Dispari

I don't see how they could possibly clip more than capes, wings, and spider backpack.

And I don't think not many people being able to use them is that good either. Pretty much all the origin-based packs are, in theory, based on something that only 1/5th of the characters would be able to use (possibly less for overly specific ones like cyborg pack). And I would submit that wedding and valkyrie are, at face value, much more niche than sheaths and holsters.

But nice parts can be fitted into a lot more scenarios than you might initially think. You'd be surprised at who might use things. I've seen people who don't have any guns outfitted with ammo belts. A sheath over your back that has a katana might be a neat thing to have on just about any sort of ninja or natural weapon-user regardless of whether or not they actually USE a katana.

Really I think just about everyone has the "ability" to be bitten by a radioactive robot genie.

That's because they're lazy and uncreative. A new system won't make people less lazy or uncreative. It'll actually just allow them to be moreso.

It's their own fault they don't care about their name and want to be Impetus anyway. In that scenario, they are the ones bringing inconvenience upon themselves. The new proposed system would bring inconvenience upon EVERYONE.

With the current system, I can do /invite Impetus and get the wrong person, on a pretty low chance. However, that's the fault of the player and not the system. A system that just allows people to have identical names doesn't take into consideration the inconvenience of having to constantly know the global name.

If the new system appeared, I'd be getting conflicts suddenly. And it ALREADY annoys me when I try to invite someone and their L is an i, so if it becomes common that typing /invite Impetus tells me there's more than one result, that would be highly frustrating.

The gripe is that local@global is ugly everywhere. It's immersion-breaking, it adds an extra step, and its just ugly. Suddenly, local name is pretty much irrelevant. You have to know global names to get anything done. In which case, what's the point of the local name? It may as just be an entry in your bio, as Arc said above.

Do we really need to break our backs to make the system more complicated and cause local names to be meaningless just to appease people who don't want to bother thinking about names for more than a few seconds? In fact, that even seems counterintuitive to me. Someone wants a specific name so badly that they want to shove aside anyone who has it to allow the to do so. In the process of allowing them to do so, your local name becomes totally irrelevant. What exactly did you accomplish? You gained the name you wanted, but because of the system it no longer even matters what your name is, because everyone has to look at your global.

As far as backward display of local, there's a good reason for that. Like I said before, global name right now is pretty much never necessary. People display their locals while in global chats because your local name right now is far more relevant than your global name. They do it for convenience sake.

How can it be original if somebody already has it?

I'd say you'd have to have a pretty strong feeling of entitlement if you try Impetus, Lmpetus, and 1mpetus and then go complain that you can't have the name. There are literally three other people out there who absolutely insisted on the name and willingly annoyed people everywhere by inserting Ls and 1s, and you still want to have it anyway. I don't know what else you could call it besides entitlement, especially since the argument that follows is "And as such, I think we should change the entire system so I CAN have that name!"

Incidentally, they don't exist in the same places at the same time. Those that are are more of a Supergroup (the Lanterns) or at the very least know eachother and work together. That is outside of short cloning plotlines or alternate dimension stories.

It makes far less sense for there to be fifteen strangers all named Batman, all working at the same time in Gotham City than anything you just gave as an example.

Most people don't choose their names, while superheroes tend to. If you were granted the opportunity to change your name, would you willingly and intentionally change it to something you know someone in the same city already has?

Whew, I'd work through the rest of your post but this is getting long, and I'm feeling a bit peckish.

What about wearing 12 rings, 18 earrings, carrying around two goblets, three candles, two belts, and a cup?

This is a nice idea, but only goes as far as staring straight at someone. It doesn't tell you who said what in local, broadcast, team, or in the search window. And doesn't help you distinguish people who you're trying to invite.

It IS much different. If I see someone named "Midnight" and another person named "M1dn1ght," I can immediately tell them apart. What's more, if I do /invite Midnight, there's absolutely zero chance that I end up getting someone other than who I just tried to invite. If I just invite Midnight, I won't accidentally conflict with M1dn1ght.

And to provide an example opposite yours, I've played in a game where when you send a tell to someone you only have to type as much as would be unique to their name. For instance, if I'm "Dispari Scuro" and someone just tries to send a tell to "Dispari," it will go through. If there's another person whose name starts with "Dispari" though, it gives an error and says you need to be more specific. If I'm just trying to invite Midnight, and there are five of them online, how do I know which one I'm trying to get? There's nothing further for me to clarify without knowing their global. And if their global isn't clearly displayed everywhere they can speak and communicate, I have no way of knowing.

