FX supression for Electricity?

/SuppressCloseFxDist 200

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The OP is actually talking about Electric Control I believe.

Personally I would vote for a no-FX option for the various Elec/Dark/Ice/Fire shields though, other than the PBAoEs. I have never bought the explanation that it is critical to show the armor effects visually, and don't personally believe the explanation for any of them has to be "you are wrapped in this element" as opposed to "you are made of this element" or whatever else. Shield Defense is probably the exception case.

It's a good thing that this has never been offered as an explanation, then. The explanation actually offered is that if you're manifesting a visual, physical effect, this manifests visually. If you are manifesting fire, ice, electricity, energy, darkness, stones, crystals or anything else visually, this requires a visual effect. You can ask for a different visual effect, but SOME visual effect is always needed. Running around in jeans and a t-shirt, sporting a golden tan but claiming you're covered in armour made of ice is taking my suspension of disbelief way too far.

I can deal with no effects for things like martial arts, super strength, street justice, the various auras associated with weapons (Head Splitter, Hail of Bullets, Pendulum, etc.), anything to do with super speed, jumping, flying or even teleporting. I cannot accept no effects for things like fire or indeed electricity.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I can appreciate what you are saying, but thanks to IOs, many characters can deflect attacks with no rational explanation whatsoever. If someone wants to claim they are surrounded in invisible Ice armor I think they are obviously mistaken, but to me this isn't the same as saying the only way a cold based armor makes sense is if you can actually see a solid sheet of ice wrapped around the player. I think players need to take individual responsibility for making sure their powers makes sense for their concept, whether this means using some of the effects but not all, using auras to achieve the desired effect, or having some other explanation for why their powers look the way they do (e.g. "I am made of Ice, not wrapped in it.")

A possible solution would be for the elemental armors to contain the option to select armor effects identical in appearance to other effects in the set. That way you'd always ensure there is *some* effect, but there would be some more room for variation. I think it is kind of unnecessary though.

Of course this is off topic, since the OP was talking about Electric Control.

I find these effects annoying too, but most of the time changing the color works for me.

What bothers me most is the speed of these effects. If they were slowed down from their jittery frenetic pulse to a more sedate and subtle flux, that would probably resolve the issue for everyone.

Perhaps a slider that controlled the speed of such animations as displayed in your client would be a solution.

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I'm actually all for asking for alternate effects, and speaking of ice armour, "skintight ice" has often been suggested. And I agree completely. Speaking of electricity, I can certainly see lower-visibility electricity at play, or something more restrained. Choice is always good.

However, I cannot agree with giving people the option to pick no effect for physical effect powers. Again, this would be like picking Battle Axe and choosing "None" as your weapon. Certain sets simply require that they show SOMETHING. I can agree with that something being meaningful, but if they describe a physical effect, then need to show a physical effect.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Why?

Aside from the obvious weapon sets, of course, but why does Electric or Energy Armor have to show anything? I don't see electricity crackling around lines or transformers, for instance - you have to go out of your way to find something like a Jacob's Ladder or Tesla coil to see "crackling electricity," or, of course, lightning. Who's to say I'm not empowering something electrically powered inside my armor?

Same with Energy Armor - why can't it just be like the Praetorian PPD? Absolutely no effect until you're hit (or would have been?) What exactly does "Energy" look like? Sunlight's energy, and I don't "see" that.

And dark armor - other than being asleep, what does "negative" energy look like?

Now, the twelve people who still PVP in this game can argue about needing to see effects - it's understandable there, and why our "no effects" options tend to say "outside of PVP." But the NPCs don't care. They attack my Corrupter the same way they attack my Scrapper. They attack an Invulnerable tank the same way they attack a Fire armor. (And why can't my Fire tank be a Fire elemental, with their two armors being an internal bit of their being?)

No, I can't say I agree that the armors "need" to have a visual representation. Enemy affecting (or damaging) effects like Electric field, sure - gives an idea of where the area of effect is. But just plain armors? Nope. I can see just fine that they're toggled by looking at the buttons with little comets swirling around them.

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Electricity doesn't generally have a look or sound when it's flowing through a conductor, but when you pass it through other people or foreign objects to which it does damage, it very much has an effect. That's actually pretty much what the entirety of the original Electrical Blast is - lots of short circuit effects. That's because electricity does damage by producing heat, and one aspect of that heat is light and sound.

I personally see Electrical Armour as a man-scale equivalent of a bug zapper - bullets fly towards you, but get zapped and vaporised when they come near enough, causing no or little damage. If you're powering some kind of electrical instrument inside of power armour, you're looking at Invulnerability or Willpower or such.

