SilverAgeFan

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In addition someone mentioned I15 and being able to "pick" powers. As proposed you would be able to "ADD" more powers after the standard powers. We will never be able to pick the powers from the ground up which totally blows.

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Especially when trying to make low level arcs with custom minions or lt.'s. Very frustrating how overpowered they currently are now.

Wish the damage and status effects could at least scale way down when fighting custom critters below level 15.

Sets I'd love to see but likely won't ever happen without an entirely new game engine:

Growth and shrinking as a melee defensive set.

Cloning or multiplication as a melee offensive or mastermind set.

Amorphic powers like stretching or being made of sand, insects or water and then sending a wave of yourself at your enemies. With a few costume options and creative aura use and dom or controller powers you can sort of get there on this one with a little "let's pretend..." style RP going on... but it's not quite the same as really being an amorphic character of substance.

EDIT to add, with much regret:

Thrown Weapons for corruptors and blasters (and defenders) with customizable items from playing cards to dice to hand fans to tomahawks to shuriken to cosmic cubes to bowling pins to bowler hats to skulls. Using a combo system similar to dual blades.

Signature Weapons for doms and blasters. The support version of Thrown Weapons above. Using a combo system to add a variety of damage types upon successful combo hits. The animations, melee ones in particular, would give the archetypes an aesthetic option for a whirling dervish type character.

Neither of those sets could ever be possible without full power customization because of how projectile appearances are currently coded.

<qr> What's been described in this thread for weapons that get unsheathed sounds pretty awesome but at the same time potentially too involved to ever happen.

I know I'd be willing to accept decent compromise. If we ever get back rigging for rigid costume details, I think a variety of permanently sheathed weapons for the back slot -- see some of the Tsoo models for examples -- would do me just fine.

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You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. BAB has outright said that the reason that redraw exists is because the power set that summons the weapon has the character adopt the stance as part of the animation. Part of the stance is that the weapon trigger causes it to be out. Whenever you use an attack (or any click power) that is not exclusively within that set, it resets to the default stance and therefore removes the weapon.

Shields operate differently because they are not part of the power's animation or aftereffect (re: stance). The shield simply exists as a power activated animation, similar to capes in some degree. You must also realize that, if the parity you are asking for between weapons and shields were real, then the weapon would never leave the hand. If a broadsword user activated the pistol temp power, the gun would appear inside/merged with the sword.

As for brawl and the origin power, afaik, they are specially coded to be attacks within the power set (kind of...). I believe that, when you choose a power set that has a special brawl, your brawl immediately accesses a different animation. It's the same for the origin powers.

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Not misunderstanding at all actually. Simply didn't have enough background to understand your points in the first place. But thanks for taking the time and exercising the patience to elaborate. I appreciate it.

And I didn't realize how brawl works (or might work) until you explained it here.

Since what I'm asking for is such a small mostly cosmetic result, I guess the only place I should hold out hopes for it ever happening is if the devs go that long mile to implement power customization. From what I understand of that, it would require a ton of work under the hood in terms of how powers are coded. Only during such a big undertaking where similar parts of code are already getting looked at and reworked would it make sense then to add this to the list of things to do.

Anyways, thanks again for making the issues at hand a little clearer.

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(that don't cause weapon redraw--so we'd need to can Cobra Strike!)

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You do realize that weapon redraw is an issue of powersets, not the limb used, right? Sets will cause weapon redraw when a power that doesn't explicitly use the same weapon is activated. To prevent redraw, the power would have to pull out either a bow or a gun (causing redraw for the other as well as anyone who doesn't use either) if a weapon isn't currently in hand.

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Admittedly, I don't fully understand how weapon redraw works under the hood. But I'd hope some of the tech they applied to shields could be ported into such a set. I'm thinking particularly about how brawl works with shields on or off. And yeah, I guess if you had pistols, a bow or an assault rifle out, cobra strike could look okay. But no, I don't get the tech stuff. But I do find it frustrating if you use any attacks outside of a weapons set other than brawl or your inherent origin attack (Magic Charm, etc.) that you lose that cool look of having your weapons out.

