Sailboat

Probably already stated elsewhere, but.... There's no upside. Literally. There's nothing they could post that would actually satisfy everyone, especially those who relentlessly reiterate this issue. All it would do is sap time and energy from the volunteers. We would still get whatever they can develop as soon as they're ready to release it...except it would be less stuff and longer before release. No upside, no desirability, no value.

Weirdly, no. I forget exactly what sets they were playing, but at the time it struck me they were fairly diverse.

Long gone, but this is the girl who slept at my feet when the City was new: Simone She may also may seem familiar if you've noticed my avatar. In the picture above, she is walking with the Meetup group we founded for her -- she loved meeting people and dogs! That group has over 1,700 registered members today.

Luna (serious) Luna (not so serious!) Ginny

You know, it's not toxic behavior to not be in favor of a change. It IS toxic behavior to label disagreement "aggression" and put someone on ignore, and it's frankly childish behavior to insist that everyone approve your suggestion or not post at all. It's incomprehensible to treat another poster that way while proclaiming that the community could not become toxic -- a taste of it has happened right in this thread. MIDS and Combat attributes, as you well know, are entirely different in nature -- they do not track what a player has actually been doing during a mission. The behavior I am concerned about could be described as "looking for slackers." Checking the log to see who was contributing how much healing or damage. You assert that won't happen...but...I have been on many missions, even since Homecoming came back, where a player on a mission remained motionless and did not respond to tells, and players -- not me, other players -- suggested kicking them from the team for not participating. Now I am NOT defending door-sitting, merely pointing out that there's not a qualitative difference between kicking a door-sitter and going through a log deciding to one-star a player who didn't contribute the expected amount of numbers you are used to. Which I would find sad. And not unlike demanding someone not participate in a thread because you decide they're not contributing the comments you want.

Yeah if it HAS to happen, merging the two highest with each other seems weird. Merge low into high. that said, I find it weird that I was chased off of Torchbearer early on by lag that I attributed to its high pop, and fled to Excelsior. Heh.

This is done differently in different games. D&D: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, normally assumed to be lethal but you can declare any attack to be nonlethal at the moment the foe runs out of hit points. Sentinels of the Multiverse: melee, projectile. Champions (tabletop): damage is divided into Physical and Energy...within either of those damages types a huge distinction is made between "normal" and "killing" attacks (against which only certain defenses work, and the damage goes to a separate pool of hit points that can kill you instead of knocking you out). Subsets of those types (Energy/fire, Energy/lightning) are largely flavor, unless a target has a vulnerability. Mutants & Masterminds: damage types are entirely flavor outside of vulnerabilities. So Champions is unusually sensitive to the distinction between lethal and nonlethal, whereas Sentinels doesn't seem aware of the distinction (some of the art on the cards shows melee damage dealers punching, others show them thrusting a blade through the chest cavity of a foe...projectile damage is shown as hailstones, an assault rifle, or even a hurled tire iron). I've generally felt COH did a good job with damage types. I wouldn't be averse to adding "bleed damage" or something to Lethal, but let's recall that most lethal attacks debuff defense -- they'd have to give that up to get a new secondary effect, IMHO.

I've been assuming that Controllers open with their AoE immobilizes inappropriately because it's their main source of AoE damage early on, and they just get in the habit. I do have to say, I was playing my Archery/Tac Arrow/Elactrical Mastery Blaster, who has one AoE hold and two single-target holds, on a team with FOUR controllers in their 30s, and not one thing we fought got held unless I used a hold on it. We ran five or six missions and not one of them used a hold of any sort, despite troublesome lieutenants of all kinds. Don't they recognize the awesome, game-winning power holds constitute?

You -- and others in this thread -- misunderstand me. I was not complaining about my friends or the difficulty of finding groups. My point was that introducing any system that tracks "performance" corrupts the community, having the tendency to turn even casual fun-oriented players into spies and informants monitoring other people's playstyle, even measuring mouseclicks-per-hour. This is a general observation -- it applies even if you have been lucky enough not to have seen it in action, even if the stats require self-reporting, even across multiple genres of game. You might argue that you don't mind a Stasi-style network of informants monitoring everyone's mouseclicks, but don't blandly assert this is a problem with my (or anyone's) choice of friends. Tracking players' "contributions" eventually leads to this sort of behavior.

Wouldn't the (hypothetical) munchkin team merely demand that you post those stats for them to see? In other games that permit stat tracking, I've seen a group of players (explicitly founded on the idea of playing friendly and non-competitively) quickly turn on each other when these sorts of stats were available. "Check the raid log -- I think Bob wasn't healing enough last time, we should dump him and get someone who will." Ugh.

I'm always amused when the hostage runs into my Hurricane without ill effect to thank me, but moments later can't find me because of my Steamy Mist.

You know, I came to play City of Heroes (or Villains). Change is okay, but I DO NOT WANT large, sweeping changes, especially to how the rules work, as that makes it less and less like COH. New Task Forces and missions are another thing -- bring that on -- but radical changes to ATs and Powersets and other stuff would make me lose interest -- especially if it happens rapidly. I have plenty of things left to explore in the game before it changes into something unrecognizable. My general experience with computer game communities over the years is that people who are impatient for dramatic changes often get what they've been pressing for, but leave the game anyway, because they are the sort of people always looking for new things. That's not a bad thing to want, but it winds up changing the game for everyone else and then the people who argued for it leave, and the rest of us are left with changes we didn't necessarily want.

