VKhaun

Is that link SFW?

Yeah check the VIP beta forum or click the 'new posts' button.
Two active topics, posts from Dink, lots of screen shots.

Both colors can be changed.
I just logged on and I can still change both parts.

+1 for do stupid reckless stuff.
There are lots of people who role tankers and brutes and then hessitate constantly, lots of people playing healers in groups with overpowered brutes/tankers that never get hurt, and lots of groups with both parts. If you play a dom or blaster, just run and start blappering stuff without sprint on or teleporting or anything. Just mosey in.

Someone (likely seven people) will feel superior and awesome for pointing out you're not supposed to go in first. Someone on a tough AT will use their powers to get in ahead of you and stop hesitating, someone will NEED to buff/heal at least you at first, but if the group starts moving faster when the brute grows a pair, they'll be useful to everyone again once there's less downtime between fights.




For me, I just make sure my characters use their 2nd build for a lowbie setup so I'm not stuck at high levels.

As a general 'improve the game/community' I would say make a lowbie with XP off for doing red DFB. Lots of people quit the dark side when they can't get a support character or VEAT off the ground, myself included. Like everyone else on planet earth I'm sure you have an opinion about DFB and other easy levels, I don't care and neither do they. They want to DFB past the lowest levels, and the game is better off if a few more people are around on red side, so instead of standing in atlas waiting for 'nice costume!' tells when nothing is going on, join red DFB's.

If you're truly benevolent, do it on a PB with nova form. You can even level it to 50 if you want, and just leave the 2nd build not leveled past 6 using the going rogue pre-order procs in the nova attacks. (I say PB, not WS, because the -def is helpful to increase team DPS against AV's). If not a PB/WS, take assault at lv4 or 6.

I think I've noticed some costume pieces blend their two colors for a third color on some areas, most recently some of the lights on the mecha set done in red/blue look purple. Was that just my eyes or is it intentional? Regardless I think this is a great thing to see as it allows more than two colors per part without making any portion of that part static in color.


Can we do FULL HAND weapons? Big drills, Phantasm style steel balls with various pointy things coming out, big rocks with shards of glass or shale coming out, anything like that? Does any person, tech, or concept prevent you from making things like this? They would sure help with a lot of robotic characters and it would just be a matter of making the base big enough to completely cover the hand, right? Claws especially, with their 'extend' draw animations rather than pulling something from no where seem like they could take full hand covering/replacing weapons.

I would like to see more 'Science' parts and weapons. Retro Sci-Fi is good, but to me LIQUID PARTS really make things look like 'science'. Bubbling, fizzing, sloshing, or if FX are out, it would be nice even just having a container attached to something that looked like it was full of liquid. I can't think of a single example in our current line up except the brain in the jar, which I do not have. -

I made a thread about science/liquid themed weapons that no one cared to reply to so maybe this is not the most popular concept, but here's that link if you feel like hearing more:
Brainstorm: Science Weapons

I tend to segregate melee and ranged attacks on my blasters. I think of myself as only doing one or the other at any given time and sometimes I get scatterbrained about it and don't switch when I should. When blasting, I like to put my faster blap move on auto so if something runs up to me I'll automatically charged brawl it or smack it with ice sword. It's effective, doesn't mess with normal play, and it reminds me to do melee stuff when I've been firing cones or dropping AoE's for the last 45min.

I would never put secondary mutation on auto, because it stops you from running.

It's up now.

What makes a weapon 'science' to you vs tech?

For me the answer is liquid and gases. Poisons, mutagens, blood, chemicals, samples... even the old science pack emotes were full of things like drinking concoctions or mixing things in various glass containers. Fizzing, sizzling, bubbling, swirling.

The retro sci-fi bubble helmet was really encouraging for glass.

Do we have the tech to do moving liquids? I can't think of anything that uses it except the science emotes. Even if we can't move it around, containers that are completely full shouldn't be out of the question since you wouldn't need anything to move. We already have some liquid filled glass stuff in the game don't we? Like the brain in liquid and such. Please don't reply saying the tech is impossible, just brainstorm with me and let the devs worry about if or how. :P



Blade/TW:
A glass container of liquid attached to a blade, and a trigger/interface of some kind on the hilt, like it's applying whatever is inside to the blade.
Color 1 = Metal of the handle and blade.
Color 2 = Color of the liquid, and a tint on the blade.
Version 2, liquid and blade edge glow.


Axe:
See Blade/TW, same thing but in the form of an axe.


Mace/TW:
Giant glass sphere filled with something, with syringes/needles coming out just one per direction. Color 1 for the liquid, color 2 for the metal. Again, second version the liquid glows.


Bane Spider/Arachnos Mace Weapon: (<3)
A chalice-like bowl on the end of a rod, or a cage around a glass container, the space in whatever the end piece is, would be filled with foaming acid bubbles that spills and slosh as you swing it. Color 1/2 for the weapon, acid is toxic green like the effect when you hit things with mace powers that have the toxic DoT.


Staff:
A metal staff, where the front end is filed with moving liquid and marked with graduations like a cross between a pen's ink tube and a syringe. The tip is a needle.
Color 1 = staff metal
Color 2 = Liquid
Version 2 liquid glows
(Naughty nurse costume contest?)


