PaxArcana

Related: just because you ARE paranoid, does not mean that "they" are NOT out to get you. :D And I don't think there's an in-game way to make notes on people. You have to go old-fashioned, with a pen and a notebook, for that.

ISTR that at some point on Live, they made the pets pushable. That seems to no longer be the case. Making them nonsolid to other players (or at least, to team-mates or allied-faction players) would seem like a good alternate to that. How about, remove it from ALL ranged minions. So sick and tired of my Battle Drones running up into an enemy's face. FFS YOU HAVE A LASER GUN, USE IT!!

Not trying to imply it isn't. Just, that it's not an earth-shatteringly important issue, that's all. :)

There's an Arachnos Arbiter in one story arc mission, in Faultline IIRC, that summons a pair of Arbiter Drones. I want that as an MM primary - summoning Arachnos-style robots. Even if it's just a "reskin" of the Robots primary.

Most likely, the statement was "would not be part of the game at launch (but would be in a later free update)". Which is pretty standard for an "it's not ready for prime-time yet, but we know people want it and will add it when it's ready to go" approach to MMO development.

Just to put this in perspective: when CoV was first launched, pets wouldn't even enter a map with you. Every time you entered or exited a Door mission map, youhad to completely resummon and re-upgrade your pets. And, what's more, none of the upgrade powers (or the shields from various secondaries, e.g. Forcefield) were AoE. My Robotics/FF mastermind, even at level cap and fairly well slotted (before IOs, mind, so using just SOs) ...? I'd spend a minute or two, on: Summon (3) Battle Drones Summon (2) Protector Bots Summon Assault Bot Equip Protector 1 Upgrade Protector 1 Equip Protector 2 Upgrade Protector 2 Equip Assault Upgrade Assault Equip Drone 1 Upgrade Drone 1 Equip Drone 2 Upgrade Drone 2 Equip Drone 3 Upgrade Drone 3 Deflection Protector 1 Insulation Protector 1 Deflection Protector 2 Insulation Protector 2 Deflection Drone 1 Insulation Drone 1 Deflection Drone 2 Insulation Drone 2 Deflection Drone 3 Insulation Drone 3 Defelction Assault Insulation Assault Toggle: Maneuvers Toggle: Tactics Toggle: Assault Toggle: Dispersion Field ... and only then, could I proceed to actually, you know, do the mission. After thirty-one power activations. :D :D :D One time, teamed with several other MMs ... good lord, several of us doing similar all at once. And trying to make our END last enough to buff each others' pets, too ... ugh! Now, though? Even including all the toggle-on steps? Eleven steps, just one-third as many. :)

Or you can ask on [Help]. Or even, in Atlas, standing under the Statue in front of City Hall. Ask right in /Local, you've got decent odds someone level 20+ has the portal and will throw one down for you. Hell. Join a L25+ TaskForce, and it's even odds someone will drop the portal as a means of fast-travel. Be quick about it, and you can make a quick pit-stop for the badge, yourself. (My first character ever to get that, did exactly this - the other night, on the Citadel TF, actually. I only hit 27 or 28 by the end of that one ...)

+1 Not a bad idea. :)

Partly, it depends on the friend's powersets and AT - moreso than level 50, or level 10, or whatever. Demons/Thermal This setup provides team-mates with Resistance and Healing. If your friend will already be well supplied with either or both, it's utility in a duo will be somewhat reduced. However, anyone with a Defense set that is weak on self-healing( e.g. Super Reflexes) will appreciate some resistance for the few "lucky hits" that inevitably get through. Bots/FF This setup provides a lot of Defense, and very little else. If your friend will be building with a Defense set, like Super Reflexes, and soft-cap themselves without help, then you won't be able to directly benefit them very much. If they play a "squishy" (Controller, another MM, Blaster, Dominator, or non-defense Defender), they may very much love the +Defense you and the Protector Bots will give them. Also, both powersets in this combination have a lot of Knockback and Repel. If your friend plays a ranced character - Blaster, for example - they may like this. If they play Melee - Scrapper, Brute, etc - not so much. Thugs/Dark /Dark is all about debuffs, and this helps anyone - defense sets, resistance sets, squishies, everyone. This one is a good jack-of-all-trades choice. ANOTHER CONSIDERATION Consider mixing things up a bit. Why not Bots/Dark...? Or maybe Demon/Ice ("a cold night in hell", hehehe)...? Thugs/Thermal (and a Hellions theme)...?

Two minor nitpicks, and I apologize for any offense I might give with this moment of pedantry: (a) the word you are looking for is "carat", not "carrot". © the actual character called a carat is ^; the < and > are "less than" and "greater tan" respectively, or in the context you are using, should probably be called html marks or similar.

Total aside: my Masterminds LOVE that PrENH. The Tier 1 minions get it, ALWAYS. SUCH a handy bit of soft control. And I _think_ each pet gets their own PPM rate, so three pets means thrice the KD ...

