seebs

Of course surgery doesn't change your gender. It changes your sex. Gender is determined by the brain. And, for reference, I'd point out that human brains have noticeable and well-understood sexual dimorphism. "Transgendered" people are, it turns out, accurately reporting the physical reality of their brains. So they are, as a matter of objective fact, correct; someone who's saying "I'm female" is saying it because she has a brain which is observably more like a female brain than a male brain. (This is slightly oversimplified, but basically right.)

I have a machine which can in theory run CoH, but tends to overheat doing so. I'd like to be able to use it to, say, check up on my WW stuff, without overheating it.

On another game I used to play, you could cap frame rate by telling the game the maximum framerate you wanted to render, and setting it a few frames per second lower than what the machine could do made it quite a lot smoother and quieter. I've already turned settings down pretty much as much as I can, which just makes it faster and still too hot, so that would be my next option.

D'oh! /maxfps

Okay. So... Trying again to get this:

DB, if you don't use combos, is a decent set which is within the broad range of effectiveness of CoH melee attack sets.
DB, if you use combos, is a decent set which is within the broad range of effectiveness of CoH melee attack sets.

You know, I somehow ended up convinced that Katana was a combo set, but obviously it's not. No idea what I was thinking of. Could just be I kept seeing dual blades after having forgotten where I'd seen that before.

So it sounds like DB is slightly weaker than Claws if you don't ever use combos, but the combos give some extra flexibility and options in some cases. Well, we'll see how I like it; it was the best choice for a character concept.

Hmm. I guess I still can't figure out the balance implications.

So there aren't tons of combos, just a few specific ones where there's a chain that has some extra effect?

It just seems like, if they aren't going to be a balance problem, the power set has to be weaker without them so it isn't overpowered with them, or something like that.

So, I have a confession to make.

Every time I consider a set and see something about "combos" I go roll something else because I don't know what combos are, how they work, or whatever. I don't know whether they mean I have to take a power that's otherwise sucky, or whatever. I don't know whether they're an optional way to get extra mileage out of a set above and beyond the normal performance, or whether the combo-bases sets are gimped unless you use the combos a lot.

Help?

Well, specifically. I finally accepted that I was suffering from severe altitis, so I created a new account. I logged in. I accepted that I must create a Praetorian. When I clicked on costume tab... Crash. Windows encountered a display driver problem and corrected it, but City of Heroes had to be closed, would I like to send a report to Microsoft?

Thing is. I'm sort of... I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, I love to play with my dollies. I spend an hour a day messing with costumes, I'd guess. I am pretty sure that this installation of CoH (I didn't create a new one) is quite capable of entering the costume editor.

Interestingly, if I skip the costume screen, I can log in and play just fine, and thus was born Super Generic Man who has the costume that you start with in the editor.

Hints?

Again, character creation works fine in my other account.

Both accounts have GR. The first account has pretty much everything except the party pack (even I have limits), the second has Martial Arts pack and nothing else.

EDITED: And for reference, once I created Super Generic Man, I seem to be able to create stuff normally on this account.

I think about what you can do for generic good builds is "Kismet +6% Accuracy in some defense power".

So, since this thread started, a guy on another board I frequent just had a very visible meltdown. He's sorta not-sane to begin with, but the topic of his meltdown was his belief that any and all transgendered people should be killed, and that anyone who doesn't think this is obviously the case ought to be locked up or put in a reeducation camp.

Why?

Well, see. If there exist any transgendered people, it's possible that you could end up having gay sex by accident, says he.

Now, I personally think the guy is pretty much insane, and if he weren't so pathetic, I'd consider him a danger to himself or others. (Luckily, the possibility of this nightmare scenario coming to pass is suitably remote; there is no way he will ever come into romantic contact with another human.)

But even though he is, to put it mildly, overreacting... This kind of thing can be a major source of squick for some people.

"Squick", if you haven't heard the term before, is a recentish coinage for "things that disgust you strongly" with the specific connotation of not making a moral judgement. It's there to distinguish between "this is repulsive and no one should be allowed to do it" and "this is repulsive to me personally and I'd prefer not to hear about it". There's a sort of two-way street here. Someone who is squicked by a given thing is carefully not making a moral judgement about it -- but is also at the very least hinting strongly that they don't have the option of just not minding it.

And that's where you run into an issue, which is that part of what makes RP fun for people is a sort of general consensus that we all know other people have boundaries and comfort zones, and that most of the time, people would rather you not push them far out of their comfort zones. And whether or not we like that people are seriously squicked by intersex people, trannies, and the like, some of them are, and it's not reasonable to expect them to magically lose their squick.

