but to say that I don't want to belong to an "elite" which destroys my individuality and recognises me only as a part of something bigger, especially when I never asked to be part of it.

The way Mender Ramiel sells the story of the Well of the Furies, "you are the only one who can stop them." While you obviously can't be the "only one anything" in a persistent, consistent world, his story did at least try to pretend you could. Canon and facts aside, the spirit of Mender Ramiel's story is one I can respect. It's an ego stroke. "You" are the one that's destined to save us all.

"The league," however, it taking on a single enemy. What you see as an elite group of the best still needs 24 people to take on a single guy. What you see as an elite group still needs eight people to take on a single angry catgirl. If your elite group of eight was instead tasked with taking on eight HUNDRED people, I could see this. Then you could argue that each member carries the power of a hundred enemies.

But that's not what happens. You need a mass of people to take on one guy, or one guy and one girl. No matter how elite this mass of people is, clearly that one guy is much more elite than they are. I don't want to be another face in the crowd (largely because I don't like being represented and representing others). I don't want to be in the elite league. I want to be the guy the elite league is struggling to take down. I want to be Marauder, I want to be Bobcat, I want to be Anti-Matter, I want to BE the threat that ordinary heroes and villains stand little chance to take out by themselves and struggle even in large numbers.

Yes, it's an ego trip. That's kind of the point. When I've received the power of the gods, I want to feel like one and act like one. I don't want to be just a very strong elite hero. I don't want to be a Ballista. I expect to have transcended previous boundaries and become something far more. Certainly the wide breadth of different powers we get from the Incarnate system imply we have a multitude of different skills. They imply independence, to my eyes. It is no longer enough to be a specialist in a narrow field, relying on your team to make up for your weaknesses. As a person with godlike power, you're expected to be a specialist in all fields.

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Again, I don't mean to disregard and dismiss your way of seeing the Incarnate system. I just feel you're approaching it from a position of fairly low expectations, because to be honest - you're a member of an elite few even as early as your 40s, when the really big stuff starts happening. Especially the way CoV's Grandville storylines shape up, that's the time you're presented as a bigshot elite. I see the Incarnate system as needing to take the next step, and needing to make that a doozy. No mere increment of power, but a jump in the total scope of storytelling, and I don't mean being dropped in a big bad hostile universe.

At some point, I start wanting to BE the raid boss.

Not only is it possible, many powers do vary. Off the top of my head, every melee power a Scrapper has access to is different from the same power as used by a Tanker, which is different from the same power as used by a Brute. All Scrapper melee powers have their critical hits written into the power as proc damage components. All Tanker melee powers are actually AoEs to account for gauntlet, but most have their effects only apply to the target selected. Brute powers all have an extra Taunt damage component.

It's more a question of HOW you envision Unstoppable being different on Tankers. I'd be genuinely interested to know.

I am talking about my Brute, yes. Even with all Toggles going, Marauder was still hitting her for high sums of damage repeatedly, and with no more purple inspirations, health was a concern in the anecdote I recounted.

Maybe it's huge for Tankers, but Invincibility isn't actually a huge buff. Tough Hide provides 3.75%, then Invincibility provides another 3.75% for the first target and 0.75% for another 7 targets. All together, that's 12.75. That's just shy of SR toggles, not counting passives. Granted, on top of resistance, it does offer quite a bit of mitigation, but here's the thing - resistance and defence don't stack as well as one might think. Numerically, you're always going to get higher mitigation numbers for JUST resistance or JUST defence of a higher number than from a mix of the two.

That defence and the physical resistance of the set actually work pretty well, just because the set has so much physical resistance. However, with the 20-ish% elemental and energy resistance, that amount of defence isn't enough for serious unkillability. Ghosts, robots, even Gunslingers are a pain, then.

Again, for a Brute. I've never played a Tanker past level 6.

I doubt it. Granted, I know Fury adds damage points every time an attack is fired at you whether it hits or misses, but the reverence with which Castle used to treat the Fury system leads me to believe it's not exactly flexible.

Even if this were mechanically possible, though, I'm not sure I'd want that to be the way we go. The obvious recourse is to have Elude add resistance as well as defence, but that seems like a very cheap solution, to say nothing of stepping on Overload's toes. I wonder if it's not possible to break defence soft-caps and have Elude push your defence to something like 47.5% or even 49%. Those last few percent points would make a HUGE difference, statistically speaking. I've seen a to-hit roll of 100.00 only a single time in all the time I've been looking.

