Dr_Mechano

I just wish the teleporters/vault/workbenches were marked on the map...

I understand why they can't be at the moment but would be nice.

Hmm isn't energy torrent a knockback for blasters but a Knockdown for scrappers and tankers?

((this is Steve (the Shivan assistant/bodyguard of DR Mechano) personal blog, each week he'll make his feelings known on a variety of Unionverse topics, providing an interest perspective of someone partially outside the community.))

April 21st 2010
Hey again Shivanites, just thought I'd update the blog, been a long week. Anyway, let's move on to work related news.

Now I've recieved several emails asking about the attack on my workplace, rest assured everything is fine, the contracters will be in shortly and the damage will be repaired.

My condolences go out to the families of John, Sara, Andrew, Alex, Maria and Jane whom we lost in the attack, their funerals will be next monday, so any of my coworkers reading this, be sure to go along and give your condolences to the families, I would but the family have expressed that I do not. Which I can understand.

Speaking of work, the boss has OK'd me to tell you that he's got a surprise coming to Paragon City soon, he can't visit himself but he'll be sending an employee over to sort out certain 'unfinished business' with a group of people...you know who you are!

On a better note we have a proper 'surprise' coming to Paragon City, we're in the process of booking the same place that Capecon used for the first annual Necrotech roadshow! I'll be there as will the ever lovable Professor David Thulian (Just call him Dave, he hates being called David or Prof) check out his blogsite a www.Daveythul.com. He'll give you more details about what we've got planned and the status of his Black Hole gun he keeps going on about (he's not allowed to test it within several lightyears of inhabited planets).

There will be boothbabes, the ever luscious Amiette and Tyette to show off what can be done with the dream partner program, Terrance will be paying his old friends a visit to talk about the new Walkie-Waffler range and for one lucky con-goer there will be the chance of a lifetime to win a free New You program opportunity!

Right that's my usual work related news out of the way, yeah I'm totally a corporate shill and you know it but lets move on to my favorite topic and one I know you will all love, Superhero related stuff!

Ok for this weeks hot or not I'm going with that feline heroine Tiger White ((pictue of Ellie in her battle uniform, probably taken from a paper)). Unfortunately due to being an undead abomination that should not be I can't really tell what constitutes 'hot' or 'not' which is why I have this section, you people vote if she is and that'll help me learn!

We also have the 'Babe of Vanguard' no name to go with this picute ((it's Annette in her skimpy outfit out in the RWZ)) but I've been told by several of my work colleges that she's 'hot' and that they'd like to 'invade her dimension' anytime...I honestly have NO idea what it means so I just ignored it.

Gossip from the Superhero meeting point of Galaxy Girl, according to our sources two heroes had a lovers spat, hardly surprising, that place just attracts emotional deliquents like honey attracts bees and there's a homeless man there shouting about something...when are they NOT shouting about something...

...I mean whether it's for food, drugs, shelter or just "oh god get away from me you glowing green thing" they never seem to stop shouting until someone takes them away to preform illegal experiments on them...for those mad scientist wannabes out there...they make terrible test subjects...the more you know .

We also had reports of the usual chit chat amongst the statuegoers, why female hero costumes are so revealing. The answer is mostly "because it's distracting and it makes it easier to move" apparently. If that's the case, why don't they just fight naked like I do? Admittedly I haven't got the same 'parts' as you humans but embrace the breeze humans, it's cooling on your gelatinous outerstructure.

Remember I need your stories to help me update the blog, so contact me via email and I'll credit you with being the source unless you wish to remain anonymous as this weeks tipster did.

Finally the ever popular last segment on my blog, "is it food?" I show you a picture of something and you tell me whether I should eat it. Last week I showed a picture of a kitten and most of you voted no, you kind souls, to be fair I don't think I could have gone through with it myself, I just like cats too much. This week, linked to the topic above is...

...homeless people...are they food? I mean they're not helping society any, would it be wrong to eat one of them? Answers in an email and I'll see you next week folks.

Also see pictures below, I've got myself a tie...I guess I'm not technically naked anymore...snazzy isn't it?