I like the way you think, but Dilophosaurus was 20 feet long. http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/d/dilophosaurus.html

Love it! Not sure I want the T-Rex to breathe fire...I'd settle for eating lawyers...but I would totally play a dino summoner, maybe several.

I could get behind this. The slide is useful for a variety of character concepts (water slide, ice, oil, skiing, frictionless, and so on) and some customization would help.

Remember that Granite reaches its ultimate durability by running Rooted at the same time, which is a sever hit to your mobility. But you are astoundingly durable while doing so. It's not news that sets with Defense Debuff Resistance (DDR) mitigate masses of debuffs and thereby hold off "cascading failure" of defense (like when fighting huge crowds of sword-armed Romans). SR, Invuln and Shield are good examples of this. Personally my toughest non-Granite tank back in the day was a soft-capped Invuln/SS tanker. Very hard to bring down even with exotic damage types and defense debuffs -- once I held off a huge spawn of Dark-energy-spewing Nictus and defense-debuffing Romans for an agonizingly long time while the team regrouped, despite Inv's poor resistance to Dark damage. The character was IOed with additional resist bonuses, and liberally used Dull Pain and Inspirations, but it worked.

I run TC on a Storm/Dark Defender with the Dark ancillary. Thunder Clap, Dark Pit, and Oppressive Gloom are all area stuns. Tornado also has a stun component but it's hard to control and the AoE is small. Thanks for the proc suggestions -- might pick up a few of those for Tenebrous Tentacles and the like.

I'm interesting in superorganism theory. The first use of the term was to describe insect colonies (ants and bees), but it can be applied to human organizations like corporations, nation-states, churches, clubs, etc. A nation-state going to war against another nation-state cares no more for its individual soldiers than you or I do for the individual blood cells and platelets that form a clot when our skin is cut. There's a looming worry that losing TOO MUCH would lead to a problem, but neither weeps over individuals. Superorganisms such as limited liability corporations are absolutely indifferent to individual suffering.

We used to refer to this hypothetical power as "Suck Toward."

Recently been playing my Archery/Tac Arrow Blaster a lot. Currently 45. I have not bothered with set bonuses much, but I have frankenslotted the AoE powers for maximum damage and recharge, while getting some accuracy and end reduction to boot. Not planning on soft-capping defense, as I have plenty of characters and it's kind of same-old, same-old to softcap everyone. That said, I've also slotted up (and frankenslotted) the mez powers: Ice Arrow (a hold), Stunning Shot (a disorient), ESD Arrow (an AoE hold), and from my ancillary, Shocking Bolt (a hold). Also a little bit of slotting (frankenslotting for acc and slow) for Glue Arrow. Aggressive employment of these control powers has been very effective in keeping my tender hide unruffled. I can often hold an entire spawn, including two bosses (ESD Arrow, Ice Arrow, Shocking Bolt). But I generally can wipe out an entire spawn with Upshot, Aim, Rain of Arrows, Explosive Arrow (with the knockback-to-knockdown IO) so the holds and stun are usually insurance while teamed. It's also hilarious, when soloing, to slow or immobilize something, run waaaay the heck outside its shooting range, and wait for the snipe (Ranged Shot) to reach noncombat damage bonus, then nail the completely helpless enemy. In my late 30s/early 40s, I feasted on Greater Devoured and Fake Nemesis bosses using these tactics.

Eh. You KNOW somebody would try to farm +4/x8 with it.

Tru dat. For me, enhancements or IOs go in a logical order...well, logical to ME, anyway. * Endurance reduction - you generate the power * Accuracy - then it hits * Damage/Hold/Stun/Whatever - then it affects target * Recharge - then it recharges. Simple, eh? Once IO sets come along, quads first, triples, doubles with damage, doubles without damage, singles/procs. Sets stay grouped, so a Javelin Volley quad would be followed by a JV double and only then a Detonation triple.

I was an administrator on another game-related forum for many years. We had a "no politics, no religion" general topics forum, AND a "don't be a jerk" rule, and it still required some moderation to enforce the rules (responding to protestations that a given topic was or was not political, etc.). Eventually, due to popular opinion, we opened a separate Politics & Religion subforum. It immediately became the locus for a lot of strained feelings and several bannings, and remained the prime source of trouble for the duration of the time it was active. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than a Politics & Religion subforum. If Homecoming does a general topics forum, I strongly recommend enforcing a "no politics, no religion" rule. And I would understand if even that level of control over topics deters them. -- it can be a lot of work.

Wait until your boss asks you to work on Christmas Eve so they can depart early for an expensive overseas vacation they booked after telling everyone "there's no money for raises this year." That'll get you to 100% fury.

When I question the general consensus about how something works in game, I try to remind myself to phrase it as a question. "Hey, I think I've noticed something working differently than expected, can anyone confirm? What am I missing?" This is not because I'm better than other posters. Frankly it's because I've embarrassed myself often enough that I'm a lot more cautious now about making assertions.