Schismatrix

[ QUOTE ]
If you're wondering why my avatar is MIA, the site I used to host it at no longer allows direct linking and the free image hosting site someone suggested worked for a bit but then vanished.

[/ QUOTE ]
But i see your avatar right there.

And look on the bright side about the phase changes: You may not be able to run phase shift continuously now, but you can still get two phasing powers as infinitely renewable temps.

Actually, the addition of stealth IO's allowed me to skip Stealth on my DM/SR Scrapper who was conceived as the ghost of a boxer who died before his time. With the phase temps he can still go intangible when it's really needed and skip the stealth pool completely.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

It's good to see that the defender forums are full of such thorough readers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, give us some credit. At least we read patch notes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hell, i also read his OP and was thinking he either meant to post in the Corruptor forums or they'd added Dark Servant to Dark Blast, since he referred to /dark.
Yeah, a 3 month vacation from the forums does not a stealth nerf make.

i miss pets inheriting recharge rates the most on my Stormies. When teamed with Kinetics users Lightning Storm would evolve into Gatling Storm, and with the hold proc slotted it was a glorious thing. But, y'know what? My Stormies still kick [censored], and i couldn't complain about it being a stealth nerf when it was one of the biggest topics of discussion between the players and Devs for weeks.

The other pet i use a lot, Dark Servant, was probably least affected since i frequently toss him into spawns where he can share his Chill of the Night goodness, which is an aura anyway.

Having pets be immune to recharge rates debuffs has been useful on occasion. Either way the change hasn't broken my game at all.

...As for Jack Emmert: i do believe he's actually working on STO now, so he's somewhat irrelevant to current discussions of CO Devs, but what i've seen of the game itself at cons and the CO site has left me with the impression that the visuals and gameplay are a bit fugly. YMMV, ONVIUAON*






*Your Mileage May Vary. Offer Not Valid In Utah, Alaska Or Nebraska.

i think Sonic is another set that makes a better Controller secondary than a Defender primary. With the exception of Mind Controllers all controllers get pets that can be used as anchors for the debuff and benefit from the ally shields even when the Controller is solo.

[ QUOTE ]
Slap em with a fishy!

[/ QUOTE ]
Which is why the tier 8, Wheel of Fish, is so awesome. It's sort of like either a smaller radius Force Bubble or a larger radius Repulsion Field with a disorient added.
The scales that go flying everywhere when enemies get smacked by the tails adds a little too much clutter, but otherwise it looks awesome.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, Wow is a very good fantasy MMO. I just happen to be very much over fantasy MMOs...

[/ QUOTE ]i've heard the former, but i am the latter, so i haven't actually tried WoW.
i tried the Tabula Rasa trial and was in the the Exteel beta. i still prefer CoH/V.

This is based on nothing but the two pictures provided, but i have a hunch that the colors will be selected for the whole powerset, not on a per power basis.
i could of course be completely wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
There might not be a law precisely against Nazis in video games, but there are laws against displaying any Nazi items (such as flags or armbands). I suppose it would be up the government to determine whether or not that law applied.

[/ QUOTE ]

As far as i can recall the 5th Column had no actual Nazi insignia, just German naming of ranks and generally Nazi-inspired design. (Gotta admit, bastards or not, most of the Nazis were some pretty sharp dressers for their time.)

[ QUOTE ]
The plaque under the Atlas Statue still mentions the 5th Column attacks in WW II. It was briefly altered to mention the Council in the Beta issue when they introduced, but when I reported it as a bug one of the devs (forget which one) replied that it should have stayed 5th column, and it was soon reverted.

Personally, I've never liked the Council, and hope that the 5th Column becomes more common in ordinary missions again.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ah, i knew it was reverted, but i could've sworn that for a time it referred to a less specific "villain group". Then again i haven't read it very frequently. It was the revisions to mission text that were the most obvious and odd to me. Especially the ones that danced around mentioning the 5th by name when talking about the group the Council had replaced.

Anyway, that's all in the past, amusing as it was.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ONLY in the MA, mind you. In the rest of the game they still give LT rewards.

[/ QUOTE ]Completely understood. Mostly I was interested in the exact date of the 'fix". The details of "how" were serendipitous.

Thanks!

[/ QUOTE ]Settling an argument?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I guess the old comment is true.

People want smarter AI foes, then when they do appear people complain about their difficulty.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, this fix doesnt really mae them smarter, it just gives them stronger abilities.

