PsychicKitty

a compeling reason to add weather effects...thats simple.

Its for the same reason there is a rain of fire in the power sets.

Its the same reason there is a apocolypse event.

Its to create the illusion of the end times and armegedon coming.

For example in many mythos it is believed that the earth will be covered literaly with a rain of fire fromthe sky.

Imagine this happening in some city zone it could very well be a warning of one of the four horsemen of the appocolypse coming to visit.

In my opinion this would be a wonderful new type of thing to add...riders of the appocolypse coming out as giant monsters rampaging the zones....you could program them to go on a path and kill the random enemies they encounter as they move around.

Another weather effect missing of course is snow fall....which could also be an excuse to add breath effects from the characters.

The biggest reasons many games dont do these as much is due to graphic concerns....but placing the effects in certain areas....and also making it possible for players to be able to turn them off for there own personal preference is a work around many companies use.

Take for example Jade Dynasty and Perfect world...granted they are not the same engines...but they incorporate the weather effects for specifc time periods to remind players of events and things happening.

Another interesting weather effect already in the game that could use some sprucing would be for the appocolyspe event that happens.....
sure the area getting dark clouds is neat.....but its too bad there is no lighting flashes in the sky continualy as the evnt unfolds.

as i said this would cause performance issues to many players but could easily be remedied by having options to turn the weather effects off...just like turning off shadows.

The truth is i dont think players all want weather effects exactly anywise....what they want is more ambience to the already incredible enviroments...there is just so much potential to the differing areas.

Personaly if it where me running this game....i would look at the concept of weather effects and add them in randomly as special events and add special things that happen during those times.
That way i would then easily draw players to areas no longer used or explored and have an excuse to add new enemies or really wild things happening. Also would allow for the ability to test differing concepts and ideas....but
go figure thats just me.

I found that the one thing in these games that makes them the most memorable are the mysteries....things like some robot thing or some weird occurence that happens for no reason.....that maybe a few people see and then a few more see and then they all try to connect the dots to figure out why.

The more mysterious things like this that happen inthe game the more people tend to keep trying to figure them out. And if they happen to get some obscure reward that they can show off to other players at anytime...good gravy it starts a huge chain reaction.

You know there where alot of players when i first played who would scour the Dark Astoria area....there where sure there was some hidden mission or something to explain the darkness.

I dont see any forum posts about it anymore...but its too bad there isnt some strange weather effects and things for players to specualte on....the construction crews and such it looks like most people have given up on too...as they dont seam to be doing much anymore....

perhaps whent he warwalls are removed...weather effects would start happening...considering people are no longer inside giant force field areas.

Makes me wonder if when they get removed...if the ginat monsters might start attacking each other too.

what annoys me is that i tried the demon pets and found them fundamentaly weaker then the ninjas i had already used before.

And ninja die at the drop of a hat....so the demons die quicker....

Demons seam to use alot of energy for no reason...and they dont seam to be able to hit very much at all...during combat thats all i see are constant attempts to hit with melee and they fail.

That annoys me to no end.

And also Demons failed my test...i do a test with my minions...i should be able to float up above and set them to attack anything below me...and they should kill the things if the things are as strong as i am...like the halloween event encounters for example.

But out of all the pets i have tried...demons cant even do that....pathetic.

so thats what annoys me.

well i disgree with the above poster.

only powers i would skip are the very first attack...becasue its weak...and has a terrible accuracy....and the repulsor field...because its anoying to bounce away the targets you are trying to kill.

You know originaly there where specific missions to defeat those enemies....well all of them except Tyrant....they where all stand alone missions. As the ones inthe story arcs where not specifc to defeating them...they never counted all the time. But all of the stand alone missions did count.

SO if you are looking for a flash back mission...you might want to check to see if the old defeat missions are offered.....though....i am guessing the flash back system probably doesnt have all the old missions.....

Its a neat system.....but its missing missions is a list that is very large....cant even go back and do preatorian arcs.

Its like the Mission architect...no matter how many times you send in a report about missing items...you will probably never see it...becasue they just dont care.

My favorite thing about the flash back missions is that some of them dont work very well when you flash back.....i did this one where you have to eliminate the skulls and clock work.....it puts me down levels...so that the enemies inthe mission where all 6 levels higher then me....nice flash back.

I have to agree with some people that Preatoria Misisons seam easier to me with a stalker....but then again most misisons are fairly easy...the only thing i have trouble with is trying to be the perfect assassin and play that way(thats where you do the absolute minimal onthe missions...as in you kill the boss only....you dont kill anything else or hurt anything else unless you have to.

