srmalloy

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And let me be the first to rain on the parade: I hope there is an option in the graphics settings to turn off custom power FX and just show the standard ones.

Two reasons: I know I'm not the only one who won't care for pink dark melee and what not, and there are still a lot of people on slow connections who won't enjoy the increased lag from the extra data that will be sent to them when someone uses a customized power.

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That's not raining on the parade Laz, that is a valid point for a lot of users, I wouldn'tbe surprised if they have worked up an option in graphics settings

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I am willing to bet that it's not going to be an option, for one simple reason -- when it gets implemented, the patch is going to change the client so that it will render all powers exactly the same whether or not they have custom colors defined; part of the patch will be a server update to make the database change to add the color indices to the powers and populate them with the default colors. The extra data will consist of two one-byte indices per power (primary and secondary colors), plus two bytes per character (primary/secondary colors for the theme). That's less than 100 bytes per character, and only needs to get transmitted once (just like the costume elements for a character don't need to be retransmitted every time you turn away from them and then look back). Oooh, massive transmission load.

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Super Strength and Martial Arts will each receive an alternate animation for their powers, and Stone Armor and Necromancy will include limited customization.

i am going to drive to paragon studios and kiss posi directly on the mouth.

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You realize that this threat is going to kill any chance of us getting similar upgrades in the future, don't you?

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I can think of only one type of customization that would truly require an entire expansion and gobs of developer man hours to produce... especially if conversations at Comic Con last year still hold any water...

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Yep.
Given the weight of circumstantial evidence we have this far out I'll be shocked if power customization isn't a feature of GR.

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Keep your hopes down Boys and Girls...

If they do make Power Customization a reality, you'll be happier.

If they dont make Power Customization a reality, you wont be as disappointed...


I will believe in Power Customization once I have used it myself. Before that it's still pipedream.

Plus, to me, just changing colors is kind of meh... I want to change animations too.

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Well, you'll have to settle for meh, at least for the time being. From the Issue 16 Overview page:

City of Heroes' latest offering, Issue 16: Power Spectrum, forever changes the way all super powered beings will look at their powers. Now, changing the colors of your powers is as easy as changing the colors of your cape!

At last, our next free content update unveils the all new, much requested and long awaited Powers Customization system! You wanted more control over what your characters' powers look like, and you are getting it! Issue 16: Power Spectrum takes City of Heroes' unparalleled character creator to the next level by unveiling a kaleidoscope of colors for your characters' powers. Become your own pyrotechnician as you select themes for your characters' powers and color coordinate the hues of the power effects.

New Character Creator

Not only does the newly updated Character Creator allow players to jump directly between Archetype, Powersets, Costumes and Character ID in any order without losing progress, but it also allows you to select your colors and theme for each individual power or apply it to the entire powerset. These themes will allow for color tinting of geometry and particle effects such as energy blast colors and force field colors. The primary and secondary colors of any power effect can be changed individually for each power in the set.

Customizable Powers

Customizable powersets include Cold Domination, Dark Armor, Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Miasma, Earth Control, Earth Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Assault, Electric Blast, Electric Melee, Electricity Manipulation, Empathy, Energy Assault, Energy Aura, Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee, Fiery Aura, Fire Assault, Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Manipulation, Fire Melee, Force Field, Gravity Control, Ice Armor, Ice Assault, Ice Blast, Ice Control, Ice Manipulation, Ice Melee, Illusion, Invulnerability, Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Mind Control, Necromancy, Plant Control, Psionic Assault, Psychic Blast, Radiation Blast, Radiation Emission, Regeneration, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Blast, Spines, Stone Armor, Storm Summoning, Super Reflexes, Thermal Radiation, Thorny Assault and Willpower.

Super Strength and Martial Arts will each receive an alternate animation for their powers, and Stone Armor and Necromancy will include limited customization.