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There needs to be a natural control set, maybe but not necessarily whips. Also, a dominator secondary could easily be cobbled together from martial arts and shuriken attacks (perhaps requiring 1 or 2 new powers).

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Ah... "line control" with whips or lassos or chains (which always makes some folks giggle like a health class anatomy lesson) are a set that I've always thought would be pretty cool, fears of Betty Page and Dr. Jones clones be damned.

And the power proliferation MA secondary should also be cobbled together IMO for blasters. A couple blaster secondaries are already blaptastic. Why not have a variety of kicks (that don't cause weapon redraw--so we'd need to can Cobra Strike!) mixed with a knife or shuriken throw or three? Could work quite well and would open the field for a number of mixed range and melee type character concepts IMO.

IF we get power customization, would love a suite of new ranged sets: Thrown Weapons and Signature Weapons (the support secondary set for Thrown Weapons) where you can pick from hatchets to shuriken to playing cards to bowling pins to top hats to hand fans to cosmic cubes and celestial spheres. I see these sets as being the ranged version of dual blades, i.e. they'd utilize the combo mechanic.

Dual Pistols most definitely.

Energy Aura and Electric sets proliferated to tanks and scrappers.

Some form of toxic or radioactive melee.

And all the work it would take to get the rigging points placed on our skeletons to permit scalable rigid back pieces. Followed by a wide ranging suite of rigid back items, including some inventable animated parts such as steam vents, jets, heat sinks, chemical tanks with bubbles, high tech military packs with blinking lights, oozing monster "vents" or blowholes, etc.

Those are the things that feel within reach I'm wanting most these days. (And yeah, I realize my first powerset want presumes power customization being implemented.)

A couple big wants that are missing here and I believe in all the forthcoming second generation superhero MMO's:

* Grappling -- as in being able to tackle, grab, lift, toss and even weaponize another enemy (as in grab one minion ranked hellion and swing him 'round to bash away all the other closing hellions!)

* Contiguous environments -- not sure entirely if I want this sort of rolling loading, but I think I do at the moment. I see pluses and minuses to its inclusion.

* Physics based (for lack of a better term) "puzzles" -- I want things like crashing jets, bridges and dams threatening collapse, etc. Destructible physically interacting parts to these structures and large vehicles along with powers having distinct effects upon different materials (take how ice powers can put out Steel Canyon fires and extrapolate that much much further) And conversely for villains would like to set out to destroy and sabotage things.

* A "plotting" mechanism or game mechanic for Villain play -- so villainy can truly be as proactive as it was described pre CoV release. The dev philosophy touted pre-release always felt on the money. But CoV failed to deliver in this department and remains my largest disappointment with that side of the CoX divide. (Though some creative MA authors have written some arcs that ameliorate this shortcoming a bit.)

As far as "big" ideas that leap to mind. I've little inkling as to what some of those things, especially villain play, would look like as a final product. But they are all things I desire in my ideal superhero MMO.

As far as multiple skins described above, I couldn't help but think of how The Sims 2 Pets handled fur and animal coloring as an interface. Not sure how weighty that sort of data would be when it comes to an MMO. But those tools are definitely an interface and character design experience worth checking out for reference.

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A Beach Event does sound like a nice counterpoint to the Winter Event, and there's even a comics tradition of gratuitous swimsuit issues to back it up. I just hope it's not Redcaps.

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It should be Devouring Earth.

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Only if there are a couple custom DE models... something more along the lines of a sunflower

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This is so freaking awesome.

I'm hoping for...

Rikti invasion
Rularu invasion (where I came in the game, during the invasion! woot!)
ICE PONDS! Winter Lords!
5th vs Council!
HALLOWEENIES!
ZOMMMBIES!

I'd most like to ice skate. Seriously. Under a Rikti warship. With zombies coming out of the ice. Being shot at by 5th.

hehehehehehe.

I love this game.