I'm not sure what would be a good idea to happen with Elude, and it's a bit late for me to be creative at the moment, but something really should happen. It's a potent power, it just delivers most of its buff outside of the bracket where it actually counts.

You have to remember that Granville and all of the 40-50 content came not just an Issue after CoV was made, but a whole BETA after the fact. The entire time, myself and others hammered away at the "lackey" feeling of the low-level villain game, and I see Grandville as the answer. For the first time, there is where you feel like a big fish. That's also what Westin Phipps is for - to trump people who thought the game wasn't "evil" enough.

We've made a real breakthrough. Yes, Z. You ARE insignificant.

This was my emotional journey, as well. Let's roll with "you have drunk from the well and have the power of the gods." Now what? Go fight civilians. And you need 20 other people to do it. Presentation, presentation, presentation. That's what we're missing, and badly. There isn't anything in Grandville, for example, that's mechanically much different from content beforehand. You have contacts, they give you missions, you complete them. What's different is the story and the presentation, and Grandville does it right, I think. To this day, one of the most satisfying endings to a story that leaves me smiling the widest is still Time After Time. THAT is what being awesome should be like.

I'm not sure how much that voice actor (who is that, by the way?) cost to hire, but it was an inspired move. I can probably show this one trailer from, what? Three years ago? I can show that, and it will do more to sway people over to the game than all the Ultra Mode trailers of today combined. Though, to be fair, the "Play for free. FOREVER!" trailer is pretty awesome, too.

I LOVE this way of saying it. "It puts players second." That's exactly what it does, and that's exactly my problem with it. Maybe I'm a arrogant git (I know, right?) but City of Heroes seemed to be able to put me first a lot of the time, even if I had to work to find the stories that did this. With the Well, this is no longer the case, and that's just one instance of many. I say I worry about the future of the game's storyline, and that's precisely where my worries stem from - that the writers are so eneamoured with their own stories that they put those ahead of our own, and it's our own stories that kept many of us here for so long.

It's a basic fact of the human condition that "our own stuff" always feels like the best, even when it's garbage. It may not be as good, but it's ours, and that makes it more valuable.

This is my story. There are many like it, but this one's mine.

Not a good enough reason.

This is actually more powerful approach than you realise. If you watch the AWESOME Issue 11: A Stitch in Time trailer, you will catch Mender Silos saying the following:

There! Right there, the Pillar of Ice and Flame is woven into the game's lore, given an explanation why it exists, where it comes from and why we're using it. And all of this while not only avoiding paiting it as the be-all-end-all of time travel, but specifically listing it as one of many other methods of time travel. Not only is this a great way to leave the door open both for us to make up our own stories AND so people like Holsten Armitage still make sense, but it also serves to inspire me to wonder... If the Pillar is one of 11 methods of time travel, what are the others? If we assume Holsten and Aeon use the same time travel device, that's still just two. But what are the others? Maybe I can come up with one of my own.

Not only is the I11 trailer probably hands down the best one I've ever seen for the game (no offence, Samuraiko, but that voice actor sells the thing big! ), but it does a great job dumping a lot of exposition in a little time without contradicting itself, without contradicting established canon and without shutting any doors for potential future concepts.

When I argue against the Well of the Furies, I argue because I know the writers can do better. They HAVE done better. Maybe it's not the same people, granted, but it proves it CAN be done better, because it has been done better. Yes, since its introduction, Ouroboros has been the hub for all the game's storylines, but the difference between it and the Well is that Ouroboros only tells its own story. It does not attempt to re-write the stories of those who take part in it. We go to Ourobors by choice, and the story then twists to involve us in it, but it never reaches back to rewrite who we are, and THAT is the key difference.

I like to consider some of the worst examples of comic book writing (One More Day, Countdown to Final Crisis, Superman at Earth's End, etc.) to be lessons in what not to do, rather than sources of inspiration. It quite literally terrifies me that someone could look at, say, Bimbos in Time and think "This sucks! City of Heroes should totally be like this!" I'm not saying I believe you disagree with this, but just because City of Heroes is a comic-book-inspired game, that doesn't mean it should be inspired by crap comics and hack writers. Pick from the good, ignore the bad.

Not quite. Memes are something I hate just as a matter of course. "Kill Skuls" was funny for its time, as was the "Deth Kick" and so on. The last time the Freakshow were funny was circa 2004 when tEh PwNxXoRz first showed up and the Freaklimpics were both frightening and absurd at the same time. The Freakshow were funny then because they were written with a sense of humour, not paraded as open comedy. They're about as funny these days as Little Fockers or Ace Ventura Jr.

