seebs

The key is to understand *why* doubling makes weight increase by 8.

That's because:

8 = 2^3 (aka 2*2*2)

Basically, here's how to think about it. Say you DON'T scale something proportionally. You just stretch it so it's twice as tall, but increase the amount of stuff so the density stays the same. Mass doubles, right? Twice as much stuff = twice as much stuff. Or say instead of "twice as tall" you did "twice as wide". Or "twice as deep". Same thing.

So think of scaling up height by a factor of two and keeping proportions as really being the same as doubling height, width, and depth. And that means *2, *2, *2. *8. And similarly, if you triple them all, you get *3, *3, *3, or *27.

HTH.

Many moons ago, there was a computer sim version of Ogre, not licensed. I think originally they banned it but eventually they said "oh, go ahead and share it, it's sorta cool".

The computer played the ogre, and wasn't very good at it.

But yeah, that is a classic example of a very, very, interesting bit of game balance and design. And it sort of highlights the problems you face. Imagine that you were to look at an army design that was particularly good at beating ogres, and you introduced a point system for reconfiguring ogres. Now you can change the ogre to suit the army, and you can maybe beat that army by hitting its weaknesses.

Now add 10 other teams each of which can do that.

Now you have something that is much, much, much simpler to balance than CoH.

MHO, pick the weapon for looks, and let the rest follow. Note that I21 is proliferating a couple of sets to new archetypes.

BS/SD scrapper is probably pretty awesome.

Yes, I had 11.6 in at some point, went from 11.6 (some hangs) to 11.8 (some hangs), then went to 11.4 (no hangs). Will try 11.8 again at some point.

FWIW, I made the character just to see how it played, might reroll though. We'll see.

So, I thought of a villain, and logged in as Ditzy "Pom-Poms" Marcone, an nrg/nrg brute (named for the... distinctive look of energy melee).

Someone complimented me on the name and asked me whether it was a Dresden Files reference.

Hmm. There is a gang boss named Johnny (early books)/Johnnie (later books) Marcone in those books. The first book is copyright 2000, so it predates CoH. Jim Butcher is known to have played CoH at one point or another.

Is the Family name in CoH a pop culture reference?

I am pretty tempted by nrg/nrg for thematic reasons. And hey, it's CoH, nothing is actually so bad you can't use it.

So, should I make an energy aura brute now? Should I wait for I21?

People say EA is lame (albeit strong and pretty when combined with War Mace). Is it actually lame, or are they just whiners?

One of my CoH buddies has a mad scientist as a necromancy mastermind. They're not ZOMBIES, they're ANIMATED BODIES. Totally different. Not superstitious at all. PRACTICAL!

Stalker can be good for science; it's a CLOAKING DEVICE you IGNORANT FOOLS. And there is nothing mystical or unreasonable about my KINETIC DAMPENING system which I use to destroy those who oppose me with STORED ENERGY.

Blue Valkyrie: Huge model, all sliders but height maxed, valkyrie costume, BS/SD scrapper. Bio: "Has eaten all the food lately."
Green Elf: Super-skinny short male model, generally greenish fabric, TA/Arch defender. Bio: "Has shot the food."
Yellow Wizard: As close to a real robe as you can get, pale yellow, fire/fire blaster. Bio: "Is about to die."
Red Warrior: Huge model, kilt and not much else, battle axe/WP brute. Bio: "Needs food badly."

... Come on, it'd be awesome. They'd even be hugely depdendent on quarters^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgreen inspirations.

A bunch of the marketeers. Also, special credit to SPTrashcan, whose discussion of how he "enjoys punching dudes" was the catalyst for a change in how I thought about MMOs, leading me to create:

http://www.l2pnoob.org/

(Note: The name might be taken a little ironically.)

And Silas, whose amazing support guides influenced my decision to write guides for CoH. Mine aren't as awesome, but I wouldn't have written anything at all if I hadn't had so much fun reading his.

Interesting point. I'm actually more interested in the API's implications. I like to antiflip stuff (buy at 123 or 1234, list at 1) in vast quantities to try to improve pricing, and I'd do a lot more of it if it weren't so click-and-type heavy.

I may have to try these 11.4 drivers. I just had a lockup, get this, logging in.

