Luminara

Exploration badges are only one facet of PvP zones. The mini-games which grant badges or extra powers, the 25% increase in XP for running PvE missions in the zone, the bonuses granted to your "side" when you complete those PvE missions, the purchasable powers, the critters which count for specific badges, all of these and more are encompassed within the basic concept of PvP zone. If a PvP flag were added, permitting what you outline, players could waltz into Warburg and picking up nukes with absolutely no effort or risk, to make one example. That's not balanced. All of that additional content would have to be removed, disabled or otherwise made unavailable to players with the PvP flag set to "Off". All of the badge-related critters, all of the mini-games, all of the PvE missions, essentially everything in PvP zones. XP from open world critters is meaningless in comparison to the other things you can obtain in/from PvP zones. Can that be done? Yes, with the phasing code, the HC team could set your PvP Off flag and remove access to everything except the exploration badges. But it's not likely to happen. The HC team strives to maintain the core design philosophies and intentions of the previous development teams, and that includes expecting players to "risk" PvP if they want their exploration badges, to accept being exemplared to the zone's level and fighting PvE critters if they want their Shivan Shards and Warburg nukes, to put themselves to the hazard if they want Heavies and turrets in RV, etc. If you want your exploration badges, you have to acquire them within the existing balance framework, just like you do for everything else in those zones. With the population as low as it is (compared to the original servers), you're unlikely to encounter people very often. And, per my personal experience, most players will leave you alone if you ask them nicely. Some will even help you, despite being on "the other side". Asking the HC team to go to the trouble of emptying the zone for you is unnecessary.

That was beautiful. Thank you.

Yar.

+Damage from IO set bonuses is a global effect. Every damage-dealing power which is not flagged to ignore +Damage, like Sands of Mu, will benefit. For further information: Damage is additive and cumulative, it takes all sources of Damage and pools them collectively. If you take Air Superiority, slot it up to 95% Damage, then add a 3% global +Damage, Air Superiority's final damage output will not increase by 3%. What actually happens is, that 3% +Damage is added to the 95% you slotted in the attack, bringing its final value up to 98%. That's how +Damage works. If you rack up 24% +Damage from set bonuses, every damage-dealing power you use will have 24% added to the slotted value. If you're playing a defender in a solo environment, you would also receive 30% +Damage from Vigilance, so your character would have 54% +Damage added to the slotted value of all damage-dealing attacks. If you then popped Aim, your damage-dealing attacks would receive a total of 104% +Damage on top of their slotted Damage. Note that even if you have 0% slotted Damage in a damage-dealing power, the game still reads it as 100% +Damage. This is because Damage Debuffs exist. The game has to consider an unenhanced power to be at 100% in order to subtract damage, so the debuff can function when dealing with unslotted attacks (what critters use, to highlight the most important example). Consequently, in slotting your attacks to 95% Damage (using SOs, IOs, set IOs, makes no difference, it's all the same to the engine), you're actually at 195% for those attacks. So that means, when you hit that magic 104% +Damage on your soloing defender who popped Aim, you're not actually doubling the damage of your attack(s), you're only adding about 1/3rd more damage (a bit less, in fact, because Vigilance is always active) because your attack, slotted for 95% +Damage, was read by the game as being at 195% Damage. 195 + 104 = 299. Additionally, +Damage does not bypass the damage cap. The damage cap is the damage cap is the damage cap. Damage enhancements, buffs like Assault/Aim/Build Up, Vigilance's +Damage, Fury's +Damage, set bonuses adding +Damage, it's all pooled together and it all counts toward your character's damage cap. Most of the time, this isn't an issue, as the damage cap is intentionally higher than most characters can achieve without significant assistance from other characters, but there are a few builds which can run head first into the damage cap. It can occasionally cause some confusion when players use powers which buff Damage in amounts which would make it appear that they exceeded the cap. Fulcrum Shift and Soul Drain, when used by defenders/masterminds/controllers/corruptors, and when their attacks are well slotted with Damage, can easily take them up to their respective caps and cause consternation when they realize they've "wasted" extra Damage. -Res, being multiplicative, allows players to sidestep the damage cap, by multiplying the final damage output of attacks by 1.amount (meaning, if you apply 20% -Res to a critter, your damage output will be multiplied by 1.2 (Resistance Debuff caps at -90% (you can apply more, but you can never reduce anything's Resistance to less than -90% (and Resistance resists Resistance Debuffs, so if your target has Resistance, that Resistance resists the debuff by the percentage of that Resistance, but only for the damage type it resists (totally not complicated, right?))). Containment effectively doubles the damage output of controllers, even if they're at the damage cap, thus also sidestepping the cap (which is why most controller damage-dealing powers are comparatively weak. they can double their damage through Containment, then they can multiply that by 1.9 with Resistance Debuffs. the final result can be very impressive when all variables are properly set up).

