Tenzhi

I'm certainly excited about this new issue, but the name... the name makes me think of the Madonna song Like a Prayer...

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I don't mind that they are charging for the pack since it is just (rather niche) fluff that won't offer any gameplay benefits (well, outside of roleplaying weddingaholics, I guess).

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Tuxedo w/tails is for more than just wedding-a-holics. I've been wanting such a costume piece for quite some time now and despite not having much interest in wedding stuff, I gotta get this pack for the tuxedo with tails.

I got some time in today, and just like the last double XP weekend I was in I can't help feeling that double XP feels like a proper advancement speed compared to the doldrums of normal advancement.

I simultaneously agree with the points about general Defender flaws and disagree with the notion that all of the suggested tweaks here for FF are bad.

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I've put together another video starring everyone's favorite FF heroine, WhisperWitch. This video uses no Mind or temp powers or inspirations. It demonstrates how to use chaos control and hibernation to survive a team wipe and was shot by running a 7 man unyielding mish solo.

Staying Alive With Force Fields Tutorial

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Why the edit at around 3:50?

That video is crazy. I would've died at least 3 times. Long before that if I was dealing with Rikti, who would have put me to sleep and killed me several times over.

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The original title to the video, "Stayin Alive", was confusing some folks. They were asking "Why not just stay inside PFF?", which is a reasonable question if your only goal is to survive.

Changing the title made it clear I was focusing on chaos control and hibernation.

Edit:
I also took off the word "tutorial" because, as PK pointed out, it's hardly a step by step tutorial. There's no such thing as a step by step method for chaos.

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No, I mean, why is the video edited at about 3:50 in? It cuts from one scene to another with a very quick fade. If you pause it right there you see the two scenes overlapping.

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I've put together another video starring everyone's favorite FF heroine, WhisperWitch. This video uses no Mind or temp powers or inspirations. It demonstrates how to use chaos control and hibernation to survive a team wipe and was shot by running a 7 man unyielding mish solo.

Staying Alive With Force Fields Tutorial

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Why the edit at around 3:50?

That video is crazy. I would've died at least 3 times. Long before that if I was dealing with Rikti, who would have put me to sleep and killed me several times over.

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Repulsion bomb hasn't worked that way for 2 years

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Ah, good. As long as the misinformation gets cleared up on one end or the other.

EDIT: Incidentally, did they ever get around to changing the text or does it still say you have to target an ally with it in the description?

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Tenzhi
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I presume you got Repulsion Field and Repulsion Bomb mixed up here?

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Not that I'm aware of.

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So, here's what you said about Repulsion Bomb, the power that you currently have to target a friendly to use:

"I do not wish to see this power changed to work off an teammate. I find this power to be extremely useful solo."

And that's what you fully intended to say?

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Repulsion Field :<ul type="square">[*]I do not want to see this power changed to a drop. Such a change would _reduce_ it's effectiveness. A PBAoE toggle can simulate a drop simply by standing in one place. A drop cannot simulate a PBAoE toggle.[*]I do not have any objection to buffing the power's current capabilities, such a pulse increase or Endurance reduction if the Devs feel such changes are not overpowered. I do not consider such buffs to be a need.[*]I do not consider adding +Pie to this power to be a need.[/list]
Repulsion Bomb:<ul type="square">[*]I do not wish to see this power changed to Knockdown as this _reduces_ the capabilities of the power. All Knockback powers can be made to cause Knockdown with the use of positioning. The reverse is not true.[*] I do not wish to see the power changed to a cone, as this would _reduce_ the capabilities of the powers. A cone effect is already possible with the use of positioning. But a cone power cannot provide 360 Knockback with positioning.[*]I do not wish to see this power changed to work off an teammate. I find this power to be extremely useful solo.[*]I have no objection to buffs to existing capabilities such as damage, Endurance cost, casting and recharge time if the Devs feel such buffs are not overpowered. I do not consider such buffs to be a need.[*] I do not consider +Pie to be a need.[/list]

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I presume you got Repulsion Field and Repulsion Bomb mixed up here?

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You still will have to keep casting Deflection and Insulation every 4 mins, the buff from Dispersion will still only work while teammates are within the radius and dispersion will still always have to be on.

