Umbral

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So No. I'd prefer we move away from polearms. I'd be fine with Staves so long as Quarterstaff style and Longstaff style were presented with their own powersets.

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Yes, because the devs have shown a desire to allow every stylistic option within a vague term to be accessed in the past, right? There's a reason "Martial Arts" is a generic and largely unbelievable style of Asian martial arts: they couldn't bring every style into the game.

If a Staff power set were put into the game, expect it to be pretty generic and designed to function for all types of staff combats. Also expect them to put Polearms into the game at the same time because, as has been demonstrated numerous times before by some weapon customization options, it doesn't really matter what a weapon looks like as long as the animation is cool and the weapon looks cool doing it. Plus, there wouldn't really need to be the entire polearm family to deal with. Most of those listed were pretty ineffective and actually completely lack any real fighting style (thank you peasants putting random farm implements on long poles), and it's not as if we've got every type of broadsword (or 1 handed sword of whatever kind) in game so there's no precedent for full inclusion.

Anyway, Staff and Polearm sets are simply a pipe dream at the moment. BAB has repeatedly stated that the primary problem with a polearm/staff set isn't the numbers or inability to make animations. The problem is that the game can't decently handle gripping something in two hands while maintaining the vector based sliding scale that players use all the time. All of the weapons players use at the moment with two hands are actually anchored to one hand with the other just getting close so that it looks like they're both holding on to it. When the distances get large and the grip smaller, the non-anchor hand can very easily start holding on to nothing. Until that issue is solved (which might never happen without an engine revamp), don't expect it. This doesn't stop us from thinking it would be a nice set to have though.

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Actually, I covered that under "Graphics":

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My bad. Read over that really fast and missed it.

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The other problem with the sheaths is that rigid items close to the body don't work well, especially when they're across parts of the body that are going to be moving a lot. Whenever the characters bend backwards, the sheath would disappear into their back (and possibly appear out the other side). Whenever they bend forward, it would either float off of their back (if the attachment point is high on the back) or pass through the upper portion of their torso (if the attachment point is lower). In order to avoid these issues (it still wouldn't avoid all of them like when the torso turns quickly and the cape passes through limbs), the sheath would have to use similar mechanics to the cape, which wouldn't work because a sheath is supposed to be rigid.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, there would be clipping issues with Capes/Wings, the Magic Pack Bolero, Trenchcoats, and Jackets, too. They wouldn't stop me from taking a back scabbard for my AR, but people that found them unacceptable could just not take the scabbard. If I didn't make it clear, I intended that these would always be optional. No one has to take the scabbard/sheath/holster if they don't like how it looks.

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Actually, I pretty sure that the devs wouldn't put them into game if they couldn't make them look right. I also think you're underestimating how much clipping I'm talking about. Characters bend backwards and forwards a lot. Every time a characters bends, it's going to cause either obvious and ugly deformation of the scabbard or the scabbard passing through the body, neither of which wouldn't be acceptable considering the high standards that the current series of devs has for what they put out. The clipping involved with capes is incredibly minor compared to what would happen with back scabbards.

Another point to consider is that I doubt that the back scabbards would be available with the bolero or jackets or any of the other animated back pieces. Side scabbards would probably be similarly limited (though less likely depending on how perpendicular the scabbard is to the rest of the body) thanks to how they would interact with them. I doubt the devs would really allow a situation that would cause so many rampant clipping issues.

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Umbral Melee

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I agree wholeheartedly with this. If people are going to start picking me up to throw me at their enemies (some people have requested Umbral Blast), they might as well be able to pick me up and bludgeon their opponents to death with me while I rant at them.

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You do realize that weapon redraw is an issue of powersets, not the limb used, right? Sets will cause weapon redraw when a power that doesn't explicitly use the same weapon is activated. To prevent redraw, the power would have to pull out either a bow or a gun (causing redraw for the other as well as anyone who doesn't use either) if a weapon isn't currently in hand.

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Admittedly, I don't fully understand how weapon redraw works under the hood. But I'd hope some of the tech they applied to shields could be ported into such a set. I'm thinking particularly about how brawl works with shields on or off. And yeah, I guess if you had pistols, a bow or an assault rifle out, cobra strike could look okay. But no, I don't get the tech stuff. But I do find it frustrating if you use any attacks outside of a weapons set other than brawl or your inherent origin attack (Magic Charm, etc.) that you lose that cool look of having your weapons out.