((several pictures of a Shivan in a red and black striped tie. In his photo album is various 'party shots' of Steve and coworkers at various office parties, nobody seems to even care he's a Shivan in the photos but they are all mad scientists)).

Now splattered from head to toe in the gore of the two unfortunate blackshirts, Chimera was barely slowed by the onslaught of equipment, she stalked forward.

"Hu-Fir..." was the only word to come from her snarling mouth as she crushed the remains of the blackshirts underfoot, a horrible crunching, popping sound followed as geysers of blood sprayed from what was left of the remains but appeared to be exceedingly careful to step around the body of Mike.

Thankfully the building is only two stories high and there were many windows with which to make an evacuation from, there was also a fire escape door in the next room, yes the building was 'up to code' fortunately for those members of the Humanity First.

Meanwhile in the Cafeteria
Steve and T0N-E seemed to pause.

"This is Edward, do not purse, I repeat do not purse, secure the perimeter is out first and foremost conscern, that means you too Chimmey, any of these oafs left in the building are fair game...capture the wounded if you can, I have experiments I need to run..." an ominous and very evil chuckle echoed across the tannoy.

T0N-E went back into guard mode, the gatling lasers whirring down and the pilot lights of the flamerthrowers blinking out.

Steve dusted off a neaby clipboard and searched for a pen, turning over the bodies of the dead scientists until he found one, he begun the task of noting down the names of those who had died, the standard payout for death at work would be sent to their families along with Edward paying for any funeral costs the family would incure.

Steve picked up a rather funky looking tie of the ground, not sure who it belonged to, putting it on he adjusted it, it was time for the Shivan to put on his business brain and leave behind the raging smashing beast he had needed to be while defending Edwards complex.

Edward's office
Edward let one final broadcast to any blackshirts left on the premise, "You broke into my house, stole my property, murdered my servants, and my PETS! And that is what grieves me the most! You destroyed my robots. Infidel Defilers. You shall all drown in lakes of blood. I shall personally see to it that I crucify you upon the tree of woe...know this Humanity First...the sword of Damocles now hangs over you, Project Chimera will be your undoing..."

Agreed we need something along the lines of WoW:Cataclysm, one of the key reasons a WoW dev says for completely reworking the 'old world' of vanilla WoW was that it just didn't come up to the standard set by Outlands and Northrend, it was starting to show it's age, especially since they want to move AWAY from the Everquest model as it appears to be in recent years.

Perhaps this should be the next expansion, City of Supers: Rebirth.

Tell you what, just before the expansion is released, crank up the Rikti invasions to eleven, I don't mean more just more frequent, I mean a day before the expansion hits slowly crank up the invasions to the point where they're non-stop in all (being revamped) zones with a mothership hovering overhead then cut off the servers at their height...

...once people log back in after the update have the MOTD display something like the following.

"It has been six months since the end of Second Rikti War, Paragon City and Arachnos have enlisted your help and now the rebuild is finally complete, however while you have been busy cleaning up the mess of the Second invasion old foes have reared their ugly heads...the rebirth of this world is finished but the battle of good and evil will never end.."

Add bomb and assault suit spawns in the Rikti Warzone so people can still get the invasion accolade and BAM! Not only have you've moved the story forward properly but it's a wonderful excuse to have the zones revamped.

And who hired Dark Respite to do their trailers!

Hmm something of a City of heroes/Eternal Earth connection going on there...

Steve was more than a match for the Junkyard dog, lifting the massive robot above it's gelatinous head and hurling it's broken body back through the breach with a gutteral roar, taking some of the Blackshirts with it.

T0N-E was impassive as a robot could be, the whirring whine of gattling lasers and the whooshing roar of flamethrowers sweeping in arcs of death and destruction, the music still coming from his loudhailer...it seemed to be increasing in volume the more kills the robot got, as if it was showing off.

Meanwhile in the R&D section...
There wouldn't have been much time to celebrate, the hulking, seething mass of the creation of Project Chimera was now in the doorway. Electricity seemed to arc off the walls and doorframe, muscles could be seen to contort underneath the skin. Chimmey looked down to see the body of Mike laying lifeless.