Enhancement categorization is irrelevant in this context. There are 9 powers in every primary, and 6 of those powers are not T1, T2 or T9 (which has a sufficiently long recharge time to prohibit working it into a repetitive attack chain). Most secondary power sets include at least one power which can be cycled into an attack chain, if not as an attack, then as damage mitigation. There are also pool attacks (Arcane Bolt deals more damage than half of the sentinel T2 primary attacks, plus has that Arcane Power proc thing going on now (which offers higher damage output over time, and is not tied to recharge times, so it's of even higher value for SO-only builds)) and *PP powers which can be used in attack chains. There's no code in the game, not a single line, which reduces the number of powers available if SOs are used, nor which restricts us to only using primary powers when using SOs. With IO sets, we can whittle down our attack chains to only the most powerful or utilitarian attacks, but that's really just a reduction in complexity and focus on something specific, such as maximal damage output or archetype hybridization (playing a character as though it were a different archetype. examples: deftroller, scrapfender). Anyone can build a full attack chain, without T1/T2 attacks, using only SOs. That is a guarantee built into the game itself, because, as you noted, it is balanced around SOs. That SO-limited attack chain will be more complex, such as 1-2-3-1-4-2-5-repeat instead of 1-2-3-4, but it will still be perfectly viable, and it will not have to lean on the T1/T2 to be seamless. That's why I refer to the T1/T2 attacks as starter attacks. That's exactly what they are. They're training wheels, designed to get us through the low levels and teach us how our attacks work, what recharge time is, what secondary effects are, et cetera. Sometimes we continue to use them, for thematic reasons, for the secondary effects, for fun, but they're optional once we're out of the easy mode levels. The game practically dumps better powers into our laps, hands us what we need to build attack chains without T1/T2 powers, even if all SOs are the only enhancement option available.

Every other inherent was designed to be available at level 1 without restricting utility at level 50. Marrying Opportunity to the starter attacks to ensure early availability isn't necessary. It doesn't matter if its activation method is similar to that of other archetypes. No-one grumbles about Gauntlet and Critical Hits both being activated simply by attacking. There are no outcries due to Fury and Defiance both increasing damage as the player uses his/her attacks more frequently. People who play dominators aren't going to raise a ruckus if sentinels click an icon to activate their inherent. We, the players, may be enthusiastically individual in our approach to play and rosters of characters, but we all share similar interests, a love for this game in particular, and want all archetypes to thrive. And why would it have to be similar to Dominate, anyway? There are numerous ways to define a trigger for an inherent. As a player who doesn't use that power, it's not a concern from my perspective. When I talk about removing the starter attacks from my tray and ignoring Opportunity entirely, it's not because I'm padding my attack chain with Dominate, it's because I've recognized that sentinel primaries encourage players to eschew the use of T1/T2 attacks entirely, which can be accomplished entirely within the primaries, without leaning on the *PPs. My level 35 Fire/Rad sentinel doesn't use Flares or Fire Blast in her attack chain, and with Electric Fences as her first *PP selection, she's not leaning on that, or pool attacks, to pad out the chain, to provide one example. That character has an attack chain developed from primary powers alone. That's how I build all of my sentinels, because that's how the archetype was designed. The design of the primaries directly conflicts with the design of the inherent by restricting its usefulness to the early game. We don't need *PPs or pool attacks to bypass the starter attacks, simply having more powers is sufficient to obviate the inherent, and we acquire more powers natively, through the process of leveling up. *PPs, even proc-bombed Dominate, are therefore irrelevant. No other inherent is restricted to functioning only with the starter attacks. Opportunity shouldn't be, either.

Restricting Opportunity to those attacks was poor initial design. Being forced to switch to one of the lowest damage attacks available at regular intervals is an unnecessary restriction on damage output for an archetype which is already operating under tightly controlled damage output. The inherent needs to be separated from the starter attacks if it's to provide benefit for all players, at all levels.

The human body can endure a vacuum for about 90 seconds without suffering permanent damage. Consciousness is lost after 10-15 seconds, when deoxygenated blood is recirculated through the body. What gases are in the blood stream (carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, residual oxygen, nitrogen, trace gases) begin to expand immediately, exasperating the hypoxic effect of space's lack of atmosphere, but the person would be dead from lack of oxygen before a gas embolism became a concern. A person also wouldn't freeze immediately, that's a movie myth. Heat is transmitted through convection, conduction and radiation, and the first two rely on material contact (atmosphere, liquid, thermally transmissive material like iron, etc). A mammalian body simply doesn't radiate heat well enough to instantaneously freeze in that situation.