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I think what you just said explains it right there. You're talking about taking AWAY about 5% in Defense effectiveness from the "smaller" bubbles from all the teammates. The teammates now only get the bonus when they ARE inside the "big bubble". To respond to Dromio's post up there, that will encourage bubblers to "stay in the middle" of the team rather than "jump all over" using positioning to make their knockback more effective and useful. That's how I see it. And you're right, it's entirely opinion, not fact. I can see where a bubbler might feel more "safe" jumping around and aggroing everything with his other powers with the added person Defense (I certainly would), however, I think MOST people will just see the fact that they "have" to sit in the middle of the team so that most of the team gets the same bonus that they used to before the proposed change. Again, it's all opinion, and in my opinion, that's how most people will see it.

Can't you see where they might act that way?

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Forgive me if it's already been pointed out, I've been away a couple of days and the thread grew exponentially: If they aren't already acting that way because of the Status protection, 5% of defense bonus isn't going to change that.

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so it's not like you will be doing the same content 12 times like you can in CoX

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Pre-level-20 I might have to change that number from 12 to upwards of 48...

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And an impossibility that would be a cool addition to Detention Field: Cold, Fire, Energy, and Neg. Energy attacks directed at it would become small radius AoEs of the same damage type - a splash effect.

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Impossibility is right, no cottages.

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Impossibility due to complexity not cottage. I didn't suggest changing the basic function of the power.

I am anti- any size decrease on Force Bubble. The ginormous bubble is one of the few powers in the game that feels aesthetically "super."

I did suggest decreasing the Repel effect in Force Bubble to the size of Dispersion and adding in a slow effect that is the current full size of the bubble in another thread, though.

And an impossibility that would be a cool addition to Detention Field: Cold, Fire, Energy, and Neg. Energy attacks directed at it would become small radius AoEs of the same damage type - a splash effect.

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So during this last week of the year, let me take a break from my (honestly, increasingly bitter) arguments about some of the things I hate in this game, especially since issue 11, to thank the City of Heroes/City of Villains development team for a long list of things that they did right that are so, so much more creative and innovative, so much more ground breaking, than I ever gave them credit for.

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Good post. I've often complained about a variety of things in this game as well. I just always figured that the fact that I've stuck around this game for so long whereas other MMOs have only gotten a few months at most from me made it apparent that I think they've done a bang-up job on this game overall.

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The animation is horrible, I've seen clips of it.

Dragonlance = roxxorz.

Dragonlance movie = suxxorz.

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I could live with the cheap animation, but they're making the awful mistake of mixing it with bad CG animations, the combined effect of which overshadows the voice talent that I'm guessing they blew their animation budget on.

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I slotted a Triumphant Insult: Chance to Disorient (10%) on my level 17 DB/INV Tanker's Taunt and have yet to see the disorient go off (graphically or in the combat log). Just to be sure, I waded in to a group of trivial mobs and threw taunt on autofire. Five minutes later neither the combat log nor the mobs showed anything like a disorient going off.

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I have the same proc IO slotted into my Rise to the Challenge, and I echo this; I haven't seen it work once at all, and I've been playing with it slotted for days.

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I have it slotted in my WS' Dwarf Form's actual taunt, and I spent a minute taunting some mobs in KR and didn't Disorient any of them. When I have more time I will test it more extensively, but it really looks to me like something isn't working right with it.

I originally posted this awhile back over at the original Knights of Paragon's forums.

Since then, ol' Eustace has gotten remade as a Blaster and now back to a Defender again:

It would've been about 1830 or so, near Hell's Canyon in what would decades later come to be Idaho. That's where I lived with my wife, and after a short while our daughter. Those were different times; happier some would say, though I know now that such happiness is a fleeting illusion.

I wasn't a warrior then. Sure, I could hunt and fish, but that was simple survival. I was the provider for my family and I did what I had to. But hunger and cold, while insidious enemies in their own right, don't require the well-honed skills of a warrior to combat. We simply lived and loved. It was almost idyllic and therefore, as I should've known were I less naive, couldn't last for long.