So if you're doing something where you know that a lot of people will find it very squicky, you probably ought to warn people in advance. It's a sort of meta-politeness thing.

I guess, the point here isn't just to ensure that the sort of RP you like happens, but to help ensure that other people don't get into something they find really disturbing. So I see the tag as a sort of compromise; it slightly hurts you chances of getting the kind of interactions you really want, but it massively reduces the chances of other people getting into something that freaks them out. From a net social benefit standpoint, I think it's a win. It is a kindness to people who would rather stay in their comfort zones, and one of the things that I think is important in RP is that it be safe enough for people to dabble a little and have it stay safe and fun.

I sort of want a second account, but this has kept me wary, because it'd be so much work to go get them all.

I have an elec/elec, I've really enjoyed it. Easy to make it look awesome, good theme.

No matter what your primary is, caltrops is useful; either you stand on it to spread people out, or you stand near it to drive them together into a cone.

You have a point about tactics. I'm coming from a bots/traps, where I have all three of the leadership buffs -- because the attacks are pretty much useless. Still getting my head around DS.

And I would like to exemplar down decently, and one of my big problems is that no matter what I want to move lower, there's something else awesome I have to postpone to get it.

Nope! I don't think I've ever bid on a LotG at all of any type. Maybe a couple test bids on lowbie def/end in case I got lucky.

In before eight people say "Oh, that was me!"

Okay, I haven't even started to figure out slotting. I'm just looking at powers. The actual character is level 32 right now, and is not quite on this build, and has a freespec lying around.

As-is, the character has Maneuvers rather than Assault, and Provoke rather than Petrifying Gaze. My plan is to postpone Provoke until I have a second attack to feed off its taunt effect, basically.

Hover is in the build because it is a nice place to put a Kismet and/or a stealth proc. I could put the Kismet in Shadow Fall, but I'd much rather enhance that for things that matter to it more, like endredux. A single level 25 endredux IO in Shadow Fall saves nearly enough endurance to run Hover all by itself. I slightly prefer Hover to CJ for these purposes -- the character has no reason to be on the ground, and I have an easier time controlling things from the air sometimes.

I'm posting this because I'm still a bit frustrated with the order of things, and in particular, the number of things I'm inclined to regard as fairly important which have been postponed ten or fifteen levels past when they first became available (*cough* howling twilight).

I don't really know enough about APP/PPP powers to have a strong preference among them, I just grabbed one that looked like it'd fit thematically.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.91
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

charlene draft: Level 48 Magic Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Demon Summoning
Secondary Power Set: Dark Miasma
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Presence
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Summon Demonlings -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Twilight Grasp -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Tar Patch -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Darkest Night -- Empty(A)
Level 6: Enchant Demon -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Corruption -- Empty(A)
Level 10: Hover -- Empty(A)
Level 12: Summon Demons -- Empty(A)
Level 14: Assault -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Shadow Fall -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Hell on Earth -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Fearsome Stare -- Empty(A)
Level 22: Recall Friend -- Empty(A)
Level 24: Teleport -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Summon Demon Prince -- Empty(A)
Level 28: Petrifying Gaze -- Empty(A)
Level 30: Howling Twilight -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Abyssal Empowerment -- Empty(A)
Level 35: Crack Whip -- Empty(A)
Level 38: Dark Servant -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Provoke -- Empty(A)
Level 44: Night Fall -- Empty(A)
Level 47: Oppressive Gloom -- Empty(A)
Level 49: Soul Storm -- Empty(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- Empty(A)

It's not that the power is all that USEFUL, it's just that the power is AWESOME.

That said, traps really is joy. No attack powers, everything in /traps, no repair, some cool pool powers, and I can usually solo at x8 while watching TV. Only time I really got screwed on it, the issue was that for reasons I don't understand a CoT map had chosen to include a number of elite bosses, even though I was set for no bosses while soloing. (It was an AE mission, but I'm pretty sure the mission didn't have elite bosses the last time I ran it. It's the Johny Sonata and the Hitmen chain, the CoT one in the cave.)

Slot /traps decently, get a couple of the pet defense/res IOs (shame about the lack of a Recharge-Intensive Pets power), laugh as the robots destroy your enemies.

The highlight of bots/traps is every time an NPC in a mission says "Do you think you're a match for me?" Because any time you can answer a question with "Unstoppable robot army." that means it was a GOOD day.