She hunched over to gently shake it before looking up at the assembled group with a look of sheer fury and anger. The hatred etched into her face was immense, it was a burning, seething rage that seemed to cause the electricity to become more of an electrical storm focused around the behemoth of a construct.

She slowly, purposeful, filled with all the malice, spite and hatred in the world, begun her advance on the group.

Personally would vastly more prefer the 'vet choice' system.

let's take a look at what I'd have with a choice system, note these are ACCOUNT based not CHARACTER based, so you can't try out all the vet rewards at 3 months by making different characters.

3 months.
Choice from the costumes pool.

6 months.
Choice from the costumes pool.

9 months.
Choice from the costumes pool.

12 months.
two Choices from the powers pool (this includes Sands of mu/Ghostslaying axe, nem staff/blackwand, mission teleporter, both the non-combat and combat vet pets, assemble the team, Prestige Sprints and City Traveller).
This 12 month two choices is only because the current one awards the Prestrige Sprints AND the sands of mu/ghost slaying axe choices. For 24, 36 etc. there would only be one powers pool choice.

Then the cycle repeats itself.

Things like the base items are given out on the current months they're given out as, let's face it, most people can wait for base items (they're not an 'oooh awesome' moment and usually an additional feature along with another reward).

Sadly the 'reflective flooring' of the Atlas city hall is actually an optical illusion.

It's not a true reflection instead they built the atlas city hall upsidedown underneath the regular city hall, made the floor semi-transparent and wholia! Reflective flooring.

That's the reason it doesn't reflect players is because it's not actually a proper reflection.

See I would be inclined to agree with you IF we did have long multi-AV fights.

Those fights actively discourage buggering off elsewhere and resting, especially Reichsman or the final eight in the Lord Recluse Strike Force which means the squishiness of rest causes you to be deaded in mere second (if you even get the chance for it to toggle on), you're discouraged from using rest yet the fights go on long enough that you'd obviously need to use it, even detoggling certain toggles isn't going to help you in the long run if the fight goes on for 10 minutes.

Unlike WoW EVERY class here runs on 'mana' whereas in WoW only the casting classes run on Mana and they get an ingame 'emergency recover mana' spell they can use midfight or someone in the raid group has 'team mana recovery' spell. Not every powerset has 'emergency end recovery' and not every support powerset has a 'boost team recovery'.

Sorry Sam but I also see you in the minority, those who are willing to slot endredux in attacks and wait every couple of fights using rest are definitely a smaller group to those who will just put up with taking Stamina and being able to rock on through. Player perception is distinctly against you Sam.

Plus having to 'have a break and a kitkat' is distinctly unheroic especially when it's just after a large group of thugs...sure natural based heroes might need a bit of a breather but the superhuman ones would just blow through the thugs without so much as a second thought. Resting after a long battle with an Archvillain, sure, that takes a lot out of heroes but just smacking around a group of thugs shouldn't be enough cause to suck wind.

Edward smiled, "ah...sounded like it came from R&D side of things.."

He positively beamed with the fact there was someone a little closer, he looked to Chimmey who was now fully dressed, electricity sparking all around her from her cybernetic implants, she simply nodded her head and moved in the direction Edward indicated.

Meanwhile...
The cheers would have been short lived, the sound of 'Lion sleeps tonight' by Tight fit continued to blare out of the smoke and above the din of battle. Through it stepped the somewhat less intimiating sight of a runt bot painted in Tiger stripes. However the gadgeteers and fixers could see this little runt was very heavily armed.

A rather more intimidating presence could be made out through the smoke, an unearthly green glow illuminating the area followed by a low gurgling growl. Steve stepping through the smoke and staring straight at Junkyard Dog, the Shivan a clearly imposing figure, standing taller than any of the assault bots.

Steve lumbered towards the crowd, the only saving grace the Blackshirts had was that all the other specifically tailored robots had taken to guard the patients being evacuated, thus there was only T0N-E and Steve to stop them.

Back in the labs...

Edward pressed a button, a secret compartment in the wall appeared, holding what was an ordinary looking sledgehammer.