Other Issue 16 Features

Powerset Proliferation - More powersets are now in the hands of Archetypes who couldn't use them previously! Blasters will have access to Radiation Blast, Brutes will get their Claws on, Controllers can now freeze it up with Cold Domination, and Corruptors get to feel the "twang" of Archery and Trick Arrow. Defenders can go high-tech with Assault Rifle and Traps, and Dominators can pulverize their enemies with Earth Assault. Masterminds heat things up with Thermal Radiation, Scrappers and Tankers get ready to fry their foes with Electric Melee and Electric Armor, and finally Stalkers get to swing their own mighty Broadsword.

Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

Other features to be announced.

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What i would kinda like to see is a bonus to patrol xp for stopping crime/or committing crime when out on the streets in the city zones. So i get my mission and if i stop some muggings and such on the way i earn more patrol xp which is a bonus to my xp earning.

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At least some kind of reward; perhaps something like an automatic 1 prestige/influence reward for defeating any enemy group that included a victim, regardless of level -- surely going out on the streets and saving victims is going to increase your reputation in Paragon City, even if you grossly outpower the mobs you defeat (i.e., it shows that you're still concerned about lesser threats to the city, even if you've moved on to more serious threats). Figuring out how to set up a similar mechanism redside will be more difficult, though. Knocking over punks who couldn't possibly threaten you if you were asleep just makes you out to be the villain equivalent of a schoolyard bully, not a Power to be Reckoned With(tm).

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Ignore the idiots and show them the ability of non-healers to shut them up.... like usual?

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Empathy shines on dysfunctional teams, which the AE _BREEDS_ So it's hard for people to attribute value to sets that work best when you have a competent team (wherein Empathy will look almost useless).

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AE doesn't just breed them, it uses the Bokanovsky process to crank them out on an assembly-line basis.

Rozen and Stren are dead.

I wish that all the missions would have two mission objectives -- the one you see when you get the mission from your contact, and the one you see when you actually enter the mission. Take the mission where you're supposedly going to be the guest of honor at a science-fiction convention; even if (every time I've gotten it) the mission being located in Crey's Folly didn't give it away, the fact that it immediately pops up with 'Defeat all Rikti in warehouse' as the mission goal. For missions like that, it's a trap, we know it's going to be a trap, but I think it would increase the immersion a bit to see "deliver necklace to safehouse" as the mission goal on my way to the door, even though I know I'm going to have to beat up the mobs that invated the safehouse once I get there. Missions that didn't have 'concealed' objectives would just have the pre-entry and post-entry messages the same.

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• Security Guards for Hazard Zones are perverts. My reasoning for this is I always have to search them with the arrow to find the proper spot to click for entry to the Zone; invariably the arrow always turns to a hand somewhere around their crotch.

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I've found that it's only when you get close to them that their pervy nature comes out; the farther back you stand from them, the easier it is to get their attention without having to grab their crotch and squeeze ("Carpe scrotum... and their hearts and minds shall follow").

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• Shivans are what happen when you let the green Jell-O stay in the fridge for too long.

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There are times when I suspect that they're Pasalima Hamidon's failed experiments into the process he later used on himself.

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• Why is that when you sneeze people say “Bless you” but when you burp YOU have to say “Excuse me”?

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Back in the Dark Ages, sneezing might be the first sign that you'd caught something that the 'medical science' of the period would be unable to treat, so people would offer blessings as an invocation of the only power that could help you.

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• Luddite Friar: “Just say NO! to the Orange Pipes of Doom!” … … Pixie Sticks?

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Trust me... You do not want to see a Luddite on a sugar high.

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• Ruin Mage: “Watch the horizon” … Yeah, because people always sneak up on you back lit by the sun without any form of concealment.

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Well, if the Rikti had managed to tip the Moon's orbit more than 45° to the ecliptic without anyone noticing, I'd be worried about what else might happen, too. (go to the ferry in Peregrine Island and face the moon as it sets, then check your compass; in our world it sets very close to where the sun does (the orbital inclination of the moon is 5.145° from the ecliptic)

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• Now… I know I’m not that bright… but if I wanted to steal a Goldbricker’s Rocket Pack… why did I have to find a glowie in a warehouse? Isn’t every Goldbricker in Cap wearing one?