As greedy as saying "He was here first, but I still deserve it anyway" ?

Names are a unique way to identify your characters. To give them an identity and a personality. Some people are lazy and don't care about that, which we can't do anything about. But that doesn't mean the system needs to change as a result.

We have globals because of convenience. In a game where the average player has probably 10 characters or more, it's easy to keep track of someone by using their global. However, for the vast majority of the game, you don't need anyone's global. It's useful to have it, it can save you time, but you don't ever HAVE to have it. If the system changed, you'd HAVE to know global sometimes. To the point that you'd actually have to be able to see it pretty much all the time. There's no way around that.

I'm a roleplayer too, and I don't have to do this. I play exclusively on Virtue. I get around this by not picking weak and generic names.

I'll ask, if you're a roleplayer and you care about your name, why would you want to be named something that someone else already has? If there's already an Impetus out there, why do you still want to be Impetus? Insisting on a name despite the fact that it grants you no uniqueness or identity doesn't scream "roleplayer" to me. Why would you want to be a nameless, faceless superhero? If anything, a roleplayer should want a unique name and not to be known by something as basic as "Shadow," of which there would undoubtedly be dozens.

*uses Greater Fire Sword!*

Yes. And every magic user worships and deals with magical deities, and every tech user injects themselves with nanites and throws grenades every time they attack. Don't put too much faith in enhancements. You'd be hard-pressed to make them make sense most of the time on just about ANY character.

True, though...

Whether we like to admit it or have it be canon or not, we don't start off at max power. We don't get to be Superman who just has an on-switch and immediately is at his max potential right out of the box, with no training. We DO improve over time. And unless you have gadgets, are a mutant, were in a lab accident, or had someone wave a magic wand at you, the only way for your powers to improve is for you to practice using them.

Most people will train regardless. Tech people would have to practice using their stuff, especially if it's something complicated like a suit. Magic people probably have to use the magic a lot to get used to it. For me, natural means they trained to get where they are, without those other influences. Ironman practices using his gear, but no amount of training sans technology would allow him to shoot missiles from his shoulder and block grenades with his forearm.

You can start off as a Peacebringer who IS an alien that has exotic powers naturally. But unless you practice and work at it, you're gonna be a pretty boring and weak level 1 PB with one attack.

Though, enhancements are a pretty weak system to try and tack canon onto, considering everyone can use TOs, but only naturals can use natural SOs, even though they're basically the same thing. And many of the tech-related things are far too specific to make sense most of the time.

All the SOs for natural are "training." They may be overly specific, like how the gadget DOs have you strapping grenades to your sword, but the point is you get better by training. If you don't just get really good with your powers through instant gratification granted by magic, science, technology, or mutation, how else do you get better at your powers than by training and practicing?

What else would a Peacebringer do to get better attuned with their abilities other than train and practice with them? Maybe they aren't running drills with Lieutenant Dan or training as a pupil under Jackie Chan, but you don't become strong and fast without one of those origins doing something to you.

Natural says to me that "I didn't get handed my powers; I had to work for them." Maybe you can pick up a gun and be lethal, same as a Peacebringer can naturally throw some energy around. But to be truly good at it, you have to TRAIN.

Really I think it's a pointless effort. We already showed with Positron that it doesn't really matter what your interpretation of a character's origin is. All that matters is what the person who made the character says. We could say he's mutant or science, but if Posi says he's tech... that means he's tech! vv

Since the guy who invented Superman isn't here to tell us what origin he'd be in the CoH universe, there's no right answer. We can back-and-forth over it and try to rationalize an origin, but the origins as set up are opinions more than fact.

I could take a fire demon and rationalize it as either natural or magic depending on what I feel like, and both would be right. There are a lot of times and places where multiple origins would fit the bill, and a lot of room for overlap. CoH's system isn't set up to handle some of the more complicated origin stories.

Didn't stop them from adding body-scale changes to a pay pack. vv

On a lighter note, I'm hoping that we do get the stuff for GR. Right now it seems like Jay is pretty busy (so is BABs for that matter? And we don't even know what he's working on). Since GR isn't going to be a stand-alone, it's going to need a lot of stuff to draw us in. People like me are going to buy it anyway of course. But to release an expansion that doesn't have at least the amount of costume parts that CoV had would be kinda weak.