Like. I clicked Login and the game froze before it could display the EULA/ToS for me to Accept.

Update: Went back to 11.4, no luck. Still hangs all the time. ... Update AGAIN: No it doesn't, that was a "can't connect to login server" freeze.

I'm running 11.6 and getting lock-ups (game, not whole computer) every so often when playing. Not visibly related to activity.

... But my control panel thing doesn't notice anything when I ask it to check for updates, so what's with that? Silly AMD.

Rikti invasions and the like have a couple of key flaws:

1. It can be hard to find a group.
2. It can be hard to fill a group.
3. It can be spammy to read all the messages from people with the first two problems.

I propose an alternative solution: Open groups. At any time, you can set whether your character is "open" or not for grouping. When you are near any kind of giant monster, rikti invasion, or whatever, if you are near a character/group who is open, and you are not in a group, a "Join Open Group" button appears. If you click it, you join that group. (If there wasn't already a team, star goes to the person who was joined, not the person who clicked the join button.)

The basic rationale is that this kind of thing makes it a lot easier to find people with whom to group for stuff like Rikti events, and reduces chat spamminess. People who don't like it can just mark themselves closed and never click the join open group button.

Okay, serious answer:

Addon API, more market slots.

Let people list more things, buy more things, and collect historical data, and even if only some of them do it, it'll stabilize the market hugely.

If you aren't on IOs, get on IOs. More of them. MORE IOs MORE MORE MORE.

Endredux is good. Accuracy and damage are also good, but you need a mix; you have to be able to use your powers, so you have to get their endurance lower. But, at least in PvE, if you do a ton of endredux and nothing else... You are worse off, because you're still missing and doing lowish damage.

I have, a couple of times, had GMs refund or reverse particularly stupid choices I made. Just...

If you go demanding that they fix it because their stupid game sucks, they are gonna laugh at you. If you apologize and ask them whether they could possibly help you, they might decide to help out.

I had one refund me an a-merit after I bought a celerity other than the stealth proc with it!

I think there's some kind of a cultural gap here. Both here and in my other MMO, I see a lot of people who are totally focused on THE BEST BUILD, and insist that once the best build is identified, no one will ever play anything else.

But when I actually play the game, I see a ton of characters that are pretty clearly "this is my character concept, here is how I could best do it within the rules".

It seems to me that the underlying problem is that people are really not even talking about related concepts. Most of us simply don't care what's the Absolute Most Efficient. We care what fits our character concepts. We care what looked fun or interesting to play. People build characters around concepts like "solo AVs" or "farm AE at level 33", but they also build characters around concepts like "amazing combat archer" or a funny tag line. My invuln/dual-blades tanker concept is purely "I want something that looks completely unpowered as much of the time as possible", because I came up with the idea of a character named Aunt Millie, with the superhero tag line "Putting the AUNT back in TAUNT AURA." ... So there she is, in a sweater with no visible effects except a pair of swords.

Do you seriously think I care whether she's "superfluous" or not? My primary contribution to mission teams is rants about how "when I was a little girl, the half-human cybernetic freaks had DECENT HAIRCUTS because they had some RESPECT." And frankly, that's a lot more useful than anything else, because the point of the game is to have fun.

This is a game in which I have built a character with the specific goal of being as useless and disruptive of his own team as possible. And you know what? If I advertise for teams on "Helpy McHelperson", specifically warning people that he's grav/storm, built for and played for laughs... THEY JOIN. So they can pop Group Fly and say "I'm Helping!"

... And we cleared that mission, too.

I would kill for a narration of a video about this by Stephen Fry.

For those who have not seen it: The BBC did a Jeeves&Wooster thing with Fry and Laurie, and it is the most amazingly perfect... Wow. Hugh Laurie does Bertie Wooster so amazingly well, and Fry does a lovely Jeeves.

... Well. Don't just STAND there. GO GET ME STEPHEN FRY! NOW!

Huh. I actually have sort of had the other end of this. I've got a couple of the WOW THAT IS GOOD builds, and I never enjoy them as much as purely-themed characters.

You can tell me that DP/dev is not an exceptionally powerful build. You'd be right, it's not.

But that's my highest-level character by at least 6 levels. Because it's FUN. And INTERESTING.