Winterminal

Just offering feedback as I go:

Since I have little interest in the Ascension pieces (they don't fit the concepts of any of my current Incarnate characters), I've dipped into some of the other stuff offered by Astral Christy and Empyrean Michael.
-Despite my negative feelings toward offering generic emotes as rewards for these things, I thought Ultimate Power was cool looking, and Swoon and Collapse are comically fun.
-I also purchased the Ice Block costume change emote, and I am unfortunately disappointed with it. I expected an animation similar to Hibernate in appearance, which is far from it. The gray coloring is very nondescript and boring, the extreme translucency contributes to the former adjectives, and the shape is very odd, reminding me of an overgrown "Fossilize" animation.

While I haven't seen the animation for the Stone Block costume change emote, I am assuming it is the more opaque version of Ice Block, similar to the difference between the "Crystal" and "Slate(?)" customization options for the Spines power set. I would have preferred a bigger difference between animations, but as it is, any way we could add a little more opacity and a little more color to "Ice Block," to not only differentiate it but also make it look more ice-like?

Hopefully more feedback to come later, once I unlock auras and such.

It sounds like you are worried that, by the end of the week, people will have run their Keyes Island Trial to experience it, but then go back to farming the Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial for Astral Merits and Threads. (If I'm wrong, please correct me.) I don't think you have any need for concern. First off, this is the third trial, which means a third possible Empyrean Merit per day, which is reason enough for many people to run it. The other reason will be for people to get a little variety in their lives. Once the first week finishes out (meaning by next Tuesday) the majority of people will have run the trial already, and it will probably be as cookie-cutter as the others in terms of how to accomplish the goals in the quickest, easiest way possible. Sure, the BAF trial will probably remain the "easiest," but I think you'll have little problem finding people to do this one.

To be clear: my previous post was not attacking Brutes, nor suggesting that Brutes be targeted as the AT to eliminate. Talk of eliminating any AT is ludicrous as far as I'm concerned. I was merely using the example of "Brutes vs. Tankers" to illustrate (apparently unsuccessfully) that each existing AT is unique and does what it does well. While there are always outlier examples, a Defender will buff/debuff better than a Corruptor while the Corruptor will out-damage the Defender (but not the Blaster), and the Tanker will hold aggro and survive longer than the Brute while the Brute will put out higher orange numbers.

The point is that some players prefer to be the "wall of defense" for their team, some prefer to run in with weapons flying and kill everything before it kills them, and some prefer a happy medium. There are some players who prefer to make their teammates uber-powerful while turning enemies into jelly, some who prefer to pump out the ranged damage, and some who prefer a happy medium. That being the case, there is absolutely no reason to even consider eliminating ATs.

I definitely agree there: from here on out, they are going to have to be careful. My hope would be that a completely new power set (like Titan Weapons or Time Manipulation) would cost a certain amount, and then a power set which carries a majority of powers that can be found elsewhere in the game (like a Dominator or Blaster secondary, since they usually include a number of existing powers) would cost a lesser amount. That would also make more sense financially: a power set that, when purchased, can only be used on one Archetype would probably sell better if it were offered at a decreased price. However, I think it is more likely that all power sets offered for Paragon Points will sell for the same amount, unfortunately.

Crossing my fingers though!

I lol'd.

When you can show me a Brute that can take as much punishment and hold as much aggro as a comparable Tanker can (i.e. similar/same power sets), come back. If anything, it would make more sense to get rid of the Brute, since it could be considered the middle ground AT between Scrappers and Tankers. But that notion is only slightly less crazy.

Just hopped in-game to purchase some of the new stuff. Since I have no interest in the Ascension pieces, and I refuse to purchase the auras or trail auras until I see them in-game, in action (as opposed to still-frames on the website) I have only purchased the Ice Block costume change emote and the regular generic emotes.

The regular emotes are quite good. Collapse and Swoon are a lot of fun, Ultimate Power is cool looking. Catch Breath pales in comparison, but can be very useful for RPers.