Someone metnioned that mission where you are supposed ot protect the media building from the gang...well that mission isnt supposed to be easy for anyone....and actualy it all depends on what types of powers you have.

As a stalker....i floated up over a tree and let the enemies come jump at me....i was out of range of their attacks but they where within my melee range...i eleiminated all targets...as that was the missions objective description(perfect assassination can make things difficult but not impossible)

On any missions with tons of spanws i would normaly kill all the taregts except one and then placate it....end of the spawn problem most of the time.

I only died on a few missions...becasue i wasnt able to do the damage required fast enough...like the metronome mission for example or the mission with the preatorian Tsoo in the office building where they send a couple hundred enemies after you.....both times it was an unexpected death(i didnt expect the clock work to kill me with one hit and i didnt expect that many enemies to come after me all at once while i am hidden)

Over all though...not too bad...

My only other difficulty was that i ran out of misisons alot....it seams you get missions in batches depending on your level.....so i ran out at 8 before i reached 10...i ran out at 14 before i reached 15 ran out again at 18 before i reached 20....the last time was a good thing because it let me go around and get badges.

It might also have been easier depending on my route i took....i chose to be a loyalist who looked for power...then chose to be a hero when i went to the normal game.

I got the best possible dimension change i think....becasue the emporer didnt hate me...he didnt despise me....he just wanted me to be careful....and he warned me of his plans...and told me eventualy he would attack and at that point i would have to choose whether i would help him or stay out of his way and help the people.

Only thing i miss is the crazy misisons to get more fame and popularity.

well there is a way to get rid of ambushes...

when you get ambushed...the game only gives you one usualy at a time...this is to prevent farming of a certain type if i recall right.

Anywise you can use this to your advantage.....you want to kill the ambush all the way except for one target...placte the target...they will go back to where they come from....

net result...no more ambushes....

this doesnt work on everything...like it wont work in the crotoa mission to stop things from entering the portal or stop red caps from trying to destroy monuments....but it will stop the ones that try to kill you because you are leading an npc...or have to hang out while you wait for a computer to be reprogrammed.


And as for leading people out misisons....just remember you stealth fairly fast when you activate hide and placate gives you stealth for a number of seconds...both usages can allow you to assasin strike things while you still lead npcs out.

i wish they would raise some of the damage on some of the stalkers non-assasin strike powers...

I also wish they would put a few more secondary effects in

I mean exactly how sad is it that a NPC with a common stealth effect is more stealthed then a stalker with hide....

I guess i think hide should have some sort of perception bonus.

And i always feel there should be an incentive to get most of the powers from the set...even the bad ones...

Also they might want to raise the duration of the buff power for each stalker set for stalkers(by about 1 second or 2)....as the animation times on many stalkers eat the duration.....i mean just why a penalty like that is imposed i am not quite sure.....(yes you are stalker so all your powers have increased animation times)

I am confused...why would i want to purchase this pack?

too bad the present emote wasnt a power that the player could use once every 15 minutes to get some random inspiration.

oh well....and too bad there wasn't some party costume pieces....or sports ones to accompany the emotes.

i disagree with some people who think this is a great pack.....i find the cost for what it offers a bit too steep...

And i find myself thinking it might be too weird to do some of those emotes with out the appropriate costume..i might feel different if i could interact with npcs via mini games and actualy play soccer or basketball...

But even role playing wise....i just cant seam to get motivated with this pack.

I guess...i just cant decide if i will get this pack or not...maybe i will...and maybe not....
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I had to edit this in to clarify something to some people

I noticed someone pointing out that nothing was done when people got upset in the previous pack thread....
And that people wont have their voices heard.....

But that is a misconception.....you see it doesnt matter what the develoeprs read....it matters what other players and potential buyers read.....if they see alot of people are unhappy...they will most likely understand and skip this pack....sending a clear message after a while of people not purchasing things that the company might not get people paying money for much longer if they keep up a bad trend...after all this isnt the only super hero game out there....it does have its good points...but if too many bad things are done or too many bad points are incorporated.....then like many games...players will let their walking do the talking.