Which is precisely why I advocated customization over removal. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's in one of my posts in this very thread. Actually, I can save you the legwork:

If that is your vision of "no effects," then I'm all in favour of it. I'd like to see all continuous auras be given an "On Impact Only" option where the effect would only play for a second after an impact to that particular shield has been dealt, but would otherwise display no effect at all. For instance, if you're running Fire Shield and Plasma Shield set to "On Impact Only" then you'll be displaying no fire graphics at all. However, when you get hit with a purely physical attack, you'll flash in orange fire to depict fire blocking the impact. If you get hit with a purely elemental attack, you'd flash blue to depict plasma blocking the impact. If you get hit with mixed damage, then you'd apply whatever algorithm chooses whether an attack was dodged, deflected or just plain missed.

This isn't about knowing what's running. It's about having at least some semblance of what a set should be. This isn't the Champions system where you pick an attack type and then apply an element to it. Loose though it may be, our powers still have a core design. If you have a power which says you are protecting yourself with fire, then this power needs to display you protecting yourself with fire. Simple as that.

Because if you don't have that, where really do you draw the line between being covered in invisible fire and just taking Fiery Aura but customizing it to cover you in ice? The only real thematic difference between powersets is their visuals. If we give people the option to turn off the visuals for all of them, why not just drop all themes in all powersets?

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Actually, let me reverse the question on you - if you don't like the look of electricity, why pick electricity for a character? If it's for the meta-game only, you lose me entirely, because I will simply never agree with visual effects changes to kowtow to the meta-game. Because meta-game aside, there really aren't all that many "non-effects characters" that can't be made with representative sets already.

Call me unfair, but I don't want to see the core meaning of powersets redefined by people on a whim. If you can make your Dark Scrapper look like a Sand Scrapper, then more power to you, but I would NEVER support adding Sand effects to Dark Armour. In much the same way, I would not support options for sets that don't capitalise on what the set represents, not when these options exist by simply taking other sets.

Again, if I want an axe, I can always pick Battle Axe. I don't get to pick Broadsword and ask for axes to be put in there just because I like Parry more than Swoop. In much the same way, if I picked an Electric Armour Brute, I will play a Brute who is protected BY ELECTRICITY, not by a power armour powered by electricity. As a point of fact, this is precisely the dilemma I went through when Electric/Electric Brutes first came true, and even managed to get Jack Emmert explain why they chose to make Electricity red. I wanted a brute powered by electricity, but whose functional power was that he was very big, very strong and very heavily armoured. Electric/Electric didn't work precisely because it had overt electricity, so I picked SS/Inv, instead, and I'm still glad for it.

Similarly, I chose against making my "energy alien" an Energy/Energy Brute - because it wasn't appropriate for her concept to be stealthy, yet my immobilize protection was in Energy Cloak, so I opted for Willpower, instead and did only a minor re-explanation of her powers.

The bottom line is that there's always another solution. If the problem is conceptual, there are other sets which don't revolve around effects. If the problem is medical, then campaigning for less hurtful effects is the solution. Turning sets into what they are not, however, is never a viable solution as far as I'm concerned, not officially at any rate. Under no circumstanced would I ever support the option to make all powersets look the same so you only had to pick the one with the numbers you wanted, and I am not going to be convinced otherwise come hell or high water.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Untill they do something akin to their first superhero MMO counterpart, one can easily just IMAGINE they're made of the element versus wrapped in it. Just having them suppressed toggles without any visual clue makes it more like "I want Shield's abiltiies, but I want to be INV, so let me suppress the effects so I can be INV while using Shield's effects".

Now i know you said Shield Defense is probably the exception, but the example goes for all the other elemental types sets as well.

Admittably, we can do this with a few powers already. INV and WP are pretty interchangable now, and INV/WP with the use of Stone costume pices can make one have a stone armor theme without taking stone armor.

That said one can easily do the same with going FM/INV and grabbing one of the Auras to represent Fire Armor type.

Reason one: Concept.

For instance, pretty much any Electric set is going to have me create an offshoot of my first "main" and first 50 (who was an elec/elec blaster.) So I've got a (few) elec/elec blasters, a merc/storm (a bit tangental,) an elec/nin stalker, an elec/elec brute, an elec/elec tank, an elec/elec dominator and so forth. No matter how it looks, if a new electric set comes out (and I think they're fairly well covered, unless we can find an "electric buff/debuff" somehow,) there's going to be a new character made with it regardless of look.

Reason 2: Because I haven't played it.

Has nothing to do with, as you put it, "effects changes to the metagame," but it's a reason I'll play a set. Looks don't come into it most of the time (though, in the case of Sonic, it kept me from playing the set for a while.)

I'm not arguing for these to be changed "just because," and I think we have agreement on - as you word it, "effect on impact." I've made the request before, as well, as soon as I saw the PraetPD armors. I *will* argue that there isn't really a good reason for these to be on and visible as they are now all the time, which is essentially what I took issue with in the post I replied to. "On all the time" works for some concepts - not others, and I gave examples of some that wouldn't be (for instance) running around with flames shooting out of every orifice 24/7.

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