They came in the night. Strange men in archaic metal armor that I later came to know were the acoutrements of Spanish conquistadors. They kept asking about the Seven Devils, but I didn't know what they were talking about. As I watched they tortured my wife and daughter to death; their screams still occasionally haunt my dreams though I have sadly forgotten their faces. Their leader, a man in golden armor with a lion emblazoned on the breastplate, finally decided I was useless to them and thrust his poniard right through where my heart should have been. They left me for dead and moved on.

---

I'm not sure how long it was afore ol' Three Arrows found me. Ol' Three Arrows? He was a half-injun mountain man who lived in the mountains a few miles to the east. He occasionally stopped by to trade. Said he got his name when he killed a grizzly bear with three arrows in one shot.

When I woke up he was packing some strange-smelling leaves into the hole in my chest. Told me I'd be dead right now if I weren't backwards. I'm what the indians called a Reflection Man. These days doctors refer to it as "Dextrocardia with Situs Inversus" but whatever you call it, it just means my insides are reversed.

A month later I was feeling better, and was raring to take off after the man in the golden armor. But ol' Three Arrows told me I couldn't go until I paid him back for saving my life. When I tried to leave anyway, he put me flat on my back before I knew it. I was forced to stay there and work for him. I was young and angry, and eventually grew to hate the man who I then saw as my captor.

It wasn't until many years later that I realized ol' Three Arrows was doing me a favour. Working for him I learned to track and shoot better than before; the hard labor and mountain air made me tougher than I had ever been. In short, ol' Three Arrows was making a warrior out of me. I wish I had realized it back then, as I would've thanked him rather than cursed his name when he finally released me from my debt a year later.

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The trail had long since grown cold, of course. But I had learned some patience as a skilled hunter. I headed to California, assuming that my Spanish enemies had come from that direction. But none could tell me of this man in golden armor. It was then that I took up bounty hunting. It was a profession in which I could hone my skills even further. And the criminal world is full of information to be beaten free from the dregs of society.

Plying my trade and heading east towards Mexico, I did a lot of beating. It wasn't til I got to Mexico that I heard rumours of a figure referred to as the Golden Lion. He was said to be a Spanish general who had stuck around after the main forces of Spain had withdrawn from the states. He was a shadow figure given responsibility for any number of deeds across America and Mexico.

As exciting as this information seemed at first, I soon found that tracking a myth is a nearly impossible task. It would be decades before I got a solid lead on this Golden Lion, and ironically it would be long after I had given up hope of finding him.

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Yup. That's right. Forty years I spent searching for the Golden Lion. Over that time I built up quite a reputation as a bounty hunter, too. I never did cotton to guns, even after Sam Colt made the revolver the most popular weapon in America. I stuck to my bow - a hunter's weapon. And besides, you couldn't very well attach a net or rope to a bullet.

Over time I began to enjoy the work more while the idea of finding the Golden Lion and getting my revenge fell more and more to the wayside. Until one day I found I was getting old. My hair was silvered, my reflexes weren't what they used to be, and the world I was used to was movin' on. I retired. I gave up. I settled down and bought a saloon. I figured there wasn't much time or meaning left for me in this life.

Then, one day, a man in battered archaic metal armor of Spanish design walked into my bar. This stirred some uncomfortable memories in me. When he walked up to me I was certain I was gonna have to kill him, but when he spoke I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice: here was a good and noble man. He introduced himself as a knigt errant and said he had heard much of me. He said he knew where I could find the Golden Lion and that he needed my help to take him down.

His name was Alonso Quijano III, head of a knightly order known as La Mancha.

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Though you might be more familiar with his romanticized title, Don Quijote de la Mancha.

We sat down and had us a little palaver, he and I. He told me about a Spanish conquistador named Ponce de Leon. The Leon family were occultists who had collected many artifacts over several generations, and amassed much wealth and power in Spain. The Sacred Order of La Mancha had been watching the Leon family for quite some time, occasionally thwarting some of their more sinister plans. In retaliation, the Leon family hired a writer to satirize the head of the order, making him out to be a senile buffoon with an outmoded sense of chivalry. After that the order started to dwindle.

