TwilightSinger

Instead of listing everything I want, I thought I'd break some of it down into one theme : Cave/Indoor Garden

<ul type="square">[*]Cave interior tileset - encompassing floor, walls, ceiling and skirting/coving[*]Stalagmites &amp; Stalagtites[*]Glowing mushrooms (as seen in Cave mission tilesets) for all surfaces - low level light sources[*]Flat bottomed rocks of varying sizes (to suggest they're partly beneath the floor)[*]Creeping vines and roots for all surfaces - Ivy etc[*]Waterfalls &amp; Lavafalls[*]Water pools &amp; Lavapools[*]The option to fill a room with water up to just under the heighest floor height - 2 levels - wade or swim[*]More Plants and Trees - current ones available don't even represent 10% of what's in game[*]Plants and Trees without containers[*]Grass/Moss/Fallen Leaves/Dirt flooring[*]Clumps of grass, moss mounds etc[*]Crystal/Geodes of varying colour for low level light sourcing[*]Shafts of Light from holes in the ceiling or walls as intense/spot lighting[*]Mausoleum artefacts (as seen in the Lady Grey mission)[*]Henge &amp; Fairy Ring style Teleporters[*]Varying sizes of Pumpkins and Squashes[*]Bones &amp; skulls[*]Small campfires and rustic torch lamps light sources[*]Cobwebs[*]A tree with a swing/arbor[*]Gazebos of varying types, with and without vines[*]Wooden benches[*]Empty flowerpots, bags of compost, haybales etc[*]A Barbecue[*]A Wheelbarrow[/list]
er... that'll do for now. Probably.

You know what? That is absolutely stunning - by far the best example of magic desking I've seen lately. Which piece did you use, btw? It's seamless, no gaps at all, and that really attracts me to trying it - and what's more you actually attempted a parket flooring pattern which just adds to the brilliance. I'm unashamedly going to attempt the staircase to the loft/mezzanine if/when I ever get magic desking to work for me...

[ QUOTE ]
The water effect is made by placing a slow field (craftable item on the basic table) and floating it (see Magic Desk sticky)

Be sure that you have water effects enabled in your graphics menu to view them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ack. Two strikes and I'm out, I guess. Can't afford a raidable-base so no go on the slow field and I can't get magic desking to work at all :/

[ QUOTE ]

Green room - oxygen supply and relaxation area (1) (2)

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, so I concede that I will never, ever get to play with bases on anything like the scale shown in this thread, and that breaks my heart, but seriously now. How are you filling those pools with what looks like real water?!

Hell, beyond that there's a hundred things I could ask about the Green Room alone...

Hot diggity friggity frawg.

Why's it every time I see a piece by Graver I think 'I wish I'd thought of that'...? The Dark Blast 'Gloom' skull power effect is brilliant.

[ QUOTE ]
The same can be said with moving Illusions to Masterminds as a Primary powerset.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hope you meant Dominators as opposed to Masterminds, there... while I think an Illusions set could be feasibly reworked into the MM style of play, it's an easy and logical port from Controllers to Dominators that will see as much benefit from the Dom inherant as Earth/ does.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nice to see them in Paragon! Now stick them in Striga, too!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd like to see them in door missions. ANY door missions. I've never seen them in door missions at all, unless you count Barracuda.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd love them to be fleshed out more, you don't really learn anything in the Cult of the Shaper arc (I forgot Calystix in the 'list' of male Coralax...). If that means they get some door missions (new tileset, please!) and a more revealing arc or two, then great. No more teasing like finding Coralax 'bits' in Striga missions!

PS: Coralax 'sing'. Turn up your game SFX when you stand near them and they make pretty sounds (actually the Banished Pantheon do this too only it's even more subtle).

YAY CORALAX!

Possibly my favourite of the less-used/understood NPC factions. I have a real softspot for those fishgirls (perhaps fishmen, too, though the only male model Coralax in the game is Mako... talk about a hareem!), even though they have been the bane of all my young villains sent too early into dangerous areas of Port Oakes. "Zomg purple death from the brine!" *Fishy Ice Blast/Ice Breath/Ice Blast* "Blarrg!" *Hosps*

I guess they don't have much trouble with reverse osmosis, then? That said, they're clearly amphibious whatever they really are, though I always hope they're forerunners to a nice Lovecraftian twist to coming storylines...