I haven't been the only one posting it, friend. Many many many players have been using it, throughout the entire life (both lives, now) of the CoX game, when confronted by people who not only innocently assume, but INSIST "X would be easy to do", without themselves having personally surveyed the entirety of the code for both Client and Server. And if you think this is bad? Back on Live, I witnessed ten-plus page argumetns, between a dozen or more people, with two or three holdouts repeatedly insisting "it would be easy". Sometimes, even in the face of actual developers directly saying "no, no it wouldn't." Regardless, I'm not going to keep pounding at this. (a) this is a bad idea that isn't worth any further energy on my part; (b) assuming this, or any other idea, would be easy to implement is the height of folly, and the only people who refuse to accept that are fools; © this is a really bad idea that isn't worth any further energy on my part. Good night.

Safer to assume it's all still spaghetti, and thus, that any idea is likely to be extra complex, than the opposite, IMO. Remember, Pessimism has one big advantage: the only surprises are good ones. :)

As I understand it, on Live, they started changing the "Knockback Protection" inherent to mose Holds and Immobilises to "convert Knockback to Knockdown" a la the IO that can do it, pretty much across the board for the whole game.

Plenty of us are still reading. By the by, it's spelled "pseudo", not "sudio". :) See? Reading! :) .... yeah ... ye gods, Defender, in the original Tutorial ... ::sigh:: ... YES, this, in so many ways!!

While I'm not interested in anything of the sexy pin-up variety for any of them, many of my characters are adolescents ... which can be notoriously hard to draw and get right, looking like their intended age. All too often, in my experience, they either look like much younger kids (like, half or two-thirds their intended age), or else, just especially-short adults. So, how good are you at drawing, say, a 13 to 15 year old? Especially one in superhero garb and in a heroic pose, or an otherwise typical-teenager pose? :) Not that I can promise to be able to convince myself to figure out how to afford your fee; it's entirely reasonable, but still rather dauntingly steep for my budget. :)

Don't assume "minimal fuss". :) CoX's code is four kinds of spaghetti and five different sauces, held together with a mix of baling wire, duct tape, and paper clips. IOW, it's an epic mess (and that's according to one of the original developers, Positron, back when the devs were paid full-time to work on it .... unlike now, when they're all volunteers doing this in their spare time). ... With that said, I'd love, LOVE, to be able to choose different "point of origin" setups for powers. It was an oft-wished-for feature ten years ago ... and, because of that, wound up being a feature for many powers in Champions Online (along with recoloring powers). Yes, especially for Beam Rifle powers, which I've come to love SOOOOOO very much over the past week. However, to do that properly would require a lot of animation work, and the Lords of the Seventeen Icy Hells only know how much work on the back end to build "hooks" for alternate animations into all the powers in the game, in order to make it happen. :(

Here, let me demonstrate: Mirror, mirror, on the wall ... who's the guy who projects his faults on others, because they dare not to agree with what he wants? ... See, that? That's intentionally rude, with a little bit of arrogance thrown in. Made special for you, because you annoy me. Happy, now? [/snark]

Absolutely. See, that image isn't arrogance, nor rudeness. It's an ongoing memetic reply that has been part of the City of Heroes/Villains community for fifteen years, now. A meme that was created to sidestep the inevitable multi-page back-and-forth arguments (often strenuously vitriolic ones) that otherwise sprang up from anyone blithely saying "it'll be easy" WRT changes to the game's code. One of the early lead developers once described CoX as "spaghetti code", it's that messy and incomprehensibly complex. The program is _badly written_. So one should never, ever, assume something will be easy.

... are they on the same "side" as you? Do they perhaps have a power that renders them immune to attack (e.g., Personal Force Field) ...?

And yet ...

Pray tell, have you heard of the Standard Code Rant...? Because you're tripping over it just about as hard as is conceivably possible.

... a Pain/ Defender with every PBAoE on Auto, set to Follow another character, would essentially be "playable" while you're fifty miles away from the computer. Instant healbot - no player needed. Or, how about a Blaster, with their entire primary - ANY primary except EB - set to Auto, and then told to "follow" a low-damage Tanker? ... More autopowers would, absolutely would, make automating a character more possible, especially for dual-boxers.

/JRanger That would violate the concept of actually playing the game. We absolutely do not need more automation. ... Also, no, not every player takes Hasten. I haven't taken it on a single build yet - even the one that has Superspeed for travel. (I got Combat Jumping instead.)

I don't think that's entirely fair. Even before DFB it was far faster/smoother to do the initial City Hall contact (or street sweep) then head to Kings Row and start doing radio missions at level 5 or 6. I love the Hollows - it's one of my favourite zones and you can be sure I ran my first new hero there as soon as I could - but even I wouldn't run it on every character. Exactly this. Radio missions killed the Hollows. DFB is just a matter of finally putting the coffin in the ground. (And I say this as a "Hollows Baby" - that's where I first learned about how to get from A to B without drawing aggro, with my wee little 6th- and 7th-level Blaster, pre-Hover even, exploring the whole zone via Sprint. LOVED the place once I got that figured out.)