The last son of the Leon family, Ponce de Leon, had come to America in the early 16th century searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth. A few years later he officially died. Not long after that, a mysterious shadow figure known only as The Golden Lion popped up. Alonso told me that he had determined the Golden Lion to be Ponce de Leon.

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Let me tell ya, that got my attention. I told Alonso he was crazy. If Ponce de Leon were the Golden Lion he'd be over 300 years old.

Of course, you've probably already put two and two together. I was old, not as sharp as I used to be, more than a bit apathetic, and admittedly slightly drunk.

Alonso patiently explained that he had tracked the Golden Lion to his lair - a golden fortress built on the legendary Fountain of Youth. He believed that the Golden Lion had used the fountain to gain immortality, and was planning to summon something fell and evil using various artifacts he had acquired. It appeared that de Leon was going to sacrafice seven sealed devils he had located (at this, my heart skipped a beat) to summon some dark god from ages past.

Maybe it was the whiskey in me, but I decided I'd get my gear and follow this crazy knight into the wilds of Florida to find this supposed fortress and take down the Golden Lion once and for all.

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Life on the trail is dull. There's no need for me to go into how many days it took us to get where we was going, or how often we passed our water on the way, so I'll just cut to the chase.

We finally made it to the so-called "Golden Fortress" - it was really nothin' more than a ramshackle wooden fort somewhere in what is now the Everglades. The place was quiet, so we just strolled on in through the front gate. Inside was a fountain that really was made of gold, and within it the foulest water I've ever seen. A few yards away was the Golden Lion, chanting something over a roaring fire, his armour a bit more battered since last we met those many years ago.

We had the drop on him. Quietly I drew my bow, taking aim at the back of my enemy's head...

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...but I didn't account for the chivalrous notions of the nutty knight I was travelling with. Before I could get the shot off, he announced our presence in a bold and quite annoying manner. It's probably just as well. I'd never been one to shoot a man in the back afore, but I was old, bitter, and tired of it all.

Ponce was a younger man than either me or the knight, and wicked fast with his rapier and poniard. If not for the valiant efforts of Don Alfonso, who protected me from many a sword wound with his own melee skills, I'd've been skewered for sure.

The fight went on for what seemed like hours but was more likely minutes. I was nicked up, the knight was bleeding unhealthily, and to make matters worse the roaring fire had gotten scattered in the fray setting the whole place afire. The Golden Lion was looking rather like a Crimson Porcupine what with the blood and arrows sticking out of him.

We clashed again and the Knight went down at the base of the fountain which was now starting to melt while the foul waters within boiled filling the area with a foetid steam.

I remember shouting, "Why won't you die?!"

The smug [censored] laughed at me. He said something arrogant like: "Fools! The water of the fountain has made me immortal."

O' course, you probably already figured out the immortality bit earlier when Don Alfonso mentioned the fountain and Ponce in the bar. You must think I was pretty thick not to've figured it out myself by then.

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Truth be told, I had figured it out. I was just stalling a moment while the Knight drug himself behind ol' Pompous Ponce.

I let out a roar and drew a special weighted arrow I'd come up with, firing it into Ponce's chest and forcing him to stumble backward, stunned. I fired a second time, and he staggered back again bumping into the knight and almost tripping into the fountain which was now a mass of molten gold and seething water. I hafta admit that I gain some pleasure from the sick look of realization that crossed his face at that moment, as I drew the third weighted arrow and loosed it upon him as he stood unbalanced. The arrow hit his chest so hard that the iron weight shattered on his armour. The piteous high-pitched screams as he sank into the boiling water and hot liquid gold were short-lived.

Choking on the foetid steam I ran over to the knight. He was in bad condition and I knew he wasn't gonna make it, but I started to drag him out of the "Golden Fortress" which was bound to collapse on our heads at any moment. As I knelt to pick him up, he grabbed my arm. In a gasping voice he said to me, "Tell me, Sancho, did we win?"

"Aye, Sir Knight," I said glancing worriedly at the fountain, "we won."

And with that he sighed his spirit to its reward. I shed a tear for him over a bottle of whiskey later, but right then I had to concentrate on getting the hell outta Dodge. By then the place was coming down around my ears. There must've been some sort of angel watching over me, but I made it out somehow. As I leapt through the gates of the fortress to freedom, it collapsed in on itself and I watched exhausted as the flaming wreckage sank into the marsh.

