ClawsandEffect

It's not much, but the devs frown on a player being able to do ANYTHING while not physically at their computer.

Pretty sure they consider any AFK farming activity at all to be an exploit.

You also get a free transfer = $10 value.

So, as of right then you are buying 400 points and a server transfer and playing for free.

If you then add in the free access to power sets that Premiums have to pay for (Time Manipulation, the Dark sets, and Dual Pistols, Electric Control, Demon Summoning, and Kinetic Melee if you didn't buy Going Rogue). Those are $10 each.

The SSA's are $10 each, VIP gets those for free as well. If you wanted to play all 7 of them as a Premium it would cost you $70.

With all the stuff you get for free as a VIP that you would otherwise have to shell out money to get, they are effectively paying US to play.

Just for the record: The Helper title usually means that player is willing to answer questions you have, not necessarily that they will help you with missions or leveling.

Or they just want their name to be a different color.

Use the Help channel (it's the question mark icon just above where you type) to find people doing stuff. It's not really what it's supposed to be for, but it's how most people use it due to lack of other options for free players (that will be changing when i23 goes live)

Also, if you're chatting in Local, it's entirely possible that the "Helper" you were talking to didn't hear you. This can be for several reasons.

1) They were too far away from you for your chat to show up (Local has a limited range)

2) They didn't have Local chat in their chat window because they were in a different channel at the time.

Just because they didn't respond doesn't mean they were being rude, they may not have known you even said anything.

If you played before, use THAT account to play and you'll be almost guaranteed to have more stuff unlocked already.

Subscribing for even one month at any point in the past will be enough to have an additional reward token.

Basically, if you have ever given the game money at ANY time in the last 8 years, you are automatically a Premium player.

I can think of one right now.

Start an Ouro TF with a high level character who has a damage aura.

Go stand in the neighborhood in Atlas where groups of Hellions spawn every 30 seconds and farm all day long while you're off doing other stuff. An Electric Manipulation Blaster would be ideal for this, because their Lightning Field is so huge of a radius.

So, no, not going to happen.

Yeah....that amused me as well.

I'm not even going to bother pointing out how ridiculous the OP's argument here is, you have all done a stellar job of doing so already.

Not getting enough for free indeed.......

Edit: Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but if there were a way I could play my Incarnate characters without subscribing, CoH would not have gotten a dime from me since September of last year.

Why? Because I already have access to everything else for free. Look around at the number of registration dates on the forums that are in 2006 or earlier...all those people have access to everything EXCEPT Incarnates free, for life. If all those people suddenly stopped subscribing because they could earn their way to Incarnates for free, the game would take a SUBSTANTIAL hit to its revenue stream.

And trust me when I say: If you are currently F2P or Premium you do NOT want those players to stop subscribing, because THEY are paying for you to play the damn game. No subscribers = No more game within a year or two.

I never skip either attack.

I like still having an attack chain while I'm mezzed.

Also, you realize the Regenerative Tissue unique only works for 2 minutes after you rez, right? (directed at Hyperstrike)

I went Mace Mastery for my Fire/Fire, and now I'm an absolute monster.

I can immobilize entire groups and jump in with Blazing Aura and Hot Feet running, and fire FSC and Combustion. I almost don't need my primary anymore

Because:

Dr. Doom isn't invited to just wander around in the Baxter building whenever he feels like it.

The Joker doesn't get to store his stuff in the Batcave.

And hundreds of other examples of why villains shouldn't be allowed in hero bases (and vice-versa)

It's one thing to have the freedom to change morality, it's another thing entirely if you then go and make that morality not even matter.

I was taking it directly from what Back Alley Brawler said (from memory), and he called them Combat Stances.

I can only make an educated guess as to what he meant by that, but I think it means the power sets that share a stance share the same version of powers that work in that stance.

Example: Katana, Titan Weapons, and Staff all use the same (or very similar) pommel bash animation for Brawl when their weapon is drawn.

Broadsword, Axe, and Mace all use the same kick animation for Brawl. As do Assault Rifle and Archery.

That implies to me that there are certain basic properties of those stances that are shared across the power sets that share them, even if the animations are not strictly identical.

Are you registered with Badge-Hunter.com?