Nice to see them in Paragon! Now stick them in Striga, too!

[ QUOTE ]
And finally, you know the "Exclusive" Arachnos capes we got for the DVD edition of CoV ( I think it came with that). Well I think they should "stay" exclusive. It is my opinion though and I'm very sure others will disagree but the exclusives we got for pre-orders are now universal. Some of us like having extras because we supported the game more.

I realise it was my choice to buy the extra packs/DVDs and add ons but I think that certain exclusives should stay that way.

[/ QUOTE ]

I couldn't pre-order, living in the UK and playing on US servers (as you seem to, so I'm wondering how you went about it...)

What I did was pay NCSoft directly on release day for both CoH and CoV, so they got every single cent of the money, no middle-man shopfront premium shaving off the profit, not even a box, manual or hard copy. Just a digital key. And certainly NO extras.

If that's not being rewarded for support, I don't know what is, frankly. I cost them less. I paid them more. But you can bet your [censored] if they'd made digitalkey downloads come with unique extras, the whining would be endless...

Bioware's Neverwinter Nights (dunno about NwN2) had an interesting bit of model coding that the modding community certainly had a damn good play with in certain areas - essentially it allowed a fixed part of the body to 'jiggle' - most commonly used on breasts, naturally, but also added to hairstyles, which gave the effect that it moved and flowed as a character moved around. It was fairly 'low' tech, but it served its purpose quite well. I don't see why something similar couldn't be put into CoX to enliven the hairstyles a little more, though god knows it'd probably start a debate about female heroes, jiggling and superjump...

The final Levantera mission on her second arc in which you must infiltrate the Rikti underground base to search for 4 clues sometimes spawns the Rikti patrol you must avoid at all costs (so as not to fail) in the sewer area where they are completely indistinct from other Rikti (they don't even have a warning dialogue).

I've played through this mission 5 times and the Patrol has always been in the same place for me, except last night on my Tanker, who attacked what looked like a normal bunch of Rikti in the sewer section and caused 'a security breach', failing the mission before he even got to the Rikti base.

Worst of all, not realising that it would happen, I called in the failure (hoping I'd get another chance, alas no chance - weren't these arcs meant to be repeatable?) and that ended communications with Levantera - only to find that the 2nd Souvenir she's supposed to give you isn't given. Which I just don't understand - why make a failable mission the end of a story arc and stop a character obtaining the souvenir? If the server was shut down while someone was doing the mission they'd fail without encountering any bugs and still not have the souvenir.

I both /bugged and /petitioned the issue last night but was told since I'd called the failed mission in my char no longer had the arc flagged and apparently there's nothing that can be done to fix it, which is pretty poor by anyone's standards.

This needs fixing. A story arc cannot end on a pivotal and failable mission.

Again, thankyou, Myth! It's been so great to see someone else's take on my characters, and yeah, Frosty's too damn hot for his own good! How he manages to surround himself in ice looking like that I'll never know

Hmm. Some animation-prodigy needs to do the Thriller dance on this CrypticAR rig thing. Then we can finally give the Banished Pantheon something to do in Dark Astoria.

[ QUOTE ]
The rigs are much more complex than the standard CoH one, it looks like. Most notably, they have individual fingers. CoH doesn't have that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Individual fingers are already in CoX, just not on player models. Check out the Fortunatas, for example.

Well, since Powersets is for some unknown reason not a choice (and really, this game can't exist without them), I'll have to go for my #2 choice, Costume Creation. It's given me hours of fun, I have several servers besides my home of Virtue, filled with redesigns and mad designs and comedy designs for characters, most of whom I'll never get to double figures, but loved creating for the hell of it.

My #3 choice would be the overall storyline - I play through just about all content with all my characters, which I think puts paid to the argument that if one char can do all the content, no one will do it again with a new char or have the impetus to - utter nonsense.

But my sadly missing #1 choice, Powersets, is something on my mind constantly. How I wish we could see more included in the game - Scrappers and Tankers have had nothing for the entire span of City of Heroes besides the Critical Strikes inherant which is more of a perk than a feature.

