Arcanaville

I'm actually a lifetime subscriber of Champions Online. However, I know, and they know, that the totally free form thing they were aiming for wasn't just missed in beta, but in retrospect probably shouldn't have even been the target to the degree it was. It was devastating to the replayability of a game that launched with content that was initially both thin and full of progression gaps. Much like City of Heroes when it first launched.

Its obvious they didn't learn the lessons of City of Heroes, rather they attempted to make Champions Online everything they couldn't make City of Heroes. The assumption that every limit in this game is bad and any game without those limits would be better, turns out to be very obviously false.

I keep telling Arbiter Hawk Halitosis Burst should really be a cone, not an AoE, but he really wants that power to have eighty feet of range.

We're getting a horse skill power pool? Does that mean we finally get to have ponies?

They know the players rarely assume the simple solution is the correct one.

I'm not sure the recharge is accurate, though.

! ! !




! ! !




! ! !

There's another full powerset I'm aware of that hasn't been leaked at all yet, and might be basically done. So since Zwillinger mentioned powersets, maybe I can finally stop holding my breath on that one.

Setting aside the judgment of the changes announced to date, I don't think it would be reasonable to assume /Ice would be getting significantly less recovery. The intent is for the sustain powers to all provide very strong recovery, or in the case of energy endurance discount.

The overall intent is to make blasters the masters of sustained combat. Their vulnerability will be burst effects: burst damage and to a lesser extent mez. But any fight they can walk away from is going to be a good one, because they'll have the healing and recovery to face the next one at full or nearly full strength. And during combat the intent is to ensure that blasters can wield their full arsenal against the enemies at very high levels of activity in a sustained fashion.

Incidentally estimates suggest that if blaster energize has a similar endurance discount to melee energize and a similar endurance cost, its net endurance management effect when used perma would be comparable to a power that offers about 1%/sec of recovery which is in the ballpark of the recovery value of Field Operative.

Done well, everything creates new and interesting gameplay. That's basically the definition of "done well" for a game design element.

I don't know what Frigid Protection is getting in terms of endurance management, but Field Operative (aka Cloaking Device) was demonstrated as delivering about 1.53%/sec of recovery, which is significantly more than slotted quick recovery. The net recovery shown with stamina and field operative was about 4.11%/sec which is more recovery than my incarnate SR scrapper has with Agility Core Paragon.

(Also worth noting that while field operative was up combat attributes showed zero endurance consumption, which is consistent with Arbiter Hawk saying that it would be silly for recovery toggles to burn significant endurance).

Power boost does help defense, but its extremely difficult to perma, and because it doesn't affect defensive set bonuses its contribution to defense buffs on an energy blaster is actually not usually that high.

Boost range is probably the least appreciated energy manipulation power, but I can't imagine lots more people falling in love with boost range in I24 over now.

I certainly like energy manipulation: I've been saying its the most balanced blaster secondary in terms of having the best mix of abilities from blapper to ranged blaster since probably my first week on the forums, but I don't think any generalist set like energy can really be fairly considered multiples better or stronger than the other more specialized secondaries.

That's no Sailor Moon...

If /Energy is making out better, its probably not by that wide an amount. As I mentioned, /Ice is getting the Absorb toggle, but while regen effects are being targeted at 1%/sec half-enhanceable, Absorb is being targeted at 1.67%/sec fully enhanceable. That's a high enough absorb to make it easily the equal of perma energize, even factoring in power boost.

I think power boost has always been a bit underrated, but its not getting any stronger in I24. It is getting a few more things to boost like Sonic's nuke, but /Energy is also mostly single-target focused while /Ice has and will be getting better at AoE mitigation. AoE mitigation is more difficult to leverage today except for high end builds, but in I24 blaster survivability could increase high enough to put that in play. And /Ice in particular has a path to very strong mitigation if Absorb can be fully leveraged.

If it can be fully leveraged, and that's an open question before testing, /Ice's absorb toggle fully slotted with have approximately the strength of unslotted Instant Healing, perma.

Presumably, although that moon looks a lot closer than the moon normally is. It looks like it might be only 2500 miles away.

The rough rule of thumb on the apparent size of the moon is to take a dime and hold it at arms length. The moon typically appears about half that size.

To be honest, it loses something without the cake he jumped out of.

Actually, I've been thinking about rolling Sonic/Ice when I24 rolls around. Its one of my candidate test combos to level during the beta: I have a feeling its going to be an incredibly tough build.

Don't get me wrong: I think Energy Manipulation is getting a great deal in I24. But just as I think people couldn't see past the perma /devices thing initially and I had to actually point out what Energy is going to be able to leverage, I don't think the other secondaries have been given fair shakes yet either. More than double the slotted absorb that energy is likely to get in regen and healing, plus a much wider chilling embrace, combined with the current strengths of ice patch and an almost cheating level of stacking sleep past 38, plus a non-crashing dreadful wail, sounds like one of the more interesting I24 combinations coming up.