I just think hot doors are bad.

I have a level 38 mastermind. I was doing an AE arc that looked interesting. Nothing super exciting, just going through stories, clicking on glowies.

Mission #3 had a hot door, and was set with a level range of 1-30.

So.

There I am, dropped 8 levels, no pets, being attacked by a spawn.

This makes it just a LITTLE hard for me to do my mastermind thing, especially since I normally run at x8, because that's a good challenge assuming I'm allowed to play my character. But I'm not on that mission, so nevermind.

Hot doors are a Bad Thing in a game where some archetypes are dysfunctional without setup.

The fear wears off before the power recharges, but by that time everything in the spawn has a 5% chance to hit the broad side of a barn, and many of them are dead.

On mind/, it's easy because you have more than one hard control -- sleep one, hold another. Or confuse one, hold another, and sleep a third but recognize the sleep will drop when the confused one attacks.

In general, with controllers or doms, I favor holding the toughest target I can hold ASAP, and then I have one less thing to deal with. On small groups, that's usually enough. Dom makes it a lot easier to burn through the other guys.

Just remember to refresh controls.

And if you have a confuse, well. Remember that you can choose to fight at most one thing if it really comes down to it, because you can always just keep confusing them until only one is left.

Hmm. Tricky.

A few thoughts:

1. Unless I'm planning to ERP with you, I don't care. Since I'm pretty sure I know what my spouse is into, you're probably not my spouse, which means the question is unlikely to come up. Unless there's some reason for which, looking at you in WW, I'd immediately notice this, it may not need to be in the bio.
2. But wait! Some people get really freaked out by stuff like this, but might want to flirt with you. But if they flirted with you and then found out, it'd be upsetting. So maybe they'd want to know.
3. Anything pertaining to genitalia or other characteristics that most people don't deal with in most of the people they meet is probably going to be interpreted as an indication that you're interested in showing off or cybersexing. I mean, why else would you mention it? (Note: I can think of many other reasons to mention it. But that's how people will likely interpret it.)

I don't think any of my CoH characters have a defined sexuality at all. I mean, some are male, some are female, but if you asked me whether they were gay or not, or even had sex, I wouldn't know. The only exception is LOVELACE-1, whom I can tell you for sure about. She's a non-sapient robot who is built mostly on the chassis of a half-finished sexbot, and she would LOVE to have sex. Unfortunately (or fortunately), not only is she not anatomically correct, she's not actually programmed, so if you tried to have sex with her, she'd just act like a chatbot programmed to try to flirt with people.

Everyone else? I have no clue. I don't know whether they're sexually active, or would like to be. I'm pretty sure Burdock McCoy, the hicksie, would be all up for some snuggling with a hot girl, but I suspect that his interests would run to drinking heavily, looking at boobs, and then going out and doing stupid stuff until he woke up in the drunk tank thinking he must have had a great night of it.

So... When I see people whose character bios include information I'd only need if I were going to have sex with them, I tend to assume that they are viewing that as a primary likely mode of interaction, and that tends to make me think I don't want to interact much with them, 'cuz that's really not part of my sense of what superheroes do.

One of the issues you run into here is a narrative logic problem. Anything which is statistically abnormal is presumed to be significant in narrative. In the real world, some people are gay and some aren't, whatever. In a fictional setting, though, if someone is gay (which is statistically unusual) rather than not-gay (which is statistically common), it is presumed that this is a significant and key component of their character. Exceptions exist, but for the most part, that will be the assumption people make.

Past that... I don't think I care much either way. If I ran into you in game and at some point this information about an apparently-female character came out, I'd probably ask which pronoun you prefer and leave it at that. I don't think any of my characters would have an opinion on the issue; while bigotry is certainly a thing in the real world, it's not a thing which strikes me as fun to play. I dunno; it might be hilarious for a drunken pixie with a backwards baseball cap to follow you around asking inappropriate questions, but that's the kind of thing that's only funny if everyone involved agrees it's funny. ("So, hey, pretty lady, uhm, which bathroom do you go to? Can you pee sitting down? You get a lot of dates? You get a lot of second dates? Er, what I mean is...")

I could probably live without hover and fly. Although I'd want CJ then. Hmm. Traps do need to be near the ground to work, for the most part. It looked nice as a travel thing (I find teleport annoying, though very efficient, as a travel power), but... It doesn't fit as well. I do like the option of getting out of spikes and the like.

I'll look at it. I don't recall whether she's got a respec open at the moment anyway.