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You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. BAB has outright said that the reason that redraw exists is because the power set that summons the weapon has the character adopt the stance as part of the animation. Part of the stance is that the weapon trigger causes it to be out. Whenever you use an attack (or any click power) that is not exclusively within that set, it resets to the default stance and therefore removes the weapon.

Shields operate differently because they are not part of the power's animation or aftereffect (re: stance). The shield simply exists as a power activated animation, similar to capes in some degree. You must also realize that, if the parity you are asking for between weapons and shields were real, then the weapon would never leave the hand. If a broadsword user activated the pistol temp power, the gun would appear inside/merged with the sword.

As for brawl and the origin power, afaik, they are specially coded to be attacks within the power set (kind of...). I believe that, when you choose a power set that has a special brawl, your brawl immediately accesses a different animation. It's the same for the origin powers.

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You're not allowed to fix it. We've still got at least 3 more pages of insensitive commentary to get out of your inability to read several lines appropriately.

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I read them, they registered. I looked at the commentary. It wasn't even that effectively insensitive. Jy00 suX0r would have been more intelligent. And insightful. And slightly less off-topic.

Back to my original point:
Monah. Nao.

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We're in a J-force thread. It's on topic to be off topic. That's how they work. Thank you for playing though. Next time you might want to remember where you're posting.

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(that don't cause weapon redraw--so we'd need to can Cobra Strike!)

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You do realize that weapon redraw is an issue of powersets, not the limb used, right? Sets will cause weapon redraw when a power that doesn't explicitly use the same weapon is activated. To prevent redraw, the power would have to pull out either a bow or a gun (causing redraw for the other as well as anyone who doesn't use either) if a weapon isn't currently in hand.

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Is anybody aware of scythes ever having been used as weapons successfully in the real world?

The only examples I know, from German peasant uprisings, had their blades reforged to point forward rather than to the side. Remember that a scythe is a slashing weapon and the edge is on the inside of the curve. Properly animating a scythe would include a 1-2 second delay after every attack where you try to wiggle the blade free of your opponent.

There are a lot of cool polearms out there. Spears, tridents, glaives, halberds, naginatas and a bunch of other Asian ones. All of these would make for cool looking sets. Hell, I could even think of a worthwhile mechanic or two to make the sets unique. Scythes however are about as dumb as Pistol Scrappers.

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I agree with you completely. Scythes are a completely inane weapon (except for the weaponized ones that are more akin to polearms than the actual farming implement). I really don't understand why people want to see a Scythe set, especially since Polearms would work much better (and in the same manner I described above), but I was simply illustrating the problems in the idea outlined.

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Obstacles

The biggest one I see is that, AFAIK, we only have one "waist" attachment point. So a waist-mounted sheath would have to override any other waist item choice, and the graphic would have to include the appropriate belt/strap/baldric/etc. But we have plenty of other mutually exclusive costume choices, and someday, when they add more anchor points to the basic character skeleton, they could give us a second waist anchor, and move the belts/straps/baldrics/etc. to the appropriate menus.


I don't think we'll see them in the next issue or so, but this is one way Scabbards, Sheaths and Holsters could be implemented with the existing system.

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You're also forgetting that, thanks to weapon customization, not all weapons look the same any more. Using the system you describe, the grips of Rularuu's Fang and the Rikti Katana would be identical to the grip of the Legacy Katana, which, while being explainable within the confines of roleplay, is going to look goofy to the guy who actually wants to see his hard earned Rularuu's Fang hanging off of his back. The only way I can see around this is to directly link the sheath to the weapon. If you choose the Legacy Katana, you get the Legacy Katana sheath, possibly recolored.

The other problem with the sheaths is that rigid items close to the body don't work well, especially when they're across parts of the body that are going to be moving a lot. Whenever the characters bend backwards, the sheath would disappear into their back (and possibly appear out the other side). Whenever they bend forward, it would either float off of their back (if the attachment point is high on the back) or pass through the upper portion of their torso (if the attachment point is lower). In order to avoid these issues (it still wouldn't avoid all of them like when the torso turns quickly and the cape passes through limbs), the sheath would have to use similar mechanics to the cape, which wouldn't work because a sheath is supposed to be rigid.

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For a melee set my top 2 would definitely be scyth and staff... Could even be the same powerset with weapon customization if done right, although scyth would do lethal dmg and staff would do smashing (which has already been stated isn't really possible... Lethal/Smashing anyone? ).