I would like to see some new animations for:

Super Speed
Anything would be nice so tired of the glow under the feet thing

All blasts and control effects
As in i would like to see some spell casting perhaps they would look like the temporary power that is the special word from crotoa would be cool.
Or maybe mecha versions of things for those power armor type characters.
Or maybe even effects that look like they are like from that anime Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

Also Changed animations for each of the Major Teleport powers....
This is a big one i think should be done....its really lame that teleporting to pocket d...going to the base...teleporting to the mission or going to an auction/black market place...all use the same buggy animation that can easily be interupted by people zoning or quiting a team or using an oroboros portal or even casting buffs on you.(yep i bet you get 100s of bug reports about this..this would be a great excuse to semi fix the problem)
It was fine when it was for just pocket D...but then instead of making a different one for the base one or any others the same exact animation was used....
That is so not a good one for the base teleport...makes no sense for the base teleport...as it imposes you to get the full animation to get a pop up box you have to select.
Maybe if the base one worked as it was described and sent you to your base...instead of popping up a window letting you select where to go....it might make more sense....
I really think you should change those teleport animations.

Lastly Rez Animations....
There are a bunch of good ones...but most of the animations can never get accessed becasue they come from special limited time powers...so players are stuck never being able to use thematic ones like the angel resurection one or the hell one....

oh had to edit this one in..almsot forgot about it...

New Healing power Animations
I dont know about anyone else....but the tapping onthe wrist thing is just...so old...and it would be neat to be able to have an animation that fit the character more....yes there you are the magic user tapping on your wrist comp to heal people...there you are the mutant with spike protrusions tapping on your wrist to heal people....if this where reality i could forsee it now...the spike scrapper comes over to heal someone....as they type on their wrist comp their spikes shooting from their body kills the person first....

Wow new characters get these only....interesting....i wonder what is going to be available in the game.....just what exactly does preatoria do to its enhancements anywise?

I am sad i wont get them...but go figure....thats the price one pays sometimes for pre-ordering...i just hope someday all pre-order items and things will eventualy become available for everyone....

I am just wondering if they will follow their pattern...and have the already customers....able to transfer their hard earned titles and characters and stuff to the new game...and if it will be some huge huge upgrade so to speak.

or if it is a brand new game....does that mean we would have to spend time leveling up from ground zero again...taking tons of time to collect the accolades and rewards and unlocking all the stuff we had to unlock before???....

I mean there was alot of things still planned for city of heroes....but if thats being put into the newer game instead....makes we want to stop playing and maybe try the newer version.....though i dont know if i will be able to deal with starting out from scratch again.

My own personal opinion for ultimate game design is to always have upgrades....so if a brand new version of something comes along....the old characters and such will be able to be transfered over....

I mean dont get me wrong....i could forsee an entirely new game engine and such for a game being made and the ability to transfer the character data from the previous game to the new one being possible....its been done in many games before...and considering characters are stored onthe server...it wouldnt be difficult to create a system of transfer...might not transfer everything....but it would keep alot of things....

I always wanted to be able to grandparent my characters and account one day....to maybe a younger generation....thought it would be an interesting concept....a 100 years down the line....the updates and expansions keep happening making the game alot different then it is today....and there would be old characters still there with differing powers and abilities then the newer ones in the game....

As much as growing big or getting real small might seam....

The only thing this will do is having people a huge bunch of them...get the powers and do the usual things that players do.

I.e. a bunch of giant guys dancing around in atlas park....a bunch of giant guys dileberatly sitting ontop of or in front of or in the middle of anything that might be an event or something that other people are doing....which would include everything from using kiosks or conatacts to using the black market/wentworths to even using mission architect and even pocket D.(surprisingly i have not seen anyone with a huge character block the trams or the guards at the zone entrences very much...but i suspect after i post this....or in the near future i will)

That is what will happen, that is what always happens in these types of games.

Every game i have played that has featured giant anything.....this kind of behavior happens....from Star wars Galaxies with people pulling out 3 Kimogillas inthe cantina to Final Fantasy XI with the gaulkas using mounts and just idling away infront of people while they tried to use the auction house.

Its a fact that this would be abused and used to annoy other players...before it would actualy be used seriously.(really sad when you think about it)

Sorry...but lets look at this game now....i mean do people have to start using freezing rain or cast bubbles or ice armor on people using the consignment places? No they dont.....they do it to annoy and cause trouble...

And thats unfortunately what these neat powers would cause to happen even more.

I am not saying they are bad...they are actualy really neat for ideas and would be great for serious players...but the fact is....that the majority of the players who play any of the online games...are not serious and will mess around like i gave examples of.

I mean just how serious can a player be who calls his character Fart Gas...i dont want to even mention some of the other names i have seen becasue those are definately banning type things.