[/ QUOTE ]
It made them smarter in that it made them use powers they already had and were neglecting due to AI glitches....

[ QUOTE ]
However, it would be nice to see the glass box replaced with the nifty capsule from the DKTF.

[/ QUOTE ]
This.
Agreed that a better map and location would also be nice. Just did that mission again on my 31 Defender and was disappointed it hadn't been updated at all. (It's some sort of pokemon thing i guess, since that alt would never wear a cape.)

[ QUOTE ]
Re: The link in your signature.

Please die in a fire.

Signed
- Blood Spectre

[/ QUOTE ]

Would this be preferable?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's almost like people think comic book plots have no room in comic book games.

[/ QUOTE ]

Comic book stories in a game based on comic books? what madness is this?!

Really, though, it was kind of weird how everything the Fifth did was suddenly done by the Council.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well the Council supplanting the 5th Column was very oddly handled, and even from a metagame standpoint it confuses me to this day. The official and fairly widely accepted version is that the 5th were always supposed to have been supplanted by the Council.

The thing that seemed odd to players at the time is that when change over first happened all badges, plaques, mission text and other references in game had 5th Column replaced by Council as if the 5th Column had never existed. (Though the models were still in the .pigg files.) Even alternate worlds accessed through Portal Corp where the 5th had appeared suddenly had Council instead. Apparently the Council was powerful to somehow edit the 5th Column from existence not just on Primal Earth, but in all known Earths. (Which made me wonder why they bothered fighting the 5th in the streets of Paragon City.) This prompted all sorts of uproar and conspiracy theories from some of the players regarding European/German laws and forbidding Nazis in video games.*

The Devs explained that it was just due to an overzealous editor who misunderstood what he'd been told to do when the Council were added. Some of the text in game was edited again, but for a year or more it only mentioned that the Council had replaced a former villain group that was never mentioned by name. Eventually direct mentions of the 5th Column were added back into the game.

Anyway, it was a confusing and, to me at least, amusing ride for the 5th Column from their appearance at launch, to their complete removal from the game's reality, to their reappearance as an unnamed group that the Council had overthrown to gradually being readmitted to the in-game lore, reappearing in Ouroboros, then the ITF and then the mission architect system and finally having both a task force and strike force featuring them.

To this day i still don't know what actually happened inside Cryptic studios with regard to the 5th Column and Council, but i think that in the end we effectively achieved the ultimate in comic book tropes: meta-retconning of the retcon of a retcon of a retcon. Which is sort of awesome, if a bit confusing.




*The fact that there is no law prohibiting Nazis as enemies in video games anywhere in Europe doesn't change the fact that many people on the boards (and, to be honest, possibly some people in NCsoft or Cryptic management) were convinced that there were laws prohibiting Nazis in video games,** and that's why the Council replaced the 5th Column shortly before City of Heroes was to be launched in Europe.

**Or perhaps there would just be excessive controversy.

[i]Edit: Changed an "s" to a "t".

[ QUOTE ]
Horatio already came out and admitted that his understanding of that section of the lore was incorrect, and promised to work on fixing it. Personally, him coming out and admitting his mistake gives him credibility in my book.

[ QUOTE ]
So I'm morbidly curious. What did the wizards of smart come up with for the return of the 5th Column? Someone please spoil it.

[/ QUOTE ]So wait, you talked about how absolutely horrible it was from a continuity point of view, and yet you don't even know anything about the lore of it? Wow.

[/ QUOTE ]
That seems almost paradoxical.
It must involve time travel and white Martians being collusionally manipulated by Arcanna Jones who is also being unknowingly manipulated by Helspont.
Or something.

[ QUOTE ]
(QR)

Is there some sort of MMO law that says a witch can't trade her broomstick for a boomstick?

[/ QUOTE ]

Gun Witch's broomstick is a boomstick.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Was it fluffy and creamy too?

[/ QUOTE ]

I Can't Believe It's Not an Issue!

[/ QUOTE ]
Issue 15: Now with more less!

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, would you all be happier if you paid $9.99 and they called it a booster?