It's not that there are memes I dislike making their way into the game. It's that memes are replacing concepts and storytelling.

You're absolutely right. It's impossible to fill a conceptual vacuum without making it more and more specific. My point is that they didn't need to fill that vacuum in the first place. Back in 2005, I never sat down to wonder "Gee, I wonder who Crimson works for." He's a secret agent. He works for "the government," I assume, or something equally as shady. Did he REALLY need to work for Longbow? Really? And field work? You think Director 11 is annoying. Try stopping Agent Crimson from escaping when he stacks Web Grenade on you and turns on Elude. And he's an old man who doesn't do his own field work, or should be one, at least.

It occurs to me that the Well of the Furies is not the first time the writing team have tried to tie all concepts to the same root. City of Villains tried to ally all villains in the game to Arachnos and all heroes to Longbow, to the point where "hero" and "Longbow" as well as "villain" and "Arachnos" are used interchangeably. PvP zones are supposed to be heroes vs. villains, but they're really Longbow vs. Arachnos, with player characters being assigned allegiance based on alignment. Feh!

As far as I'm concerned, a "creative vacuum" is the most conducive to player creativity. I'd much rather see a large, persistent world created through fiction where my character is let loose to pursue plot threads here and there, than to have a linear storyline that explains everything with the same small handful of concepts. If filling in the world makes it too specific, then don't fill it in. Broaden it. But instead of broadening, the City of Heroes world has been getting smaller and smaller and smaller, with each of the many divergent plot threads being tied together at both ends.

It's objectionable, to my viewpoint, at least, because it's not the first time this has happened, and from the looks of it, the future will bring more of the same. I can live with "the Well," that's not the issue. I won't like it, but I can deal with it. What concerns me is that unless we make our voices heard, future writing will only become more specific, more intrusive and more linear. It looks like this is what our writers want to write, and it's a problem. It's a problem I feel needs to be addressed, and addressed publicly.

Dark Astoria already seems to suggest our voices are being heard. That's good. So long as debate exists, there can be no losers.

Then definitely bug it. If the waypoint isn't showing up, that's a bug and should be fixed, and fixed fast. It's damn near impossible to find that cave without some sort of waypoint.

They did a lot of work on waypoints and markers with Freedom to include those stupid spinning coins and the needlessly large waypoint markers, so it's possible some trigger got broken in the process. Definitely file a bug report, and I suggest including the results from both /loc and /whereami, just to be thorough.

Truth be told, I don't know all that much about Dark Astoria or its storyline. I spent I think a day testing it, got depressed at the horrible drop rates (lots of stuff wasn't dropping that they intended to fix) and simply lost my enthusiasm. The whole raid grind idea has burned me out so bad that I'll just see what comes out on Live and go from there. Hopefully it'll involve meaningful progress. That's why I don't get Beta invites and turn down the ones I do get - I suck at Beta testing.

All of this is to say that... If Dark Astoria really is the step in the right direction everyone says it is, then I'll be the first to sing its praises. What I saw after a day of going into it was promising, to say the least.

I can't speak for Tankers, but I LOOOVE Unstoppable on my Brutes. An Invulnerability Brute with all toggles goes up to about 53.5% physical resistance and 23.8% elemental, energy and toxic resistance. That's FAR short of the 90% resistance cap. Unstoppable with just a single slot caps physcal resistance to 90% and and damn near caps everything else to 89.7% That's a HUGE jump in performance, especially when fighting things with powerful Energy or Fire damage. When fighting, say, Nightstar, Unstoppable is the difference between life and death.

Moreover, while physical resistance for Invulnerability is high, foes with very heavy physical damage are still dangerous, and Unstoppable represents a reprieve. For instance, when I last fought Marauder, he put me in a no-win situation. He used Unstoppable, meaning I couldn't really overcome his regeneration, but he could easily overcome mine as I'd run out of inspirations. My only recourse then was to delay him for around a minute, then use Usntoppable of my own. We spent a good two minutes being able to hurt each other, but his Unstoppable dropped first. I was then able to defeat him before mine dropped, which wasn't too hard since he was very low on health by that point. Unstoppable also helped me not run out of endurance towards the end of the fight as I was literally running on an empty inspiration tray.

I can see Elude being mostly pointless just because so much of its buff goes over the cap, but Unstoppable? I've lost count of how many times this power has saved my life. I slot it for recharge so I can use it more often. The difference it makes is MASSIVE.