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I made my way back to civilization, a peaceful sense of closure having settled over my life. I expected to maybe live a few more years and then pass on like everyone else.

But I found I had a renewed sense of vigor. The passage of a few years left me feeling restless and in better physical shape than I'd been for awhile. So I took to bounty hunting again, fully expecting that my age would catch up with me on the trail and I'd die a violent death, but at least I'd be doing something I enjoyed.

When I reached my 90s and that renewed sense of vigor still hadn't gone away I began to sense that something wasn't right. Goin' over things in my head, I came to the conclusion that breathing in the vapours of the Fountain of Youth had, for better or worse, given me extreme longevity. And so, here I am in Paragon City, still plying my trade. Times have changed a bit, but I've adapted. Still can't part with my bow, though some say it's an archaic weapon. I have made extensive modifications over the years, however.

And I recently invested in a device called a Quantum Ripper that allows me to bend the laws of three-dimensional space - it sure beats walkin'.

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Huh, I forgot evil Goldust still exists too.

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I call him "Mutadust" because his mannerisms and such sometimes remind me of Muta.

I missed the last half hour of TNA - what was the big thing between Hall and Nash? I figured it was going to be something silly and stupid.

Humbug I say!

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I can't quantify this at all, but things seem laggier than they were under I7. This may be because I was playing a Trick Arrow defender (with Glue Arrow) in a trench coat on a team of 8 (several of which were using the veteran reward goodies, including wings) running police band missions and a safeguard mission. But, everything seemed significantly laggier, to the point that my computer would pause for several seconds at a time and my frame rate felt like it was in the single digits.
Of course, like I said, I can't quantify this yet. But I will be keeping an eye on it.

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Yeah, I was experiencing some intermittent choppiness on a sewer team today. I dunno if it was the two sets of wings on the team, or if someone's power usage was at the root of it. Were I to take a guess, with what was going on I'd peg either the Force Field or the Earth Control powers that were being used as a likely culprit.

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I would have picked PvE Combat if that was an option, which it should have been IMO.

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It would've been my second choice after customization/costumes - which itself would've been second to "it's a Superhero Game" had that been on the list.

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I found the jet to be awesome. As a villain, it let me jump high enough to clear the invisible wall around Breakout, and actually fight in the arachnos/guard/longbow battle (and get my butt kicked).

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That's interesting. The Christmas Event Jingle Jet wouldn't even let you *fly* over the wall there.

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I remember when it was pushed back a year when the devs sadly found out that their entire power and AT system was fundamentally flawed

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That's not how I remember it. I remember them deciding that players are too stupid to have freedom of choice, and thus scrapping the whole system that offered that in spades. That was when balance first began to trump fun.

I have a level 40 Corruptor that uses 3-slotted hover for normal movement at all times. So, yeah, I find moving at that speed to be useful. Especially before travel powers and SOs are available.

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I noticed the 2 new armors, Sinister and Justice are bugged on the chest and leg option. You can chose 2 colors but only the primary color shows up. It is working fine for the boots, gloves, and shouldes though.

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If you can select patterns for it, look and see if there's a pattern at the end of the list that matches the costume name and it should fix the problem.

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With all the perez nostalgia, I'm surprised no one has mentioned what might have been my first real w-t-f moment in the game, when I saw what I eventually learned was a rad defender herding the entire zone to the Atlas gate, and broadcasting "free XP at the Atlas gate!"

And of course, everyone familiar with rad goes charging into the neutered crowd, and everyone not familiar with rad runs screaming for their lives, and I'm flying overhead going "what the hell have I spent my 40 bucks on?"

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Awesome. Wish we could still have things like that happen. I only got in at I4 (I was here close to when the forums opened, mind, but a minor change in the processor requirements between then and Beta (which I had gotten an invite for) meant I had to wait until I got a new computer to get the game) but I saw similar dogpiling in Perez Park a few times. I got to do it once with my Invulnerability tanker before they killed the Aggro cap. That was truly super.