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Zee, you forgot the important time rift that somehow reopens doorways to the Paragon Dance Party! :P

Not that many folks would visit this time around either! XD

Edit: And not that it was ever my style, but it would be epic hilarious if they could rollback the combat rules to pre-purple patch so entire city zones could be herded into dumpsters by firetanks and we can see fire/devices herding teams again... :P

(Never participated in those unofficial "in game events" as I was between levels 3-10 on my first for heroes. But boy do I remember hearing about 'em :P)

Ugg. Thanks wrong forum. :/

Considering that the looming competition is touting line-swinging and burrowing as two other major travel powers, I'm all for a revamp to travel powers here in this franchise. These are interesting suggestions for places to improve upon existing travel powers. *thumbs up*

(Of course I'd love it if they would say "we'll see your bet of +2 travel powers and raise the ante." Have long wanted burrowing or line travel.)

so I'm new to binds. never made one before. I've always leaned on the fact that I'm a fairly fast and accurate typist. So doing things like the /e flypose1-4 thing on the fly come pretty easily.

But now we've got some groovy costume emotes which are rather cumbersome to type out.

I recall there being binds to cycle through costumes out there in the aether. Can someone help me write such a bind to change through all five costumes using the spin costume emote and bind it to the number pad "Enter" key?

And like I said, I'm new at this, so I'll need a hand with exactly do I need to type into the prompt to make it work?

And lastly are there any good guides or web tools for writing binds out there?

Thanks in advance to the binding expert that can jump in with suggestions here

May need to run this one Madcat_88. Have you also posted it to Scholarman who is doing a low level arc review?

I'm quite interested in "alternative origin arcs" for lowbie villains. I never quite got into the canon material as compelling generic origin material--I think CoH, despite being dated, far exceeded CoV in terms of this.

I've published (and asked for review of) my first stab at one of these arcs in this thread as well: "Oh, The Bad Things You've Done!" (#54308) It has some problems. But I'm waiting a few more reviews for digging into my forthcoming alternative origins arc tentatively titled "I Am Monster."

A source of inspiration, despite a bunch of typos and no use of fancy stuff like colored text is @Alika-Awesome's "The Art of Villainy" (#43405). It's the most silver aged villain arc I've seen to date and scales just fine into the sub level 10 range.

So yeah, anyways, I'll be looking up, playing and rating yours later tonight I think. What was that number? 68054?

I'll throw one of mine at you. It's a redside arc intended as a prequel to when you ended up in the Zig. It intentionally caps out at 15. And due to the abundance of a relevant custom critter group and our inability to defang their status effects, I'd suggest playing not before level 8--maybe even later.

Title: Oh, The Bad Things You've Done!
Arc#: 54308
Author: @SilverAgeFan
Length: Medium-Long, 3 missions, no defeat-alls

And if you enjoy that one, I've got a superspy oriented arc blueside as a chaser. This one is intended for levels 30+. Had some kinks with the first and second iteration of the custom villain group in it, but I think those are all worked out now.

Title: When T.R.O.U.B.L.E. Blows In...
Arc#: 26095
Author: @SilverAgeFan
Length: Long, 4 missions, (last mission is not a defeat all-but can easily turn into that)

Hope you enjoy!

Congrats on the name change!

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My ice dominator's domination mode costume

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Beautiful use of the bug. I really wish the wouldn't fix it. At least you've locked in your gorgeous winter wear for while you can!

Alright, throw my two arcs onto this pyre if you get a chance:

When Trouble Blows In
arc 26095
4 mission arc designed for paramilitary and superspy types, but hopefully accessible to a variety of hero back stories.

Oh, The Bad Things You've Done!
arc 54308
3 mission arc designed for lowbie villains, levels 8-15 (caps at 15) as a generic "prequel" to you starting in the Zig and tracking you through a range of bad behaviours in Paragon at the start of your career.

Both have some tongue in cheek humor and are intended for contextual run and gun roleplay with enough breathing room for your own characters to emerge, or in the case of the latter, to find some footing for new characters.