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To do Scythe and Staff with the same animations but different effects (which I doubt they would do), the devs would have to make them completely different sets just like they did with Katana and Broadsword. I doubt that they would make them share animations since a Scythe and a Staff are used in completely different manners, though, if they do make them, I predict that they will follow a similar model as Katana and BS insofar as their attacks follow the same progression.

I don't really see the point. It's not as if they can completely screw up your life with a single attack like Sappers can. The only time they're dangerous is when there are a number of them, which I think is the point.

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I just checked. I'm sorry to say I failed my "take this seriously" throw. Oops!

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The -5 penalty to those just for being Forum Cartel makes it a bit hard, huh?

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Give everyone more hitpoints, damage, resistance, make IH a toggle again, give widows back their uber defense and a number of buffs across the board to make pvp last longer and more interesting.

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You do realize that the reason behind the nerfing of the defensive sets was to make it so that players could no longer be statically invincible? Toggle IH was removed because the only way to kill a decently build */Regen was to get lucky by toggle dropping IH and then praying that you got lucky enough to get enough damage in while it was recharging and (hopefully) the */Regen was stuck in animation. I PvP'd like crazy back when arena was first released and even I had to admit it was a bit borked. More than once, I simply stood there and let */nrg blasters beat on me just to see if they could actually beat me (they generally couldn't because I was fast enough with Recon and I had loads of pointless toggles for toggle droppers to eat through).

Personally, I find the current state of PvP to be much nicer than it used to be. No longer is mez as painfully broken as it use to be (once your mez protection was overcome, you were screwed...). You can actually defeat a target via attrition rather than purely through obscene burst damage. Of course, it takes some getting used to because all of your powers operate completely differently, but that's to be expected in a game where PvE is balanced around a single player fighting massive mobs of targets and continuing on without resting.

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I love J-Force because they are going to give me one billion inf for typing out eighteen words.

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Fxt.

Monah. Nao.

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You're not allowed to fix it. We've still got at least 3 more pages of insensitive commentary to get out of your inability to read several lines appropriately.

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I love J-Force because they are going to give me one billion infamy for typing out eighteen words.

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Good job with reading comprehension there.

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Better solution: make sending emails cost inf. Not much (somewhere in the 1000 inf range), but it would cut down on the spam oh-so much because now, in order to advertise, they've got to use their "product".

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That wouldn't even make a dent in their inventories. They sell influence in lots of 100 million and more.

User-configurable email filters are the only viable solution that I've seen proposed here so far.

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You'd be amazed at how great an impact having a low cost on the emails can be, especially when it's combined with the incredibly high volumes they send out. And the point of making the cost relatively insignificant is that it is relatively insignificant. If a player wants to send another an in-game email, they should be able to without it costing an arm and a leg.

Keep in mind what their likely hit ratio is. If they send out 1000 emails (1 mill inf at my cost), are they going to get even 1 hit or does it require more? If anything, it's going to increase the price by decreasing their available stock.

Better solution: make sending emails cost inf. Not much (somewhere in the 1000 inf range), but it would cut down on the spam oh-so much because now, in order to advertise, they've got to use their "product".

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This specifically has remarkably origin specific animations and names (rocket pods, nano machines, holograms, etc.).

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True, but the same can be said for Archery, Assault Rifle, Devices, etc.
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Archery can be explained away in any number of ways. It's not as if the technology behind Archery is particularly advanced.

AR and Dev also have the issue of technology but it's not as if all of the animations pretty much dictate origin. You're talking about missiles, armor suit specific names, etc. It's even more of a stretch than a swiss army gun to make the origin something other than Technology, especially since you're specifically making most of the powers explicitly linked to the armor.

The other problem is how would it operate for characters who choose to not have armored suits as their costumes. It's just too specific imo.

Sounds to me like most of that could be done by making an Nrg/Devices/Power Blaster with the Fighting pool (to account for the additional toughness and survivability the suit provides).

The biggest problem I've got with that is that it is highly specialized. Stone Armor can get away with it because you can explain any of the origins creating armor out of surrounding or grown or whatever stone. This specifically has remarkably origin specific animations and names (rocket pods, nano machines, holograms, etc.).

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So I saw some nice additions on Posi's little pop up window I got last night in game, and on a few places here on the forum. But no mention of any new powersets, or proliferations.

I was really hoping for dark or rad blasters.

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If we're getting any proliferation, it's going to require a bit of testing, which means it'll require a longer beta period. I'm pretty sure that they're trying to get out I15 as quickly as possible so I'd expect that we'll be getting any proliferation later. Plus, I expect that Castle has been pretty busy with all of the MA balancing and, as such, hasn't really had the time to intensively test and number crunch sets for proliferation.