Both sets desperately need new secondaries and Scrappers especially could do with more primaries - Quarterstaff would be very gratefully received

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Fly is pretty. It's not fast, it's end killer, but there's something majestic about flying. Soaring about instead of being tethered to the ground. Awesome.

[/ QUOTE ]

One End Reducer SO in Fly... and End is... NOT a problem here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fly shouldn't need it now. They reduced the end-cost of Fly a couple of months back, now costs the same as SJ/SS to run. Sure, if you're fighting and Flying at the same time, the endurance use will be harsher, but it's the same for SJ/SS. But then, that's what Micro HOs are for

Superjump. It's a metagame all on it's own - no other travel power takes as much skill to master and no other travel power can be as dangerous when you screw up. I was hooked when I hit L14 back in may 2004, and I've never looked back since. That said, I think as many of my chars have Fly as SJ, for thematic reasons. But SJ is something I will return to the game for, time and time again. It's the best travel power I've ever seen in any game, ever. And it's probably my favourite power in the game. I will actually miss old Faultline, because I used to go there to hone my precision with SJ landing and spatial awareness.

[ QUOTE ]
Just to be all official -

Online code is now available to be purchased! (Only not if you have a MasterCard).

^_^

[/ QUOTE ]

Somewhere, right now, a pooch is getting screwed.

It's probably got a MasterCard.

Male characters have access to a pair of realistic looking Aviator style glasses called 'Mirror Glasses', as seen here in game, and here in the actual costume editor at the tailor.

This option is completely unavailable to either Female character types, nor Huge character types.

Can we have Mirror Glasses (re?)placed for Female and Huge characters to use, please?

[ QUOTE ]
I remember Phantasy Star Online did something like this in the higher-level lobbies.

People were amused incessantly for months. Soccer games were everywhere.

[/ QUOTE ]

I love it when people bring back good memories of PSO. I shall have to fire the old Dreamcast back up some day. Of course, won't be the same without Seganet, but I could go for a singleplayer fun-run I reckon.

[ QUOTE ]
TwilightSinger, to get that many PDP at once you probably triggered several alarms at a time in a Pawnshop robbery? For Masterminds it's almost impossible to miss them all, but go to whatever lengths you can not to let yourself or the thugs touch any of those cones of red light that are coming from the security monitors, and if you do, wait for the ambush (a double-spawn of PPD) and fight them before going on. That's how you keep from getting overwhelmed. If you just power through, boom.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ahh, ok. I can see that's where I went wrong. There needs to be a broadcast shout from the incoming ambush in that case, as I was expecting something to happen when I touched the red light (did it on purpose to experiment) and when nothing obvious happened, I figured it was either bugged or not working yet. So I probably waltzed through every security cam in the pawn shop, heh. The ensuing fight was kinda cool though, if only because I had to outwit overwhelming odds.

[ QUOTE ]
As for Elite Bosses, somebody taught me the trick for that ages ago. As soon as the first police spawn shows up after grabbing the loot, I fire off the three Luck inspirations I was carrying for just that purpose. Only a very few EBs can hit through that, and it buys me time for my minions to grab and hold aggro while I fall back on assisting. And yeah, sometimes, on the rare occasions I can actually get them to aggro on the EB with that much Luck on my side, Gang War really helps if for no other reason that the time it takes the EB to one-shot the ten of them is 10 shots that they're not firing at me or the minions.

[/ QUOTE ]

For starters, I was playing a Brute, so minions aren't much help to me :P
Secondly, I used 2 lucks, as that was what I had, and Aurora hit through them every time. The problem was not so much an EB, but an EB that was simply the total bane of my existance, and due to being random, I really had no way of preparing for her at all. Psionics at 'Hero' level damage tears a Fire brute apart. That she spawned with 4 minions made things even worse, as 3 of them were damage adds (though the 2 lucks worked better against them) and 1 was an accuracy debuffer.

I do maintain that on Villainous setting, signature heroes should not be appearing. It's ok when you know what you're getting, ala the AV&gt;EB change, because you're told in advance by your contact and can prepare for what you're facing. In a totally random EB encounter in a Mayhem mission it's like being told 'you've had your fun, but now you don't get to complete this'.

The missions are enormous fun, but it was soured at the end by that factor.