But that's not what I said. Generating energy by attacking should generate a chain reaction, thus create more power overall. NOT generating energy by attacking should leave you cold and inactive.

Now power takes away your levels when you use it, too, but that doesn't make it a good idea. "Unique" is not in itself a positive unless the what you're suggesting is good as well as unique. Having me held is just needlessly punitive, and I would very much prefer a full endurance crash to that. I'm not against the knockback, mind you. I don't even dislike the basic design of the power. I'm just hugely against the hold. In general, I have very little tolerance towards "punishment" mechanics, but at least a crash a controllable kind of punishment. It doesn't prevent me fromrecovering from it. The way you're designing your hold, you want me to get held no matter what, and that's just not something I will accept.

Once upon a time, Blaster nukes stunned you after you used them, and for five seconds, no less. Pretty much nobody liked this, as it got people killed repeatedly. You know how Nova has a ton of knockback on it and huge damage, to boot? Well, that still got Blasters killed when it stunned them. Hell, Nova has killed me even without the stun. Knockback isn't enough of a solution against an unresistable hold, especially since an unresistable hold suppresses your protection toggles.

No amount of smilies is going to make your insulting insinuations any less insulting. It'll just turn you into Golden Girl. I'm not looking for the "perfect" power. I'm more than happy with Unstoppable, and I even make wide use of Elude. I want a T9 power that doesn't suck to use. And getting self-held sucks. I didn't take my status protection so I could stun myself. If you're so dead-set on being "unique," why not just put Self Destruct in a powerset? You do a lot of damage, but it kills you. No powerset power outright kills you, so that's unique, right?

That "crap" works. I'm much more interested in something that actually plays, as opposed to something that's "unique" and crap to play. I've had my fill with "unique" powersets that pay for their uniqueness by being garbage. I'm definitely not interested in another Dual Pistols, I can tell you that much. "Unique" doesn't sell it to me. Besides, "a hold" is not unique. Getting self-held predates the game's launch date. If you want something that's actually unique, try using one of the newer systems, such as stat percentaged changing based on power use, the combo mechanic or swapping entire powers based on status tags.

Oh, so it's way too much work for you to do stats, but when I don't offer suggestions on how to improve the set, I'm somehow at fault. There is no Internet protocol that I'm aware of that dictates I must suggest improvements in order to comment on an idea. You suggested it, you improve it. Or don't, it's your call. We're all discussing here, but I had the impression that we were discussing your idea, not my brain. If you want to discuss my brain, you're only going to derail your own thread.

I'm giving you my impressions - you're trying too hard to be "unique" and your set suffers for it. I said "a bit more solid" and you interpreted this as "the best set in the game." Me thinks thou dost protest too much. In fact, I come at you with concerns, and you dismiss my feeback as "Oh, you just want the perfect power." Great way to ignore all of it by engaging in character assassination, dude. That's called a straw man, for your reference. If you want to discuss your own idea, I'd stick to discussing your own idea, instead of playing armchair psychiatrist.

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If you're stubborn about removing the hold from your T9, then we have nothing else to discuss. The rest of the set seems decent, but I refuse to accept a T9 power with a hold in it, especially when it can be done in a better way without making it overpowered and without just making it an Overload clone. That's up to you if you want to do it, but please don't tell me what I want in the process.

*edit*
Oh, you're right, it is there. My brain skipped the --> sign and I read 5% resistance. My bad, I apologise for misreading your stats. With 50% resistance and a a 20% hit points buff, this sounds like a pretty solid T9. That's probably better than Unstoppable. I still don't agree it merits a hold, however.

*edit*
So make the buff weaker. Slash the resistance by half (that usually caps anyway), keep the hit points buff and take out the hold. Or, if we want to be technical, the "crash" is only part of the price you pay for the power. The 10 seconds of sitting on your hands is probably an even bigger price to pay than the crash and the hold. Even if you reduce the timer, it's STILL a huge price to pay, and more than enough to make up for a perceived too much strength, ESPECIALLY since it has the potential to slash that "strong" buff into nothingness.

Here's a hypothetical question for you. What crash would a T9 God Mode power which made you untouchable for three minutes entail? Death, maybe? Experience loss? Level loss?

Considering that's precisely the point of T9 powers, I question your judgement. What, if not to survive when your regular powers are not enough, DO you use a T9 God Mode? To be slightly more unkillable against enemies that can't kill you anyway? The entire design objective behind a T9 power like Unstoppable and Overload is to give you a window of nearly guaranteed survival in which to kill whatever it is that's threatening you, with the gamble that if you're not done in that time window, you're in deep trouble.

