bjooks

Nope, I'm not offended one bit, but then again, drugs don't offend me all that much. And at least the new name is a less obvious pot reference.

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I liked your mention of the Tailor/Enhancement GUI problems.

I have one big QoL issue which, if fixed, would make me very happy.

The costume change window.

I would like it much more if the costume selection window was "sticky," like so many other elements of the GUI are, so you could place it on a certain part of your screen and it still open in that location the next time instead of always opening dead center, completely blocking the change you'd just called for. I'd also have the window close by default once a choice has been made to make it easier to see what your CCEmote looks like. While I'm at it, I'd have the choice in the dropdown CCEmote menu be sticky, as well, saving each toon's preferred change emote.

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Sounds similar to mine. Tray 4 tends to get the temp powers I don't want to use up accidentally (ring of pain, summon werewolf, etc), powers I don't want to click accidentally (self destruct, phase, etc), and teleports. Sometimes, on high level toons with lots of temp powers, I move these to tray 5 as well.

But in addition, I pull out a free-floating 4x3 power tray, place it just to the right of the regular power tray, and put my travel powers, rest, mystic fortune, and vet-pets there.

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I could make lists (and have), but for just one thing? Staffs would make my day.

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I don't get an "anti-CoH" vibe from Massively so much as I get a "that-game-is-so-5-years-ago" vibe, which I guess is admittedly elitist. However, I get that vibe more from the commenters there than the writers. It's a vibe I don't share, but can at least understand. But if you think the commenters are hostile toward CoH, you should check out the CO threads there; those people are brutal.

It was funny when I16 went live, because the Massively article about it was SOOOO obviously written based on info from the front page of the website at the time of the update. Unfortuantely, the CoH front page at that time linked to the early pre-release press info, which didn't describe big parts of the update such as the Super Sidekicking. So Massively's article about the update having gone live ending up with:

So I'd bet the problem is as much with the CoH marketing team as it is with Massively. Two days after Hero Con and there's no official info or pics about it here on the main game site, at least not without searching through the forums for compiled fan reports (great job guys, btw -- without you guys we'd still be in the dark). No, I'm not blaming the CoH guys for Massively's lack of reportage, but honestly, they've not helped themselves by making the Hero Con info accessible on the CoH front page or Announcements page.

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It's quite fun and looks great as a combat/short distance power, but it's lacking a bit when it comes to utility over distance. Don't think SS and SJ, but think combat jumping and a quicker sprint, with lots of tumbling animations thrown in.

If I were putting these powers in this game, I'd give this as one of the tier 1 powers (level 6, right?) in the same category as swinging. Don't know how I'd round it out, though. But both make good "natural" travel powers, much more so than SJ or SS.

Not quite, but close. In CO, you get your travel power at level 5, I think -- whatever level you leave the tutorial. Still, it's much earlier than here.

The "looking stupid thing" is a matter of personal taste. I originally thought it would look stupid with a line cast into mid-air, but was quickly won over after trying it; the physics of it, the way you can time your swing/release to do tricks, the feeling of vertigo you get as you swing up and down through the city, it all was pretty cool to experience. Admittedly, part of why I think it works in Champions is because you can't zoom out as far as you can in this game, so you rarely see the end of your own line. As for other people, I never noticed it looking weird when others used it. Again, though, YMMV.

As for utility in cramped spaces, Swinging in Champions carries a component of and works much like Super Jump, so that your first leap in the air is a good-sized Super Jump (higher than Acrobatics, but not as high as Super Jump). But if you hit the jump key while in the air again, you cast a line and the swinging mechanism starts. I found that, thanks to that SJ component, Swinging was just as useful as other travel powers, even in cramped areas.

Of course, nothing says that it would work the same if ever introduced into this game.

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Must agree completely. Now that beta's over, one of the few things (besides the stances) that might pull me back to CO is the variety of travel powers -- specifically swinging, acrobatics and teleport. LOVE 'EM!

I've always wanted swinging in this game, but now I've tried it in that other one, I want it even more.

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Sorry, not quite. Wrong the first time, but right the second time.

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Jack threads are best used to measure posters here. The more Jack-rage they spew, the less likely I am to take them seriously. Even if he really, honestly, was the the ebil overlord that killed your puppies, the fact that all these years later some people still obsess over this tells me more about them than it does about Jack.


I saw a different inspiration for the Maniacs last night. Upon seeing a group leader, I thought to myself, "Oh, now I get it. Of COURSE the leader of the goth clowns is the Joker. He's just wearing a hat he stole from some band geek."

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Quite possibly the funniest tv episode ever.

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See what? That Dev info only comes out through Twitter these day?

jk

But if you're still listening, I saw a pic from Comic-Con that showed the phantom army with a two-color pattern. Do we get to choose the pattern, or is there just the a default combo?

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Ah, I see. I thought you were asking why people would play if they weren't interested in the lore of the universe. Makes more sense now.

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For me, the in-game story is the least appealing part of CoH. The character generator, the powers available, the game mechanics... all these things make this game very appealing even to those of us who, mostly, ignore the story (especially given that, if you level in teams, you don't really get a chance to read any of the story anyway).

I play inside my own world, a universe my friends and I self-designed for our own RPG back in the late 90s. We were a group of (mostly) magical creatures -- fairies, elves, fauns, demons, angels, etc -- who had gotten separated from the magical planes and instead found themselves lost in the modern, mundane city. And so they banded together with regular folk, heroes and scientist types, who helped them acclimate to the mundane world all while trying to find their way back home to Faerie.

And really, there's nothing in CoH that contradicts (too much) the background of my toons. Instead of whatever city we were trapped in back then, now it's Paragon City. Because of the residual magicks there, most of our toons live in Croatoa or Perez Park, except the Faun who lives above a bar in Kings Row because he likes the beer, and their wealthy benefactor who owns a skyscraper and lab in Steel Canyon.

I couldn't tell you much at all about the in-game canon. It's a story that's running parallel to my own, and I sometimes interact with it when I take certain in-game missions that lend themselves to my toons' personal direction, but it really doesn't concern me as a plot; it's a means to an end: playing my characters, my way. AE has let me build on that greatly, giving me a place to battle with angels and demons at the end of the world, or stop the Elvish invasion of Croatoa, or finally take part in the great Faerie War when we make it back home.

I think one of this game's greatest strengths is that, due to the comic book inspiration, there really doesn't have to be one defining genre or way for people to play. Want to follow the in-game story? Great. Want to build your own story? Also great.

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Sounds like a few problems I've seen in the past couple of weeks or so. Yesterday, when my toon died, he laid on the ground and appeared to be swimming on the ground until I went to the hospital. And the NPCs disappearing sounds almost like the rubberbanding I've seen with villains -- they're in front of you one moment, 20 feet away another, then back in front of you.

This has only happened to me inside missions, with either the sliding glass doors in hallways or the wooden doors in caves. You push to click, but they don't open. But if you run at them, you can go through them usually after a few tries.

Another problem I've had that started around the same time is that the buttons in the powers tray occasionally either show they're active when they're not, or else show they're queued when they're active. This has made fighting a bit more difficult in the past weeks.

All these problems seemed to have started (for me, at least) just day or two before you guys had to revert that most recent build. I was experiencing all this as recently as last night, but this morning when I played a bit I didn't notice any of these problems, FWIW.

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