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They tend to break when you have to beat them up to peel it off their back.

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• You get the feeling that the guy who designed the architecture for Arachnos Bases was really into hamster tubes when they were a child?

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Gerbil cages.

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• I clicked Shadow Maul and instead of doing the punch animation my character acted as though SHE were the one getting hit… Now, is that a glitch or is she just mocking her opponent?

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You just don't appreciate modern performance art.

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• I got 5 recipes for range in the space of one mission… at first I complained.. but then it hit me… my opponents didn’t want them either.

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Then Trap of the Hunter would drop more often. I think it's more due to the fact that these are minions you're defeating; do you think the head boss is going to want to outfit his henchmen well enough to make them a threat to him?

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Painful
Painful to get to 50
Painful to have at 50
Bout the only thing psi is nice for is PVP and if you want to do that take EM

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I beg to differ. My Psi/EM Blaster is 45, almost 46, and I've come to love taking her on ITFs; it's something wonderful to behold watching a Cyclops or Minotaur pop Unstoppable, and everyone else's attacks drop to doing damage in the 5-30 range while your attacks are still doing 150-500 points of damage, and throwing a Psionic Tornado into a clustered mass of Cimeroran Traitors, completely ignoring their Defense bonus from their shields is fun to watch as the forest of orange numbers float up.

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I thought the banished had their -fireres removed a long long time ago?

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It depends on which of the mobs you're going after. All of the zombies have a lower resistance to fire, lethal, and energy damage than to other types, but I'm pretty sure that the ones with "Dry" or "Dessicated" in their name (Dessicated Husk, Dessicated Chamber, Dry Husk, Dry Chamber, but not Rotting Husk or Rotting Chamber) take extra damage from fire damage that gets past their resistance.

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One of the coolest places in COX is the CoT Stronghold. It's only used in two redside missions, one from Scirocco and one from Mage-Killer Zuhkara.

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I got the one from Mage-Killer Zuhkara on my Bots/Dark MM the other day, and out of lack of familarity with the map did it backwards -- I went straight to the 'end' fortress and waxed the EB protecting the altar, then worked backwards around the loop taking out the other ceremonies. It was funny to realize I'd done it backwards; the rest of the mission was sort of an anticlimax after the EB fight. But it's a wonderful map.

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Dual Builds and AE kinda played a hand in the price gouging of purples recipes.

[/ QUOTE ]That word you use... I don't believe it means what you think it means.

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*sigh* it doesn't change anything, wrong word or not, demand/prices on some things have gone up. It's also interesting to see that crafted lv50 recharge IOs were going for 1 million inf hero side, but I can say that's laziness on the buyers part when you could buy/craft your own for around half that.

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Prices are hideously volatile on common and uncommon salvage due to the MA; since you don't get regular drops, and the people farming AE missions for tickets aren't going to waste them getting salvage when they can get reward rolls and sell them for hundreds of thousands if not millions, the farmers are competing in the AH for the pool of vended salvage that the people who still do regular missions put up, and since there's less salvage going into the market, the prices will jump whenever the AE farmers hit the markets for their own purchases. This is why it's volatile; I've seen Ceramic Armor Plate going for 100,000+ for the last five trades, and twelve hours later for a high of 100. And while there are some salvage that has lots of 'stock' in the AH, it seems as if a big chunk of it is listed at the blue-sky price -- so there may be 183 of a common salvage item available, but bids of 10,000-15,000 don't fetch anything, because they were all listed when that salvage was going for 80,000+ in the last AE rush.

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People should start posting pictures of how "awesome" something supposedly is.