Because you have to be before you can download the map pack now. Last time I downloaded it, it went to the proper place on its own, but I had to register with the site before it would let me.

You can take Scorpion Shield from Mace Mastery at level 35, which gives S/L/E defense in good amounts. If you buy the sets you need from there at level 38 or below you can do it pretty easily. If the sets are level 33 or lower you will stay softcapped as low as level 30 (because you keep your level 35 power exemped to level 30)

Claws gets an endurance discount instead of an accuracy bonus.

Dual Blades I want to say didn't get it because of the combo system, but that doesn't explain why Staff DID get it. Titan Weapons probably because of Momentum speeding up attack animations.

It looks as though it's mostly sets that have no other real gimmick that get an accuracy bonus. Beam Rifle and Staff being notable exceptions there.

Especially since toggles don't shut off when you log out anymore. The only time a toggle will ever be shut off now is if you die or run out of endurance.

Some toggle powers don't cause redraw anyway. I cite as an example casting Rad toggles while using Dual Pistols or Assault Rifle. With Dual Pistols at least you just extend your hand with the gun in it. I suspect that was coded that way deliberately in the case of that powerset, though.

To remove redraw from, say, Regen click powers you would need to make 216 new animations. Regen has 6 powers that can be used in combat, so that's 6 new animations for each combat stance (6), times 3 for the 3 different body types, and times 2 for standing and flying animations. So, 6x6x3x2 = 216.

That's just to remove redraw from ONE power set. Now imagine multiplying that by the number of power sets that can be paired with weapon sets.

Let's look at Kick now. 6 combat stances, 3 body types, standing/flying. 36 animations to remove redraw from ONE power. And that doesn't count possible variations depending on the specific weapon being used. (not sure if it would need them, but it should be mentioned.

In order to remove redraw you're looking at, in all seriousness, thousands of new animations. A new power set requires 54 animations if all the powers in it have an animation associated with them. 54 animations for a brand new power set, compared to 216 animations to remove redraw from an old one. A new power set takes several months
to finish, so how long would it take to remove redraw from every set in the game?

My numbers here are probably not exact, in fact I'm sure they are not. But I am absolutely certain the number of new animations involved in removing redraw is in the thousands.

Back Alley Brawler's solution for removing redraw involved your weapon appearing in your hand out of nowhere, as in you start the animation and your weapon appears at the beginning of the animation. That would look incredibly stupid, so they probably will not do it that way. It would look FAR better to just be able to use other powers with your weapon still drawn, which is where my theory of thousands of new animations comes into play.

You're asking for a MONUMENTAL amount of work to fix something that doesn't really bother the majority of players that much.

I'm quite sure most players would balk at the idea of removing redraw once you informed them that they would get zero new power sets for at least a couple years because the animators are all busy on the redraw thing. Which is probably why it hasn't been done yet.

We do, actually.

I exchanged a number of PMs with Back Alley Brawler several months before he left, when he was working on the redraw issue.

All power sets have stances associated with them that the animations are coded from. Kind of like how you have to have a car before you can have a snazzy paint job.

They are, IIRC:

No Weapon: Non-weapon sets use this stance, and it's the only one there is no redraw for, for obvious reasons.
Single Weapon: Axe, Mace, Broadsword, Arachnos Mace
Shield: Shield Defense paired with any non-weapon set.
Shield + Weapon: Shield Defense paired with a Single Weapon set.
Two Weapons: Claws, Spines, Dual Blades, Dual Pistols
Two Handed Weapons: Assault Rifle, Archery, Titan Weapons, Staff (I think Katana falls into this category too)

Basically, the animations for each of those power sets are coded so they can only function while in the appropriate stance. That is presumably to make it easier to code animations for future weapon sets that use on of those stances. (Example: When they made Dual Blades, they used the stance that Claws and Spines uses, instead of having to code a stance from scratch for it)

The problem there is, you can use any power you like that is within the same stance and there is no redraw, but if you use ANY power from a secondary set or power pool it will cause redraw because the secondary/pool power is not using the same combat stance. That's why Kick makes you put your Broadsword away when you use it, even though it doesn't make logical sense to put your sword away to kick someone.