Interesting...so as we all know Hero 1 doesnt have Excalibur anymore and didnt make it back(becasue he is an end boss you have to fight)....and given what the letters imply...that means he made a sacrifice to make sure all the others did survive....so i am wondering when they will actualy show up.....

And when i say when...i mean what time period....i cant recall the exact text but something from Oroboros makes me thinnk at least one or 2 of them came back before the rikti even appeared.


So anywise....
I hope everyone realizes that If these letters had been posts from other players on these forums...the first post someone would have said is: Ok can i have your stuff then?

Endurence is a troubling thing for INV/SS...not all the time...but say when you run against things that drain the end. or you get long combats....

My own solution tot he problem in volved slotting my stamina so i could slot in 4 enhancements....
I slotted one enhancement IO that would give energy back every so often....then with the other three i put the endurence modifiaction ones fromthe same set. This was due to the fact that some of them had lesser stamina recovery then a normal IO...but i wanted to keep it one set so i could get all the bonus things.

In the end i am satisfied with how it worked out.

I disgree that having too much energy recovery is a bad thing....normaly i notice i use alot of energy..and i find when my rage goes off or i am in prolonged fights i start losing alot of energy even faster and if i am too low i end up sitting around not doing much....and sometimes not doing anything wont help...and this is with a 4 slotted stamina maximizing my energy recovery.

edited in:
Oh yeah one other thing..i personaly suggest you 6 slot your rage with the entire adjusted targeting set...so that way you can keep it up more...it will give bigger adjustments to hit...and give you more set bonus abilities. Go figure....thats what i did....

An all Tank team is alot of fun and works really well.

Dont really need a healer or much of anything...except for some certain encounters.

One encounter in particular was the eden trial...as in....although we tanks couldnt die easily and could kill all the little guys we couldnt kill them fast enough to stop them from healing the stone wall.(an example of a game mechanic issue..as in the develoeprs should have put into at least one of the tanks attacks set some form of way to mitigate regen...because if 8 players cant tackle something..then solo this problem in a smaller scalle will be undoable...ie this is an example of something that is broken)

Also against some archvillains we found we could continualy attack but the problem was again we just couldnt bypass the targets health regeneration and healing.(another big red flag here....as 8 players should be able to bypass the problem...mgiht not be able to be done instantly but it should be possible...so if it doesnt work...this becomes another example of the broken mechanic)

You see thats a huge major drawback to an all tank team.....for some reason Tanks have no way to compensate for healing rates...and when you have 8 people you can really see the hole inthe game mechanics.

Its a big enough hole that a train of 18-wheelers can drive through...

Anywise aside from what i mentioned an All Tank team is really good and alot of fun.

In fact here is a dialogue well its not exact but its basically what it was after one encounter when the entire team went AFK.

"sorry guys I was AFK for most of that encounter did everything go ok?"
"oh? You where? I think the rest of us where AFK as well."
"Hey!! You went AFK? We all thought you where dealing with the combat."
"oh well...no harm...no foul looks like they all died anywise"
"Are you sure we are at the highest difficulty setting?"

You know....you might try updating your video driver...

Yes i am sure you might be using the latest digitally signed version...

I am refering to using the latest one as in the testing non-digital signed beta version....it seams many computer users had some issues like what you described when using new supposed stable versions....and the latest beta versions seam to correct the issues..

They corrected an issue i had after i updated...which caused city of heroes to freeze my machine...

This is just a suggestion....

After all you said you had it running before so it cant hurt.

To find the beta nvidia drivers just look down in the text on the download driver screen...thats the screen where they want you to select your video card type...in the text below you will see a link to the beta(unstable drivers) as they like to call them.

Lets just say if you had not noticed...beta these days means from alot of companies: "this is what is coming out next and wont change unless it blows up or breaks something really bad."

Yep they sold out...this is going to be a big one....

I wont be there then...since its sold out....that will teach me to not drag my heels at registering.

I actualy had hoped to get the neat costume thing...but it looks like that will be an impossibility this time.

Well as the sticky on the top of the forum says:

Lighthouse:It will take about 48 hours to synchronize the test server.

And it could take longer....

Anywise you can go ahead and read the sticky thread at the top of the forum for a better explanation.

I would suggest from my own experience...to avoid the combustion and fire sword circle and take the two auras...

Lets face it....you are blaster not a melee player....you want to actualy hit and kill things...even hit and kill those paragon protectors and superior reflexes enemies.

You dont want to have to interupt your best attack chains to use some melee attack powers that consume alot of energy and use alot of animation time.....time in which you might have killed something already.

Again this is this just a suggestion...