If this is suggesting anything even close to open PvP, I'm against it. Forcing PvP on anyone is not something I think would work well for the game.

If it's something more like a heavily modified zone or arena PvP system, I'd be all for it. Seems kind of interesting. Maybe akin to getting the RV heavies.

As an expansion on its own, I don't really support it. Seems to be a weird and highly specialized way to create a character.

Honestly, I can't say why or why not I J-hate or J-love J-man and his J-compatriots. I've never really understood them, as I'm reasonably sure that no one who isn't in their little collective can. They're a constant source of both entertainment and irritation, filled with an enthusiasm for the friendliness and audaciousness that makes CoX great. They're like concentrated supergroup.

I can't precisely love or hate them because of this. I'm absolutely jealous. It's impossible to love them because I could never belong to their group. I would stick out like a navy and gold thumb on an orange and blue body (with matching cape and super suit). All I can do is watch their antics and feel that, in some small way, I'm getting participate in what it's like to be as open and outright funky as they are. I can't hate them for pretty much the same reason. I'm getting to see the game through their eyes, temporarily getting to see the world through the evershifting beer goggles of the J-force. They make the entire experience of belonging to a community, both on the forums and in-game, all the richer. They're like bacon ice cream at a Baskin Robbins: totally not what you expect, completely perplexing at first, incredibly intimidating second, and, after you finally take a sample, pleasantly surprised (though not enough to choose them over the Chocolate Fudge Ripple whatever you came for).

I can honestly say that, having belonged to a group that is as old and, hopefully, as distinguished as the J-force, what I do feel towards them is respect. They've been around and active for 5 years. And I don't mean active in the sense as some of the other 5 year supergroups. The J-force has always been known throughout the Freedom server. They've had a thread wherein they keep us informed and laughing about all of their current escapades. In fact, they still have escapades. That alone is worthy of the respect of every other supergroup on the planet. What makes it truly great is that they're not afraid of letting in everyone else. Their thread lets everyone participate, rather than secluding everything they do behind a secret wall of privacy in which only members are privy. I personally believe it's because you don't care what anyone else thinks about you. You're happy just as you are: swimming in debt, injurious to the eyes, and laughing all the while.

So, here's to you J-force, on the anniversary of our game and our supergroups:

To 5 years of absurd people, absurd conversations, and absurd enjoyment. May we all be lucky enough to never get bored of it and never run out of it.

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Mastermind has only FIVE primary power choices
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Dominators are also tied with blasters for the least amount of secondaries. These two, if any other AT, need some more variety.

[/ QUOTE ]Mastermind primaries are also unique to the AT; Dominator and Blaster secondaries are also unique to their respective ATs. This is why there are so much fewer of those kinds of sets.

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I don't buy this argument. Just because something is unique doesn't mean it should be neglected.

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Because it's unique means that it's less "bang" for each time investment "buck". Unique powersets are like that. It's also the reason why some ATs get thematically and visually strange power sets (Dual Blades on Tankers and Brutes?).

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When I said "clones" I didn't mean clones of you. I just meant clones.

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Then how would that be "clones"? Just have all of the enemies look exactly the same? Doesn't really have much of the "clones" favor people would look for, especially since "clones" as you're implying could simply be roleplayed quite easily without needing a new powerset. The problem I see with the masterminds is that it's kind of hard to develop the sets without getting hyper-specific, and, to complicate matters, the archetypal super-villain minions are mostly covered already. Any extras they add are going to start being more and more origin specific.

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I submit "Animal taming" and "Clones" for the MM primaries.

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I highly doubt either of those will happen. Animal Taming isn't likely because it would require construction of entirely new skeletons and suites of animations. Clones isn't going to happen without power customization because there's no current way for an MM to control/modify the appearance of their pets.

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you do realize that recipes, salvage and enhancements drop from the dev's choice arcs correct? this means that you can already drop purples in ma content. you just have to do the dev choice to get it. i think they also drop from HoF arcs but i haven't played one of those yet.

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I have gotten an Apocalypse: Chance for Negative off a Dev's choice so yes they are possible, but when I ran @Muu's Hall of Fame arc, it still gave only influence/tickets and inspirs, so I'll bet that the HoFs arc act like a normal one...

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I believe this is so. The devs want to have absolute control over which missions can drop normal rewards and which can't. Remember that it's possible (though not likely) for a farm mission to be selected as HoF if it got enough votes. The devs would want to quash that possibility immediately.