Ice Block is disappointing. I was expecting a Hibernate-looking transformation, but instead it looks like a grey, overgrown, translucent animation of the "Fossilize" power animation from Earth Control. Therefore, I will be waiting until i can see the rest of those costume change emotes, along with the auras.

Hope people are enjoying the new goodies!

As someone who likes to match primaries with secondaries, I would love to see a Rad and Sonic Manipulation set, as well as a Dark Manipulation set if they ever port over Dark Blast. However, with i21 bringing the ability to start a Corruptor as a Hero from level 1, and the fact that you can make them Dark/Dark, Sonic/Sonic, or Rad/Rad, I doubt we will see Manipulation sets for any of the above. Yes, they are different ATs and can play VERY differently from one another, but given the amount of other stuff the Devs are working on (based on recent announcements), complementary secondaries are probably low priority.

That being said, they have already announced 2 new power sets, one of which to be released with i21, and the other one to be released (most likely) shortly thereafter. One can only hope that some more power sets are also in the works, and that a blaster secondary or two is among them, since we STILL hold the record for fewest number of secondaries out of any of the 10 regular archetypes...

If anything can be done, I am all for it. If I am joining anything involving a league, you better believe my speakers are being turned down. Except I have to turn them back up once it is over because I can't hear anything...

/signed

Plain and simple: I want some more secondaries for blasters. When I saw Time MANIPULATION, I got very excited... and then that was dashed away when I saw it was yet ANOTHER buff/debuff power set. I mean, I understand that Blaster secondaries are completely unique power sets: no other AT has access to them (same goes for Mastermind primaries and Dominator secondaries). Thus, making them caters to a smaller number of players. However, given that Blasters still have the lowest number of secondaries in the game, I think it is high time that another was released.

Have you seen Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls? The little grossed-out-dance he does after he gets the bat back in the cage at the end of the movie? Yeah, I just did that. Heebie Jeebies!

If doable, this sounds perfect. Free players could easily receive one-on-one help from Vets without disturbing those around them, and any VIP can choose, at any point, to turn the option off, thus disabling RMTers from tormenting them.

I think the "synergy" of similar sets (Ice/Ice, Fire/Fire, Elec/Elec, etc.) is the combination of their secondary effects. An Ice/Cold Controller can reach the slow cap at quite a low level when combining Shiver with Snow Storm (in fact, it becomes redundant at higher levels to use them both). An Elec/Elec blaster can drain most of the end of an even-con mob via Short Circuit and Power Sink. Dark/Dark defenders practically make enemies into headless chickens as far as "hitting a teammate" is concerned. Stackable secondary effects of powers is good incentive for choosing complimentary powersets.

I have never had a 50 I wished to re-roll, however, I did get an ice-themed controller (Ice/Storm) to level 23 just before Cold Domination was released for Controllers. Naturally, that wasn't a tough decision to re-roll, but it is a similar scenario nevertheless.

IMO, this is something we could see in-game, but ONLY if the following criteria were met:

• Power sets only. No changing archetype nor origin.
• Upon "reset," all enhancements are sold for the amount they would sell for during a current respec, all salvage and recipes are sold for the amount of inf. they would sell for at in-game stores. Inspirations are deleted.
• Start the character back at level 1, sort of like a "Special New Game" option given in many video games with campaign modes (i.e. keeping things you unlocked the first time through, like badges or SG Prestige in this case, but starting back at the beginning).
• There should be some cost (in Paragon Points) but how much would depend on other factors.
• There should be a time limit to how often an account can execute one of these. My suggestion is 1 per month, but this combined with the price could vary dependently.

The last 2 points should supplement the "the gaming developers lose money on these" argument.

If all of that criteria was met, in my mind, it is fathomable. However, the last few points of Memphis_Bill's infamous copypasta still stand strong, and could very easily negate everything I just wrote

I'd say this falls under the "reactive defense" requests that I have frequently seen. Things like Super Reflexes should use dodge animations when a "miss" or "deflected" is registered, and sets like shield defense should have guarding animations. There was a recent request (within the past month or two, I think) for an armor set that reacted/glowed different based on whether an attack landed or not.