[/ QUOTE ]
*meh* i was just having fun with the theme. Issue 15 was light on content compared to most issues, but i don't really have issues with that since i can understand why the Devs wanted to get the anniversary themed stuff out ASAP. It still has some good bits in it and i'd rather have some content now over waiting seven months or more just so they can put out a huge feature-packed issue. There's still content from the many of the previous issues i haven't tried yet anyway.

i am feeling greater anticipation for Issue 16, and i'm hoping giant Reichsman/5th Column/Axis America by way of Burkholder robots terrorize the Rhode and Etoile islands. Not that i have any reason to think it will happen, but i like the idea.
The ability to custom tint powersets will be nice as well.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Damn that's harsh.

[/ QUOTE ]
I see whatcha did there
You ain't gettin' me with that, or at least not a lot.

[/ QUOTE ]
*heh*

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anyone know wtf this guy was talking about?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, and I doubt he knew what he was talking about either.

[/ QUOTE ]
This.

The only other codes that come to mind are the game codes used to upgrade/open an account. Since those are one-time use i doubt those are what he meant either. i think you just ended up on one of those teams made up of misinformed fools who've invented nonexistent features/cheats for the game.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/i...henisClean.gif

There!

-Rachel-

[/ QUOTE ]

That's just mean

[/ QUOTE ]No, that was awesome.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yep. Brilliant.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That doesn't sound completely at odds with the America and Freedom Phalanx of CoX Lore I know. Go about your happy extermination, and don't forget the identical twins.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well...

...except that twins (no, not even identical ones) are not clones, nor as genetically identical as true clones are.

Oh, and twins are also NOT unlawful.

But other than those two little nits...

[/ QUOTE ]

Well it seems clones are just as vulnerable (or even more so) to genetic variation during development as monozygotic twins, so that's not really much of a difference. It seems to be a natural result of cellular replication, though clones differ even more from the genetic source due to additional genetic material in the egg in which the DNA is placed. (Though i suppose you could reduce that by making only female clones using the genetic donor's own eggs.) Additional clones made from the same egg seem to have about the same rate of divergence as monozygotic twins.

Then again i'm sure we're talking about comic book clones which use exotic technologies to shape the body and mind of the new clone into a duplicate of the original, which actually goes far beyond merely cloning the original. They're more replicants than clones.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yes we have the day off.

I am procrastinating from cleaning the kitchen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Had to do that, yesterday. XD

We worked out a deal where I'd clean house and cook meals if my fiance did the dishes and the yardwork.

The house is spotless and we just got notified of the weed ordinance. >_<

-Rachel-

[/ QUOTE ]

Time to renegotiate. In the old days there was usually a rolling pin handy to help with the discussion.
i hope at least the dishes are clean.

[ QUOTE ]
Does fort provide psi defense? If not, then ice tanks may honestly not get much use out of it... unless dealing with things that only do fire damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fortitude provides "DEF(All Types, Melee, Ranged, AOE) +15% for 120s [Non-resistable]*", so the answer would be yes.


*Unenhanced values for a Defender. Actual values may vary by AT and slotting.

[ QUOTE ]
People are invoking Joss Whedon to support a concept?

[/ QUOTE ]
i'm not, but it's true that there are many examples in games, books, comics, television and film of characters using both magical and technological capabilities, and even combining them into a technomagical gestalt.

Lusiphur from Poison Elves having a semi-auto pistol with endless ammunition in a high fantasy swords & sorcery setting is one of the most minor examples.

[i]Edit: My previous post linking to clips of magical girls blowing stuff up with guns, rocket launchers, power gauntlets and clip-fed auto loading magical staves are a few other minor examples.

[ QUOTE ]
But for you long-time players that love to play the market, please continue to come into threads with transparent "pat myself on the back for being rich" posts.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's quite a few short-time players who play the market. The market's hardly been there since launch, and playing the market has even less to do with time subscribed than almost any other activity in game.

Personally i'm not exactly well-versed in the market mini game, but when i take the time on an alt to play it casually it's still easily enough to make many times the inf needed for generic IO's and SO's. i tend to spend my time leveling up lowbies, and haven't really taken the time to learn how to play the market well, so i'm hardly a multibillionaire.

[ QUOTE ]
The other day I saw a blaster who was themed as a witch. A great bio, and electric blast/electric manipulation. Her outfit was pretty cool and her bio was enjoyable. Yet to my suprise when reading her power selection she had the munitions epic power pool. I noted that this witch would apperantly throw out a ROCKET LAUNCHER amongst her electric spells?

<snip>

P.S I realise that sometimes it is thematically correct to have different elements etc, but you can only stretch it so far.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, i know what you mean.