Claws:
Double Syringes. Color the Liquid/Metal with or without glow.


Spines:
Hope you're not afraid of needles! XD


Assault Rifle:
A flame thrower with two liquid tanks and tubes that seem to mix them near the barrel, along with your super-standard machine gun/shotgun/grenade launcher.
Flamer is permanently colored.
Color 1 = Liquid 1
Color 2 = Liquid 2
Version 2 liquid glows
Final length of hose where they're mixed combines the colors.


Beam Rifle:
I got nothing... maybe a bubbly liquid cooled something? Light going through a crystal could be scientific looking. Not sure how to set it up as a beam rifle weapon though. Anything I come up with in my head looks slick and techy.


Pistol:
Any standard paint sprayer style weapon is fine. Clear container full of liquid takes a color as with the above. I've noticed the semi-auto pistols have moving slide animations when firing, maybe the behind the scenes programming of that could be used to swish the liquid around or cause a little spray around the barrel using the liquid color?


Bow:
NO BOW STRING for those of us who hate the clipping. Instead make the notch at the front look like a short magnetized guide (rail gun concept), and add another glass container of liquid stuff that may or may not glow just because. :P

It was highly expected that Staff Fighting would come with a weapon pack in the store like Titan Weapons did. I assume there's a reason it didn't... with mecha T9 on the way and a good red name post about weapons being made for multiple powersets at once now (TW size and scaled down to be used for DB/Katana/BS), I have suspected since mecha was announced that there was a relationship between the two.

I could very easily see the VK-99 Event Horizon blade being doubled and put end-to-end to make a staff. It's plenty long enough to meet the two hands I think, and the handle looks the right width for a staff.

Personally I want more true magic and science weapons. Mostly you see natural and tech and people have to improvise. I want to see moving liquid inside a staff with a syringe tip a magic staff design repeated a few times with different types of glowy on the end... energy/icy/firey/dark/etc. Similar requests for the other weapons.




Scythes seem to belong to Titan Weapons though. They've made it clear from the very beginning that even though it's a smash set, they're fine with putting obviously lethal category weapons in there. Swords and scythes are already in there with the maces. I guess because they're huge and the set conveys brute strength in the motions, they smash things just as much as anything else and the sharpened edge is irrelevant. Which is equally fair, and awesome.

I had two ideas when CoV came out (Edit-...both also used the science pack, was that much later?) that I'll never do, centered around a mad scientist working in the Rogue Isles, who had two children

1) Tech, Bots/FF, small male using the funky googly-eyed face.
Techy gloves/boots and regular clothes, safety helmet. Mentally Handicapped son of the mad scientist, rigged up with force field generators that use his motions. When he wan'ts someone protected he waves his arms that way, if he gets scared and raises them he is covered by a personal force field, etc. Set loose to 'play' in safety anywhere on the rogue aisles, guarded by robots.

2) Science ???/???
The mad scientist's daughter, who does nothing but play video games and never leaves the house even though he wants her to see the world. As a compromise, for her sweet sixteen and each birthday thereafter, he has given her something to remote control and 'play' by running around the rogue isles.
A giant demon using the exposed/wired brain and one or two tech parts like it's been lobotomized and is being controlled... a robot that's all shiny silver except a rusty/dark colored communication looking device like it's been rewired... a zombie looking guy who is the corpse of some powerful mutant, rigged up with preservatives and electric shock devices to make it move around...

No power set was really varied enough for #2. The best I saw was weapon/shield because shield has so many options, but it didn't really work well enough for me.

I had just rerolled my main (FF/AR->FF/BR) and wanted my bubble again. Bought a 4hr x2EXP and was 32 before it wore by running my own DFB speed runs.

Awesome. Thank you.

Checked the stickies, tried a search. No luck.
Can someone tell me how to check the in-combat defense bonus from stealth in mids?

Paragonwiki lead me to City of Data on RedTomax.com, and from the description there it looks like two separate bonuses of 2.5%, and I assume I lose one of them when in combat. Mids just lists the whole thing as 5%. Does this mean if I cut it in half that's an accurate amount or does the math work differently?

We don't need Cranston's exact cowl, we have four or five different ones already from huge like Reaper to small like Assassin. We don't have those exact pants but we have baggy that you can put over small boots and make your waste line wider with a tight belt or the body sliders.

I agree on weapons. I think we need an issue where we just jack up the weapons. 'Arsenal Month' or something. No new costume set, no new enemy group. Just let Dink and the crew go to town on tools of destruction and... peace keeping... but you lost me after that. It sounds like you have a few very specific parts you want and you're not happy with using something similar, and you're trying to talk about it like some gaping hole in what's available.

And in the case of 'eyeless' masks that's not even a costume part that's an art style. Batman and Robin did not have flat white corneas, that's just how they were drawn. CoH does not use that art style, but if you just love it you could fake it with the small mask face options and some of the faces that have blank white eyes, or a stable eye aura set to black.

The whole boring cape arc?
Isn't it just talking to people and one mission?

I find it annoying that I lose my weapon sometimes on TW/Fire.
I would go WP just because it's all toggles and autos except the T9.

@blackdeath

A lot of the pieces are fairly reflective, but they take color much better than the celestial pieces. Think of car paint rather than metal itself.