There's also the comment BABs made recently about how a broken shoulder part looked like a quiver. We can take that one of two ways. One, just the silly fans jumping to conclusions over anything uttered by a redname and assuming that's confirmation of things to come, or two, BABs knows we love to do that and is tugging our strings with unconfirmed teasers. Either way, I want me some back options.

Are you holding down page up, while moving the mouse left and right? You have to hold down the button while rotating. It's not a toggle-switch.

Don't worry about it.

VEATs aren't necessarily more powerful than the base ATs. They're different though. For instance, all of the types you can make have buffs for teammates. They're flexible ATs -- in fact, each one can branch into two different paths. Soldiers can become either Bane Spiders or Crab Spiders. Widows can become either Night Widows or Fortunatas.

A Night Widow is somewhat like a Claws/SR Scrapper or Stalker, with buffs for their teammates. They have access to a few ranged attacks including some psi, as well as a few utility powers like Smoke Grenade.

A Fortunata is somewhat like a psi Dominator with SR as a secondary. They have a decent variety of psi attacks and mezzes, and have some of the same abilities that Night Widows have, including the same team buffs.

Crab Spiders focus on the backpack they have which gives them some nice ranged attacks, with an emphasis on AoE attacks. They still have access to rifle attacks, which Banes maintain as well. They also have a couple pet powers, and some people make "Mastermind" builds that rely on having a bunch of pets. Crabs have pretty high self-defense compared to the others, which I'd say is like a mini-Invuln, since it has moderate RES, as well as the DEF they all have, plus a power that acts like Dull Pain.

Bane Spiders are somewhat like a Mace Stalker. They use their maces to deal high damage burst attacks, and have a mini-assassin strike type power. They have more HP than the others through a passive, as well as some useful powers like a RES/DEF debuff and a hold. Some people also use Banes and focus on the rifle attacks rather than maces and play them as "Huntsman" builds, which is like a pseudo fifth build for VEATs.

If you want to learn more about VEATs, try checking the VEAT forums, or the wiki!

I believe you're mistaken on the nature of the power. Ninja Run is a poor man's travel power. It's not designed to be anything else.

It looks really cool, and with the right investment it can be faster than Fly. But it's still not as fast as SS, and doesn't let you jump anywhere near as high as SJ. It is inherently better than not having a travel power. But it's not as good as having a real travel power. The power slot may be worth it to you. I have about 2 out of 26 characters that I decided could get by with NR alone.

NR is faster than Sprint and CJ, true. It also costs tons of endurance more. NR is 0.46 end, while CJ is 0.07. It also suppresses in combat, which CJ and Sprint don't do. If you use NR in combat, you'll burn tons of endurance and generally speaking have no movement advantage. You also won't have the defense or the immobilize protection that CJ offers.

You're kind of comparing CJ to SJ and saying that SJ is way better because you move faster. It heavily depends on what you're doing. NR is way better... for a travel power. But in no way comes close to doing what CJ offers for in-combat situations. It is also better than Sprint, but STACKS with Sprint. It also costs close to twice what Sprint does.

Such as?

Say you're on a team with Rocketman and Rocketman. Besides requiring the players to jump through hoops and manually check the global every time Rocketman or Rocketman says something, what solution is there other than tagging their global name onto their local name?

What solution is there to when you type /invite Rocketman and there are three people named Rocketman online?

What are your "ways around" displaying the global name and requiring it for essentially all transactions when the only way to tell two people apart is by their global?

$70 is rich? Because that's all it'd cost to buy all the item packs today.

This is me. But right now what I really want:

* Beastial run on all fours. And maybe some other run animations.
* The ability to open the tailor (with all applicable fees) from anywhere.
* Non-cape/wing back options. Backpacks, sheaths, quivers, jetpacks.
* More tails. Specifically, fox tail. I don't care if they're animated.
* Belts with tails! Would probably have to be a separate part though.
* Leg/thigh details, like leg-holsters and things that Longbow and Knives have.
* More formal/dressy/fancy outfits and dresses.
* Higher texture quality parts, like revisions of existing tops with skin that don't look painted on.
* More costume sets and pieces to be universal. I want upper body tattoos on girls, and the arcane cape, and everything else.

Is it clear I like visual stuff and customization yet?