Enjoying the reviews I've read thus far in the thread.

Fur collar on the femme coat... very nice!

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And right there is why it's a good idea to weight votes based on how much of the arc one sees. And as a subnote why it might be prohibitively difficult for folks to make it to the hall of fame.

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No. No, it's still not.

If your mission is absolutely terrible, why should I waste my time finding out if you suddenly learned how to spell 3 missions in?

A good writer grabs you from minute one, and in the loose shared content we're talking about, the onus should really be on the creator, not the audience.

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Here's a thought: is there something like a "guest book" included with the MA. This way if someone is getting one starred, they potentially can get some feedback:

* "i.e., thought it was a cool premise but mission 1 with those 8 AVs was too much to solo."

* "would've given you 3 stars, but down graded because your spelling stinks!"

etc.

Consider how much people in these forums help each other (despite pouncing on others a bit to hard now and then) in the fan art and fiction sections of this board. Would be nice if some of that feedback could make its way in to the MA rating system. Even if it's a 100 character comment max when you rate an arc.

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Agreed to a certain extent; it depends on the purpose of the too. Personally, I think Hemmingway is dry and boring.

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...was only referring to this...

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In particular, going to nuke a character that just 'wasn't working', and only having a dozen merits -- not enough to even try to gamble for a recipe -- makes me sad.

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In the Premeritous Epoch, I had this problem when nuking characters who had obtained early anniversary badges...

Not saying your complaint is illegitimate. Just pointing out that "there's always something" for folks like us (fellow RPer and concept builder extraordinaire here ) who tend to fall in love with our characters, even when they don't work so well...

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I think one main area you would want to avoid is too much text. If your descriptions and story is too lengthy that may cause a player to exit immediately. I know I will be trying to streamline my story...it will be difficult to find that balance of just enough story and fun missions...

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This is a difficult balance. There needs to be enough story to draw the reader in, but not so much as to push them back out again.

Now, for test mode missions I'll run with my wife, daughter, and/or other friends and family, I'll probably keep the text much shorter. We'll gather in the SG base for a better mission briefing first, then go run the missions. RP potential is great.

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Brevity and economy are virtues of good writing. I'm not saying that all mission texts should (or even could) aspire to be Hemingway six word stories. But be like Harvey Pekar and foster a knack for knowing when there are too many words on the page.

(Note that I direct this to myself as much as I do towards the poster above or anyone else reading...)

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I had to laugh at http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/gam..._overview.html

'The First MMORPG to Offer User Created Content!'

Yeah. Way to do your homework.

[/ QUOTE ]Not to be snarky, nor to challenge your assertion, but because I am ignorant of MMORPGs in general, who else has done so? CoH is my first and only.

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I know Star Wars Galaxies offered RP and event construction tools before they rejiggered the entire combat/skills/leveling systems twice. These tools supposedly allowed you to set up triggers to spawn NPC's with custom dialogue, things to find within the environment (including buried chests containing clues on far flung planets) and even drop temporary scenery (such as downed spacecraft) into the shared gameworld (any place you could place player created architecture). For better or worse, I was already on the way out the door when these were released, but they were supposedly quite versatile in the original rules system. The original game was already quite conducive to free-form RP and if you had the time to connect regularly with certain communities, these tools promised to really amp up the player generated content.

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Edit: Wonder if you will be able to purchase more story arcs with tickets? Eventually?

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Too easy, I think. Maybe as an reward.

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IIRC, back when the architect was going to be part of i13, there was mention that if an arc of yours graduated to the "hall of fame" or some sort of distinction, it would no longer count as one of your published arcs, freeing up a slot for you to publish another.

A dynamic along these lines would allow for quality content providers--those of us who end up really finding a knack and fire for creating fun, interesting and varied arcs--to keep producing.

In some ways, as CoX continues to age, I see it evolving into a story space as much as a game, where we the players provide the majority of new content in it's silver years. (Granted I see that being a few years off. Think of Ultima Online at 10 and later...)