"Ah Foehammer, it's been a while but if they want anything they're going to have to get past me...and that's a tougher task then they have been led to believe..."

He stood guard in the lab, waiting...

Hmm my own personal opinion is that the massive mocking the initial Jetter Shoe advert recieved from the community for being just that damn crappy probably soured a lot of advertisers on the reaction.

I'm assuming they would have kept abreast of what people were thinking of the add and having people look at the forums, seeing quite a large segment of population they're targetting actively taking the mickey out of it, denouncing it as rubbish and generally calling it crap probably got Nike to pull their brand from it instead of bothering to make a, you know, good advert.

The problem was that none of the promised things were applied to the adverts until quite near the end of their lifespan.

1) The devs promised that filters would be applied to the adds to make them fit the enviroment, the Jetter shoe advert had no such filters in place so it looked pretty much out of place EVERYWHERE. It wasn't until the last set of adverts did they apply the 'poster look' filter (as seen in my example of the only EU add) and dirty them up for Rogue Isles or make them look ruined in Boomtown.

2) The ad itself was just poor, it honestly did look like a low rez Jpeg of a shoe with 'jetter' written in the corner making the advert look completely half-arsed, the Tony Hawks and Babylon AD one looked a hell of a lot better.

3) It wasn't for a product that I would consider for the target audience playing MMOs, sure they may buy fancy trainers but as mentioned it didn't really fit the target audience. Something like Mountain Dew/Red bull (since we don't get Mountain Dew here in the EU), the latest sci-fi or comic book movie (like the Babylon AD example), just generally better targetted advertising.

not working for me...try posting your link to to it CB.

Actually thanks to the addition of Ninja run I've found that not having to do the whole 'delay proper travel power indefinitely' thing which means that all my characters are freed up at 6 to pick swift/hurdle, 14 or 16 (depending on whether something important arrives powerset wise like say scrapper mez protection toggles) for health and 20 or 22 for stamina.

Surely people have got to see something wrong when the answer to most peoples problems with endurance isn't answered by 'slot endredux in your attacks and toggles' but 'get Stamina' by the majority of people ingame and on the forums. In some cases, say Spines/Fire getting stamina AND slotting for endredux isn't enough thanks to running six toggles at once (the two resist toggles, the mez prot toggle, the two PBAOE toggles and Tough) and I'm slotting invention +recov bonuses soley as well. It's only once most of those sets and physical perfection from the body mastery pool are gained will it even itself out.

I dread to think what that build would be like without stamina...

((GAH! Sorry Brit...next time send me a PM or give me a slap or something!))

Sirens begun to blare as the facility came under attack, Mechano stood up in his office, "so they finally got brave enough...Steve, time to put our little pet project to the test...first it needs some finishing touches...go slow them down..."

The hulking Shivan nodded and begun lumbering towards the site of the breach.

Edward leaned down and spoke into the microphone, a message blaring out over the tannoy.

"This is Doctor Edward Johnson, this facility is under attack, all patients are to be evacuated, all guard bots report to the sight of the breach, R&D boys and girls, you are now officially weapons free...time to put that research to the test."

Edward paused for a second and then facepalmed, "except you Dave...I do NOT want that blackhole gun used under any circumstance...use some other project you've got going..."

Edward swore he could hear cursing from the R&D department from here which led to him giving a chuckle.

The Medical staff begun their evacuation of any patients, a few scientists who had been using the cafeteria at the time of the attack were either caught in the explosion or killed by the random sprays of gunfire.

Edward calmly walked down to the genetics testing lab, pressed a few buttons on a keypad as Chimmey was released from her tank. He unhooked the wires and feeding tubes.

"Welcome to the real world my dear...take a moment to gather your breath...it's time you went into your first test..."

Edward offered the naked hulking catgirl a towel. To the side was a black t-shirt with the Skull and Cog logo on it and a pair of trousers painting in urban camo. Chimmey begun to spark and sizzle as her cybernetics kicked in...

...meanwhile at the breach the lower grade guard bots had flooded in, almost all of them were quickly downed by gunfire, being little more than a deterant to the street punks of Sharkshead Isle than an effective fighting force.