In fact, most of the times when I've used Unstoppable lately is either to outlast an elite boss whom I can't outdamage, like Marauder using his own Unstoppable, or to survive when I accidentally aggro four spawns on my head because Nemesis Snipers suck in large rooms. If you're designing a God Mode power from the perspective of someone who doesn't take God Mode powers and doesn't use them as designed, then perhaps you shouldn't be designing a T9 God Mode power. If you want to be unique, why not make your T9 a self-resurrect. Sure, it's not literally unique, but it's so rare and present in powersets designed so long ago, it might as well be.

What. "Be precognitive." Are you seriously suggesting that we need psychic powers to use your suggested power? Because most of the time when I realise I'm in trouble, I realise this because I see my hit points plummeting faster than I can recover it and my enemies don't look like they'll be going down any time soon. When I realise I'm in trouble, I'm already in trouble, or will be very soon. I apologise for not possessing the ability of precognition, but does it not strike you as backwards design when you create what is ostensibly an "emergency" power such that it doesn't work in an emergency?

Also, if I know I'm in trouble and I'm going to die, I'm not going to stay and die. I'm going to run away, if at all possible. That is, unless I have a T9 Self Rez power with which to return to the battle and hurt my enemies, but assuming I don't. Assuming I have a T9 God Mode, I'm either going to use that if I can, or if I CAN'T, I'll take off running.

The smart way to manage the crash on a T9 God Mode power is to save it until the latest possible moment, so you can ensure it lasts past the end of battle. You can't do this with a power that has a setup time. Yet not only do you seem to completely ignore how much that setup time kneecaps your power, you feel it has to have by far the worst crash of any T9 on top of it. You shouldn't need me to fix it for you.

Seems like you're the one complaining. Surprise! You suggest a new powerset and it's a lot of work. What did you expect? That people would be beholden to you and make your powerset for you? Maybe if you asked for help instead of browbeating people into it, and acting like we owe you. Your attitude is very rotten, Mafia, and it's making me hugely disinclined to be productive. If you try to work WITH people instead of shouting them down, then maybe you'd get more cooperation.

That IS a new animation. Both BABs and David Nakayama have gone over this elsewhere on the forums many times. Furthermore, you're completely ignoring the issue of activation sequences. Every time your character summons a prop or any effect which lingers on the body, this requires its own activation sequences. That's so you don't jab your sword through your head as you run, so you don't hold your rifle with an open hand and so forth. An activation sequence forces your character model to use an altered version of the basic movement animations. When trying to replicate a power rooting overriding bug, I found out just HOW many things have their own separate activation sequences. Something as simple as Fire Blast attacks do, for instance, because of the flaming hands. You wouldn't think having a power put flames on your hands when you go in combat mode would merit its own activation sequence, but it does.

To this day, no power in this game has ever been made to be customizable in such a way as to change its activation sequence, not that I'm aware of, at least. We can only swap visual effects, but we can never dig into the guts of the animation system. What you're asking for is not just unprecedented, but very likely requires new tech.

No, they are not. Burst has its own unique animation, Slug, Buckshot, M30 Grenade and Beanbag share the same one, Sniper Rifle has its own, Flamethrower has its own, Ignite has its own and Full Auto has its own. That's not to say having the same animations for a lot of Blasts, with just the visual effects being different, is a bad idea. Personally, I find that it's exactly those effects that differentiate each Blast power. Regardless of how you thrust your hands, a fire blast will always be different from an energy blast, which will always be different from an ice blast. Hell, I'd love for all Blast sets to get access to all the same animations, especially the one-handed ones.

Also, this. This is something I've been saying for a very long time, but never found the right words to say it. These sound like the right words. City of Heroes never struck me as a comic book simulator, and I still remember something Jack Emmert himself said, that I do very much agree with: Just because something was in a comic book doesn't mean it's a good idea to put it in the game. Nearly everything linking City of Heroes to comic books from anyone in charge around the game's creation said that this was a game INSPIRED by comic books. Never once was it said that the came was trying to replicate comic books, or that it should have the limitations and shortcomings of a comic book. That's merely where the inspiration came from.