[ QUOTE ]
Are you nuts? I took down Valkyrie, no sweat! Of course, I was using my Thugs/Traps MM, and Gang War distracts ambushes (that's right, they make ambushes attack THEM!).

I think the threat of a random EB adds an element of excitement. Although, I've decided NOT to do nothing but Mayhem Missions on my Thugs/Traps. I'll do some real contacts from now on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nuts? No! Do you have any idea what a Psionic Elite Boss Hero does to a fire/fire Brute? 3 shots them in 6 seconds, that's what. When she first appeared, she also came with 2 Longbow and a PDP Ghost and SWAT Officer. I had to eliminate the Ghost first before he stacked Flash Bangs on me, so Aurora had more time to beat me like angry dough. I spammed almost every inspiration I had in the first encounter, got her down to 2/3rds and died waiting for an animation to finish so I could use my last heal insp. Then I died 5 times more attempting to whittle her down before the timer finally beat me - the Jail cell doors didn't even regenerate after the 4th death!

It was utterly ludicrous - I stood almost no chance whatsoever. I didn't even have the villain I broke out of the jail to help since he was a mental cripple and was terrorizing citizens somewhere else on the map.

Having tried a couple of Mayhem missions with my Thug, I decided to see how things were solo with my L28 FM/FA brute.

At first, things were going great - Blazing Aura was causing total mayhem, and I found a couple of side quests pretty fast. However, at one point, I was ambushed by 12 PDP Ghosts and Equalizers, all at the same time. I spent about 10 minutes just stretching them away from each other in order to fairly fight them. Up to 6 or 7 stacks of Flash Bangs, perma immobilized at one point. Both the glue gun and flash bang need toning down severely, both in duration and activation - I've had one PDP Ghost Flash Bang me three times within a 15 second period.

Ok, once they'd been dealt with, it was business as usual. Smash the stuff, beat up the two PDP guards every so often, rescue a villain from the jail - though not entirely sure why, since all he did was attack civillians endlessly and seemed to have no other motive.

So it came time to do the heist - flawlessly, till I looted the cash.

Oh dear. Aurora Borealis? I could not have been given a worse Hero to fight, seeing as I've absolutely no Psi resists or defences. Let's just say the fight lasted 10 minutes, I was killed 6 times, and the timer ran out as she was at a sliver of health. The experience up to the point the Elite Boss Hero (I was playing on Villainous, the lowest setting) jumped in was marvelous. Once the killjoy arrived, the experience downgraded significantly. Frustration isn't fun. EBs shouldn't be spawning at Villainous.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what the numbers on Dominators pets are - but controller pets have an accuracy of 300%. That is why sings can hold or hit almost anything in sight, and fire imps destroy all they go after.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sings might, I know mine rarely misses. But Phantasms, Phantom Army and Animate Stone sure don't have anything close to that much accuracy. They miss quite a bit. I think the accuracy bonus is inherent to the Sings, not the AT. I'd be surprised if Dom Sings didn't have the same accuracy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Quite. I know for a full fact that when I'm playing my Illusion controller, both my Phantasm and Phantom Army have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn at times. Saying controller pets have 300% accuracy as a blanket statement is distinctly off.
Sings are known for accuracy. I don't think any other pets come as close, and the reason Fire Imps do well is because there are several of them.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually intimidate has a much lower base accuracy, takes about 3 times longer to recharge, takes up a power pool choice, forces you to take a power that is worthless to stalkers, and has no -accuracy debuff. Everyone knows how tight a stalker build can get so it's no wonder nobody really uses this but with DM it will be a different story.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't kid yourself - a lot of players know how overpowered any form of Fear is in PvP right now (so few resists to it), and that includes Stalkers. Intimidate might involve having to take Provoke to obtain (and don't discount the anarchy you can cause in PvP with a timely taunt), but in a repetoire of 'I win' buttons a Stalker can have, it's among the most aggravating. Target immune to stun? 3 slot that Intimidate for accuracy.
Intimidate &gt; Placate &gt; BU (maybe even before the Intimidate to ensure it lands) &gt; AS &gt; followup.

Pretty much a build decision implicitly designed to take on the tougher targets like Scrappers and Tanks.