It is of course completely fictional, as it depicts me actually returning phone calls.

A similar problem exists in the movie Its a Wonderful Life.

Lots of things will make me happy. That's also not a particularly interesting reason to do anything. But you are incorrect about the reason given in the post I quoted, which I will quote this time in its entirety:

Calling them cowards is very strong. It could be equally argued that anyone that can't generate sufficient balance to have a functional game within the framework required is stupid.

We have a phrase in engineering to describe solutions that begin with "throw everything else away and then do what I say." Its not a repeatable phrase, but it makes assertions I would consider anatomically unlikely.

Good engineering finds solutions to problems that function within the limitations of the systems they must operate within. You're given limits in resources, in technology, in what you can touch and what you can't change. And within those limits, a solution is either possible or impossible. If its possible, a good engineer finds and implements it. If its impossible, a good engineer can prove it. If its just hard, a good engineer admits they aren't as good as they thought they were.

If the devs presented me with a problem: fix this. And I was given limits in the mechanics I could use, the mechanics I could change, and the net results I was required to deliver, I would put my money where my mouth was and craft one. And a good solution would work, would cost a minimum of resources, would require the minimal alterations to the game systems, would be easy to understand, would be supportable and extensible by future developers, and would make the change in such a way that the players would barely notice it was there. I would do that without simply reinventing the wheel, without overturning half the game to do it, and without violating any of the current foundational game design rules of the game.

Because that's just what good engineering is. It serves the needs of the users of the systems. If you don't care about the feelings of the players of the game when you're making the game, or the needs of your fellow developers, what's the point?

If I'm as smart as I think I am, I shouldn't trip over the cottage rule and run home bawling over a skinned knee. I should treat it like making an airplane and having to deal with gravity.

I think its really a matter of closure. It was closure enough for Gordon to know that the boy he reached out to long ago became the man who was inspired to become the Batman, and that Gotham was saved by the acts of people like Gordon, even if Batman became the symbol of that salvation.

It was closure enough for Lucius to know that one last time Bruce Wayne thought his way out of a bind.

The closure Alfred needed was to know that his effort was not in vain: that Bruce forgave him and had fulfilled his (Alfred's) dream to finally move past the death of his parents and live his life.

They were the three people who really mattered to Bruce, and he gave them each the closure they deserved after he decided to leave Bruce Wayne behind. I believe that this was his plan from the moment he escaped the pit.

Based on the very large sample size that exists for MMO sequels, the best you can say is that MMO sequels are extremely unlikely at all.

Interestingly, Unstoppable has found some new life in my Katana/Invuln that I've resurrected from the idle 50 pile. In running with a build that dates from I9 through DA at +0x8, I find Unstoppable does help quite a bit when things get a bit rough, if I remember not to be fighting in the middle of a giant spawn when it crashes.

My guess is that the crashes get reexamined at some point, but I doubt they go away completely. I think its possible we one day see end crashing get reduced to something more like a high -MaxEnd reduction (analogous to Burnout) and health crashing get significantly reduced in strength. But I don't think you'll see crashes disappear completely.

In my opinion they are pretty comparable now in terms of damage mitigation. In terms of being tanking pets specifically stoney has an edge in status protection: jack is only protected from sleep and stun, while stoney is also essentially immune to holds and immobilize and has decent knockback protection.

There's a difference between being meta, and being ambiguous. But most people, even most reviewers of the movie, failed to see the distinction.

Inception is Nolan's love-letter to story telling. Its a movie about story telling. The movie uses the same tools the characters in the movie use to draw people into *their* story, and it tries to plant ideas in the viewer's head by telling a story about characters trying to plant an idea in another character's head. Cobb's whole plan is to present theater to Fischer, just as the audience sees the story Nolan is trying to tell through the theater of the action movie he presents.

The ending is actually pretty simple in construction. Cobb actually says to Ariadne (and his projection of Mal) what his real touchstone is between dream and reality: his guilt. He feels guilty about killing Mal, and that guilt reminds him that Mal is dead, and any world in which Mal is alive must be false. His scene with her projection is his trying to make partial peace with that guilt. Its why even in limbo, Cobb ultimately manages to regain his sense of what's real, and how he's able to take the leap of faith again to escape limbo.

Once he does, and he sees his children, he just knows he's in the real world. He takes out the totem out of reflex, but he doesn't stay to watch it. Cobb has decided it no longer matters what the totem does. He knows in any dream world where he can bring projections, his guilt will ultimately bring Mal. A world that has his children who he wants to see more than anything, but doesn't have Mal who he most wants to bring back, is the real world.

So why does the camera linger on the totem? So *we* can decide if we care what the totem does. We're the meta characters Nolan is bringing along in his story. He wants to see what we'll do with his inception attempt. He wants people discussing and debating his movie. But *not* because the story is ambiguous. Because the story was designed to incite.