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pics or it didn't happen?

i found the grandville spot on you tube this one below have visited from time to time

monkey fight club "easter egg"

located near Lorenz Ansaldo, just east of the Natural Quartermaster in sharkhead ilse

outside the building notice the contact in the distance and the monkey on the side of the building clicked the door to enter


inside the building

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After Joe Young and Cornelius took up DJ Zero's offer to move their Rikti Monkey Fight Club out of Sharkhead and into Pocket D to get out from under the Family's attempts to get a bigger share of the profits, the Family took over the abandoned equipment and set up their own RMFC, but it remains considerably seedier than the one in Pocket D. (happened with Issue 8)

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One of the features they promoted in the AE was levelling from 1-50 just in AE conent. They definitely delivered on that. I really don't think any curbing of low levels using the AE is going to happen.

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I wouldn't be surprised to see a new meter for Architect XP introduced, which worked a lot like Patrol XP except it would give you full XP in Architect missions instead of half XP (half XP being the new base rate). That way, people could still level from 1 to 50 in the MA, but would have an incentive not to stay there 24/7.

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I think it would be more useful for AE missions to increase your available Patrol XP, so that as you did more and more AE missions, you'd earn more bars of Patrol XP until you capped at 10 bars, then you'd have to leave the AE building and do regular missions to collect the patrol XP you'd built up in AE missions. Since (blueside as an example) your Security Level depends on the city's recognition of your demonstrated performance stopping crime in Paragon City, it seems to me that no matter how well you perform in AE missions, it's what you do out in Paragon City that determines your advancement. And what you do in AE missions should carry over; even if it's not recognized for advancing your Security Level, you're gaining experience with your powers that will speed your recognition by Paragon City.

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4) Few Mezzers: But tons of mobs with AoE heals, and every lieutenant or above is immune to mez. Combine this with ...

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Uh, get somebody to pay attention? The Surgeons can be killed in two seconds by a blaster who is paying attention. Furthermore they're not immune to mez, I've held the Cimeroran bosses when they were alone, easily. They are only immune to standard herd-and-control tactics.

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Not to mention that, with an Illusion controller, every Immunes Surgeon in a spawn becomes another healer for your team. Watching four or five Surgeons standing around a Scrapper healing and CMing him while he tanks four Minotaurs and a general is worth the price of admission.

And if you don't have an Illusion controller, well, you fall back on the first rule of facing mixed spawns: The healers die first. They're physically weak and they don't have any attacks worth noting. Shoot for the green glow.


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5) Melee Centric: Did you know that Arachnos Soldiers are weak to melee? Cimerorans tear my Bane Spider character up, even on lowest difficulty settings. The stacking -def(all) from all those spammed Broadsword attacks makes Cimeroran Traitors just about the only enemies that threaten my bots/FF mastermind, too. Let me guess: you're a tank with a resistance-based primary?

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So...not only are they strong against fire/kins and fire/psis, they are also strong against otherwise unkillable masterminds and VEATs...come to think of it, I've seen quite a few "farm build" brutes and scrappers dropping dead on the walls of Cimerora. Good job devs.

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It's called 'tactics'. Your character is weak vs. melee? Then you want to keep your targets at range. Blasters have been learning how to do this since CoH was released. Having opponents that make you think about the way you fight, rather than just wading in and doing damage, is a refreshing change.

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Idiots have always been idiots. AE didnt change anything.

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This.

With all the recent foo-furrah about the MA/AE farming thing, people seem to have forgotten that there were n00bs loooong before the AE/MA.

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However, prior to the MA, getting your noobbutt PL'd to 50 generally meant that you had to have a couple of friends playing the game who already had 50s and were willing to get you to Peregrine and then PL you; now they can just go straight to Atlas and saunter over to the AE building while waiting for someone to solicit for more members for his farm team because he needs a full team to get the best ticket drop rate for himself. You don't need to know anyone who already plays the game; all you need to do is show up.

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Heck I have seen custom mob made so well they turn a High power Purple IO'ed character into a level one rookie with one hardly working attack, they die two times and quit looking for something easier.

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Or, and more easily, made idiotically difficult; my first custom villain group got tossed out after establishing to my satisfaction that Hide + Ranged Attacks = Pain, adding Placate made it worse, trying to restrict that combination to lieutenants, bosses, or EBs just makes the pain geometrically worse, and the lack of fine control over mob placement prevents you from being able to use them judiciously. Although I can see a few specific uses for them.