And the rest is true, as well. Rick Dakan and his team didn't just create a "story," they created a world. They created a world replete with super-powered beings, and then took it upon themselves to guess how such a world could actually operate on a somewhat realistic level. If super heroes existed and war broke out, would governments not try to use them as soldiers? If super heroes could be paid for their would, wouldn't they want to? If science existed to create massive shield walls and portals to other dimensions, how would this affect society? These questions and more are explored, both in-game and in the now many years old history segments, and they make up a believable, persistent world.

But today's writers don't seem to care about a believable, persistent world. They don't seem to care about building anything persistent at all, because they refuse to either lay the foundations of their own stories in a consistent way or use existing foundations from older writing. Things just "happen" with no buildup or integration, and the best explanation we get is that... Well, that was the truth all along, we just didn't know it. Instead of building off of the very cool world the game shipped with and exploring its various assets, recent writers have busied themselves tearing it down and then duct-taping ill-fitting anecdotes in any holes that open up.

There's no longer any respect for the source material, and City of Heroes is rich with source material, lemme' tell ya! It seems like writers these days behave like Architect authors - each one is here to tell his own story about his own characters, lore and player concept be damned. It's actually a common complaint I have with Architect arcs I play, even the ones I'm specifically asked to test-run. But here's the thing - player Architect authors make story arcs for fun, and if they're inconsistent with game lore or presumptuous of character concept, then eh. It was just a player having fun. The official Paragon Studios writers do not have this luxury. I presume they're paid at least in part to write, and they're the ones that are responsible for canon. They need to do better than this.

Even Jack Emmert, the guy we all seem to love to hate, the guy who gets most often accused of creating a Mary Sue, still had the presence of mind to give his character an at least somewhat believable backstory, rooted in the long-term lore of the game and the history of the city. The Statesman, Miss Liberty and Back Alley Brawler are the only people who consistently show up throughout history and help shape the city into what it is.

To claim that "Well, comic book storytelling sucks, so it's OK for City of Heroes storytelling to suck." just doesn't work. For one, I know a fair few people who like to see comic books as a legitimate storytelling medium, home to great stories, both moving and intense. For another, just because something shows up in a comic book, it doesn't mean it's a good idea to put it in the game.

It's the things they have your character do, and especially say. Twinshot isn't really "bad" about it, to be honest. It's a tutorial mission, so it makes sense my character wouldn't know these things. If he or she did, I wouldn't be running the mission. Or I might, just because I like the story. Twinshot's constant "kiddo" gets a bit grating if you're playing an old man, but it's easy enough to see it as just her version of "bub." About the only thing I can latch onto is the Wolf Man saying he can smell my fear, but his mouth is so full of feet who knows what he meant. Overall, Twinshot's arc is harmless, and actually kind of fun.

It's Dr. Graves arc that takes me out of my skin with the things my character is forced to say. "I have a mental time bomb!" may well be the most degrading thing any character of mine has had to say, and what follows it is insulting to ME personally. Whoever wrote the arc saw my villain (and I say "my villain" because that's who's taking part in it) as a stupid, loud, obnoxious, low-brow knucklehead whose one call to fame is undignified brute strength. Not only does it bother me that I'm expected to want to play this... Thing that the arc expects to be its protagonist, it's moreover incredibly limiting, since that's the only type of villain who makes sense to be in this story.

The problem with both stories is they are chock-full of dialogue "trees" that are not only unnecessary, but aren't trees at all. A proper dialogue tree implies branching, at the very least on a superficial level, which in turn implies having multiple choices of what to say per dialogue page. None of the dialogues I recall from either arc ever give a choice, or if any do, they're very rare. Both of these stories are written like movies, in the sense that our characters' role is already cast, our script already written and our character motivation already established. It doesn't matter what character you or I made, because that's not the character that runs these arcs. What runs these arcs is the very specific, very developed character the writers put in, that just happens to look like what we made.

And this simply isn't necessary. The cast in both Twinshot and Graves' arcs are well quirky and memorable enough, which is what you do when you're creating a role for a silent protagonist, which is what our characters should have been. You add character in the supporting cast to make up for the lead not being able to show much, and the lead can't show much because the game doesn't know what kind of character the lead is supposed to show. Because WE get to decide that. Yes, it's a limitation, but part of the job description of a game developer is to work around limitations. And this particular one is not insurmountable.

Ha! Sweet! I am so saving this! Thank you for giving Xanta the arms she always should have, and thank you for exaggerating the sword. I always felt even the Razor sword was a little small for her. This is amazing!

*edit*
Say, do you mind if I spread this sketch around? Post it on a couple of other places, maybe? How should I credit you?