I am for all of these things, but of course, standard code rant applies. My guess is that the problem arises when characters are targeted by multiple attacks from multiple targets at the same time. Scenario: Player is attacked by 3 targets at once. Each of those 3 attacks needs a hit roll to be calculated independently: 2 miss, 1 hits. Animations are calculated on a per-attack basis, so in the span of time it takes 3 individual attacks to reach the Player, 3 different animation codes are trying to launch at the same time, each based on their own individual to-hit roll.

The character is trying to do too many things at once. From what I can see in-game, this is why animations can become skewed, or just plain not happen. Any time you get hit with a boulder from an Outcast Brick, and go flying backwards in a standing position (as opposed to flopping onto your back which is the default), it is likely because your character was in the middle of a different animation upon getting hit by the boulder. I am sure you can think of other scenarios where this is an issue, and I would bet money that the "once in a blue moon" scenarios to which you are referring, where your shield-bearing character actually uses the "dodge/deflect" animation, it is because the character model was not in the process of executing any other animation.

I have few-to-no problems running CoH on my Macbook. It is the model released summer 2009, I am still running regular Leopard (not Snow Leopard), Nvidia, and 2 gigs of RAM. So I cannot speak for those with the upgraded operating system, nor for those on different machines, but I love it.

I would definitely go with the Mac Mini, unless you need the Air's portability. The Air might become uncomfortably warm during play. On my Macbook, the fan comes on within minutes of me starting to play, and I usually have to put some kind of cloth or tissue between my hand the hand rest by the keyboard while playing. You may have to customize the Mini a bit (i.e. upgrading to a larger RAM than the default), but any computer with the right specs should run it fine. If you have a choice between Nvidia or ATI, I suggest Nvidia simply because there seem to be less problems.

It should be noted, we do not yet know how CoH will run on Lion. It could very well be fine, but as far as I know, there hasn't been a test run.

I don't think we will see a City of Heroes 2. Or if we do, it won't even be announced for a long time, let alone released.

• At the moment, they have just started a revamp of the older zones, starting (logically) with the starter zones. We can probably expect this to progress through the zones, up the level spectrum, with a couple more massive changes (a la Galaxy City) along the way to keep things interesting.
• The brand new end-game has only begun. There are still 5 more powers, existing power expansion, and tons more content to roll out.
• F2P is a gambit designed to hook more players into paying. Why do you think cable companies will make premium channels like HBO available free for a month or two? They hope that you like it enough to start paying for them. And there's no need to put resources toward a way to bring in new revenue, if you are shutting down that project.

So Issue 21 has one completely new zone, and one zone that is receiving a huge makeover, no doubt heralding the start of a new story line. Odds are, that story line will continue to influence different zones up the level spectrum as the revamps continue. It appears as if they are remodeling the game, rather than saying that it is "finished" and pushing it off the side.

*raises hand* Always happy to help a fellow SP member, especially after the warm welcome.

All I need is:
- At least a week's notice of "when" and "how long."
- ASAP, what kind of things you are looking to capture, so I can roll and/or level up a toon quickly.

To be fair, we only have limited images of the whole zone. I'm picturing an Arcane-ified Steel Canyon, surrounded by 'Eden' with random Devouring Earth structures throughout the central city area. But who knows?

While I whole-heartedly agree that outlier zones based in extreme environments would be awesome, the game is called "CITY of Heroes" so naturally the majority of zones will be city-like.

I, like Xzero45, have an Archery/Devices blaster, slotted for range. Between Devices allowing me to set up some traps, then Archery allowing me to kill from distances where I can barely see the enemies, he's a true Sniper (which is what I would call the class).

My Ice/Ice/Cold blaster definitely plays more like a suped-up Controller, or a Dominator. Between 2 ranged holds (I skipped /Ice's melee range because nothing ever got close enough for me to use it on), a fast-recharge immobilzation, and a mass Targeted AoE sleep, I rarely get touched. However, I can't re-name this play style, as it is pretty much the play style of a Dominator: Lock down your enemies, then kill them with little danger to you.