Then a noise came through the smoke, the clanking of heavy ladden mechanical feet and....

"...Ah-wee-ooh-wee-ooo, wee--ee-ee-ee-oo, we-um-um-a-way..."

It's been a long while since we had a community plot. Since the board merger they've kind of died off.

I was planning to start one myself (see "Project Chimera" that Mechano is working on and I need to prod Britannic to hurry up and post) though that wouldn't be on the same scale as your idea.

Hmm The Requiem War and (tooting my own horn here) the Chronodyne plot (which involved the three big SGs at the time) were the last big community plots created by ourselves, the second Rikti War was of course an ingame event.

I'd be glad to offer up Amy or DR Mechano, though less perhaps the good DR, comicbook science can be fairly rulesbreakery at times and I wouldn't want to ruin the whole plot with him.

It is quite funny seeing the 'you and your ilk'.

Sorry but I had to laugh, if anyone remembers the British comedy duo Punt and Dennis they'll remember the line "damn you and all your kind'.

This is what appears to be the main problem in CoH, the PvPing community is completely seperate to the PvE community.

Lets take a look at WoW, most PvErs will run the battlegrounds when they've got nothing better to do, there isn't such a completely defined seperation between PvP and PvE communities, everyone does a little bit of both most of the time just to pass the time. There are more hardcore PvPers and casual PvPers but most people will do PvP battlegrounds for something.

I know I did PvP not for the gear but to obtain the PvP mounts which were black versions of the normal racial mounts, ones I couldn't get the normal coloured versions of in PvE because of the massive rep grind involved. Sure my black mechanostrider was a dime a dozen and everyone could grab one but I could obtain one and that made me happy.

Here there is a very definite seperation between the two communities, thanks to the way PvP is set up here, one cannot casually pop in to a warzone with any build (Hunters in WoW each talent tree had their advantages, Beastmastery could break out of stuns and holds, Marksman dealt high burst damage and Survival gave you more tricks up your sleeve to go escape melee fighters). Heck even a healing priest was useful to keep the main tank's health up for the general fight in AV or for mass group healing.

Here there are only a certain amount of 'good builds' for PvP, if you're not one of those, it's damn tough, you're character will get their *** kicked time and time again, doesn't matter if you pimp yourself out with 10 billion infs worth of IOs, if you're one of the unlucky powersets (like Assault Rifle on blasters for example) then you're going to get your backside kicked.

I know this may be upsetting to you but I'm going to be brutally honest here...the PvP community is small enough in that it matters only a little, the last quote was 5% a few years ago, with the Issue 13 changes having driven off (according to the PvP community) a lot of PvPers then we're probably down to 2%-3%. The PvP community is very vocal but it produces more noise than a community it's size normally would. They're the opposite of a silent majority, a noisy, shouty minority.

Despite what you think you simply matter a whole lot less than the PvE community, otherwise why the hell would they try to drag some of the PvE community into PvP by focusing on changes that were completely detrimental to the old way of doing things in PvP?

Issue 13 tried, it tried and failed.

As much as people hate Jack the one thing he said back when he was doing interviews for CO is that "if you don't have PvP at the start of a games life, adding it later is more trouble than its worth" and he's damn right (for a change).

To be fair he made a lot of mistakes, adding PvP and getting them to add villains as an expanshalone but that one quote shows that just throwing in PvP, as they have done with City of Heroes/City of Villains without any real consideration of the impact it has, was a major mistake.

So look at it this way...say they did get rid of PvP entirely, made the shivans and nukes available through PvE methods, turned all the PvP zones into PvE zones. The game would lose, at most 3600 subscribers (assuming we're at the 120k subscriber mark), that's not a whole lot of subscribers compared to the remaining 116400 subscribers who are here for PvE.

They're not going to gut PvP though, that would be stupid, instead they're going to focus on parts where they get the most bang for their bucks, PvE.

Sadly it comes down to a simple numbers game in the end my friends.

He does, sort of, have a point there, there are too many PvP zones for the PvPing population we have, it spreads them too thin, while just having RV wouldn't work (because there's no way, even at 50, a level 1 could compete with a natural 50).