Back Alley Brawler almost got rid of redraw, but the last we heard about it was that something about Shield Defense broke things in a very bad (read: unplayable) way. I assume it had something to do with the fact that the powers that pull your shield out are toggle powers, but he never clarified what exactly the issue was.

So, yes, there really ARE combat stances that the weapon animations are coded from, and you can't just simply remove them without breaking things. I don't anticipate that changing, because it would probably require redoing every animation for every power in the entire game so that there is no longer any conflict between stances.

Did you know that, animation-wise, Brawl is the most complicated power in the game? It's because there are at least 36 versions of that one power so it can be used in any combat stance without conflict.

I only slot more than 3 if I'm chasing set bonuses.

And usually only slot 3 if it gives me a tangible benefit to do so, such as SR's DDR that is enhanced by slotting your passives.

If you come right out and say that you're going to ignore people telling you things you don't want to hear.......why did you bother posting this in the first place?

It's not the devs' or mods' job to make sure you don't waste slots. You need to pay attention to what you have unlocked.

This.

Much like how a Widow can take Build Up -or- Follow Up, but not both.

The corruptor will do more damage, but the defender will debuff regen more, so it just about evens out in terms of how long it will take you to kill them.

The accuracy debuff difference is pretty much irrelevant because AVs and GMs resist it so strongly.

Actually, if you take a brute and a scrapper with the same power set and put both at their respective damage cap, the brute will deal slightly more damage.

It's about a 20 damage difference when using a tier 9 attack, but the brute's damage is higher.

It's balanced by the fact that it's virtually impossible to keep a brute at its damage cap for more than a couple seconds at a time, due to how Fury fluctuates. A scrapper, on the other hand, can stay at its cap more consistently than a brute, so in practice their damage is just about dead even.

Also, as UberGuy mentioned, the presence of Critical Hit sways things in the scrapper's favor. A Critical at the damage cap will deal twice what the scrapper is technically supposed to be doing, because it is a straight doubling of damage for most attacks. And that is balanced by the fact that it only happens on 5-10% of all attacks. So, again, they end up about dead even when you put both at their damage cap. 20 attacks x 20 damage = 400. If the scrapper crits 1 time out of 20 with their tier 9 attack they will deal an additional 500 damage or so.

Slight edge to scrappers when all factors are considered.

We've gone round and round on this issue so many times, I'm not even going to bother going into it again, Johnny.

I'm going to reiterate one part of it and leave it at that, because I don't feel like wasting any more time in a pointless argument with you that it feels like we've been doing forever.

Tankers have lower damage because of their higher base values for their defensive powers, the caps have very little to do with it.

Since the game is STILL balanced around what can be done with SOs, it is perfectly fair, because tanks can reach levels of survivability using nothing but SOs that scrappers and brutes can't even dream of. Unless of course you expect me to believe that an Invuln brute is just as tough as an Invuln tank with just SOs slotted. (it's not, not even close)

You can't balance ATs around things that not everyone has access to or the desire to use. They absolutely MUST be balanced around the lowest common denominator, which everyone from a complete F2P player all the way up to the longest term veteran VIP has access to. Telling players they must have access to IOs and build the most bleeding edge high performance characters before they are even balanced is a dick move. That would be a blatant money grab and it would be bad for the game in the long run.

You want the Tanker damage cap to be higher than that of a Controller? Well, I want my Scrapper's resistance cap to be higher than a Controller's. It's very likely that we're both going to remain disappointed.

You're never going to accept that, I understand that very well. But eventually you're either going to have to accept it or quit the game, because that is a balance point the devs are almost 100% guaranteed to never budge on.

I just wanted to reiterate that. I have no desire to argue with you about it again. It's a completely pointless argument that neither of us will ever win, and you know it as well as I do.

In spite of our extreme disagreement, I do (believe it or not) respect you sticking to your guns on this. You haven't earned a spot on my ignore list, which is saying something given the shouting matches we've gotten into.

I agree.

She looks very much like someone who grew up watching a lot of anime and immersed in the Japanese street racing scene. Which actually makes her costume kind of appropriate if that is indeed part of her background.

She would actually look more at home as part of the Praetorian Syndicate faction, since that scene seems to be a big inspiration for their look.