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- If you sit and scream at the chat screen: "words are made of LETTERS not NUMBERS!! LETTERS!!"

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You don't need to scream at the screen... you simply recognize that there's something not quite "r19|-|7" about them and expect them to be subliterate... unfortunately, that expectation pays off depressingly often.

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- You're upset that none of the cape options are a towel wrapped around the neck.




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Jay? Could We? Please?

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And a helmet option that's a kitchen pot over your head, too.

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- Danged poor eyesight. This was never a problem with 8-bit graphics.

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You, sir, need an eight-bit tie.

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As an aside, in the Watchman movie, Silk had stilettos...except for the hallway fight, where she suddenly didn't.

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If you ever watched the old Wonder Woman show from the 70s Lynda Carter's boots magically became flats whenever you'd see her in an action scene as well.

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Depends on the action scene; her stunt doubles -- Kitty O'Neal and Jeannie Epper, among others -- had boots without the heels to reduce the chances of being injured. But Lynda did some of her own stunts, including one scene where she hung from a helicopter, which gave the producers fits (the scene had the camera close enough you could tell it was a stunt double in the original shot). Little details like changes in footwear are often keys to identifying when a stunt double has been swapped in for a shot.

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As an aside, in the Watchman movie, Silk had stilettos...except for the hallway fight, where she suddenly didn't.

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Assuming that it's a continuity slip, and not just a "can't do this scene in heels" issue. But continuity is an ongoing nightmare for filmmakers, and people will sit through movies specifically to catalog the slipups. For example, in "Dark Knight", during the interrogation scene, when Batman beats up Joker, Joker's hands are holding Batman's forearms upside down (from underneath). When the frame changes his hands are now on top of Batman's forearms, then it cuts back and his hands are under again. And sometimes it's just costume availability limitations -- in "Spartacus", they used so many extras that in several of the battle scenes you can see gladiators and soldiers wearing sneakers.

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Does that mean nothing is more sinister than Infernal or Malaise?

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He could have a name variation from Malaise to Krankheit.

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And I have to agree 100% with Zek's list, about half of those I generally use myself before I find a name I like... and to reemphasize it, I'm gonna just freaking quote his list just for the hell of it:[ QUOTE ]
Thesaurus.
Dictionary.
Foreign Dictionary.
Imagination.
Multiple Words.
Hyphens.
Roman Numerals.
Imagination.
Random Generators.
Added Space In The Middle.
Just A Dot.
Imagination.

[/ QUOTE ]Basically, all the stuff in bold are my bread and butter for coming up with a character. A lot of my names come partly/fully from foriegn languages (mostly Japanese, with a little latin for good measure).

It's not hard to find good names that are available... It just takes a little effort.

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I've gotten a lot of use out of Russian names for characters, in part because of the opportunity for more exotic backgrounds, and in part because it's fun to build Cyrillic chat binds to give some additional characterization. Some of the characters I've created using Russian for names:

Yadernii Ogon -- "Nuclear Fire" (Fire/Rad Controller)
Stal'naya Deva -- "Steel Maiden" (DB/WP Scrapper)
Ledyanoy Kulak -- "Ice Fist" (Ice/EM Tanker)
Ogon Moroza -- "Frostfire" (Fire/Ice Blaster)
Tenevoy Krik -- "Shadow Scream" (Dark/Sonic Defender)
Tenevoy Ogon -- "Shadow Fire" (Fire/Dark Corruptor)

Now, I concede that, with five years of play gone by, most of the 'simple' names have been taken, but the expenditure of a little creativity will expand your choices into a much bigger pool of possible names.

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The names Schlichtedfunk, Voogelmaas, Doominate, Tocatta and Fugue, Boxer Rebellion, Shovel of Pwns, Nuts McAuliffe, and Axe of Violence are all availalbe on freedumb.

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"Toccata and Fugue" sounds more like a team of a /Sonic Defender and an Illusion/ Controller...