The World's End: Everything that happened in Gary King's youth repeats in the present day, in the same general order, but it all becomes twisted, and near the end, he's presented with a bright light offering redemption, which he refuses. An EMP wipes out all electrical devices, leaving the world dark and faded in the final scene. Conclusion: he didn't try to commit suicide, he succeeded, and the entire film takes place inside his dying mind. Deadpool: Sister Margaret's School for Wayward Girls is populated by assassins and bikers, but we never see a single police officer investigating the place; Deadpool is popular and handsome, but becomes disfigured following a terminal illness diagnosis; he meets an insanely hot prostitute who falls in love with him and becomes the driving force for his quest to fix himself. Conclusion: Cunningham is Wade Wilson. Suffering from the pain of a terminal illness, made worse by the medications and treatments he's forced to endure, he blames his doctors and resents his wife for the agony he's living through, and retreats into his imagination and lives out a wildly distorted version of his reality. The disfigurement is a result of his self-loathing for giving up on his children.

I don't have Assemble the Team, Team Transporter or Mission Transporter on any of my characters. I only use LRT or the Ouroboros portal when I'm at an extreme distance from the zone transfer point(s). The charges of Teleport to Base and Rapid Response Portal I've accumulated are unused on all of my characters. My base has no teleport pads. I only use the Teleport to Contact function of Ouroboros when I'm starting a flashback mission. I shut off my travel powers when I reach the mission door, I rarely ghost and I don't do speed runs. What you've said in no way represents how, or why, I play. And since you seem to want me to participate in this thread, I'll also point out that my peacebringer has 5 KB->KD enhancements slotted, and I adamantly disagree with your proposal, and the reason you've given for it. I'm not upset at having spent those five slots on those enhancements, I don't consider them to be a tax, I'm grateful that I have the option to use them. Those enhancements turn the relevant powers into strong soft controls which significantly aid in survivability and greatly improve my ability to deal damage. As long as those enhancements remain slotted, I'm neutering the enemy's ability to respond and ensuring that they're within range of my most powerful attacks. The KB->KD enhancements already provide extra damage by allowing us to use our more powerful attacks as soon as they've recharged, rather than wasting some of that post-recharge time pursuing enemies or repositioning. Adding basic proc damage to the enhancements is neither necessary nor warranted, and the request comes across not as a suggestion to improve the game, but as unbridled avarice coupled with a selfish disregard for the game's health.

Chauffer! CHAUFFER! Why did you make me raise my voice? Remind me to fire you later. Now trundle the limo to the next spawn and have them line up outside of the door, so I don't have to stand up to defeat them.

Worse, I forgot Hancock. I'm on a superhero video game forum and I fucking forgot Hancock. I'm definitely growing old. Also, the Evil Dead series, Return of the Living Dead series, Ice Pirates, and, from what I've read, Brightburn (haven't seen it yet, though, so nothing but synopses to go on). I think the Incredibles franchise might be appropriate for the list, too, but it's up in the air... they swing back into seriousness in the second half of each film.

No, because the game is currently designed to make leveling from 1-20 easy. Scaling damage, little or no need for status protection, limited attacks available to critters, etc. The early levels of the game were oriented around the concept of having enhancements with lower values. IOs and IO sets don't need to be adjusted unless the early game is also adjusted. And if you adjust the early game, you also have to adjust the availability of SOs, IOs and IO sets to compensate, since you'll be requiring players to slot appropriately. So be careful of that can of worms, you might find that it doesn't taste nearly as good as it looks.

And then developed super baking, super telepathy, super ventriloquism, super knitting... Thank whomever for Crisis on Infinite Earths. I shudder to think of how bland Superman stories would be if he could knit his way out of every predicament.

In the original Greek mythology, Hades was no more a place than Zeus, or Poseidon, or Hephaestus. After Greek culture had blended with other cultures, such as the Roman Empire (which incorporated other religions quite readily), and monotheism began to spread (which also incorporated aspects of various religions), Hades was redefined. But the concept of Hades as a location didn't originally exist in Greek mythology any more than the concept of Zeus being Mount Olympus, or Athena being Athens. That simply wasn't how the ancient Greeks envisioned their pantheon. Their gods resided in places, they were not places in and of themselves.

Damn. You beat me to that one (i was planning to do it later this week).

Those bastards!

Hades was the god, Tartarus was the underworld. Tartarus was a Titan, originally, then became the embodiment of the underworld when the pantheon defeated the Titans. It depends on when you look along the Egyptian time line. In the Old Kingdom, Anubis was the god of the dead. He was the protector and guardian. By the Middle Kingdom, Osiris had become the god of the dead (after Set chopped him up) and presided over Duat (the afterlife in this mythology), and Anubis' role had been shifted to the god of embalmers, the god who weighed the hearts of the dead in the Hall of Ma'at, and the protector of graves. Then, near the end of the Dynasties, he was also portrayed as the guide who led the deceased to the Weighing of the Heart. So yes, but no. Anubis didn't rule Duat, but he was the god and ruler of cemeteries and tombs (and his power there was beyond that of any other), and in early mythology, the god of the dead. This is why he was also known as the First/Foremost of the Westerners (to "go west" in ancient Egyptian culture meant to die, evoking the myth of Osiris' death and its connection to the setting of the sun), the Lord of the Sacred Land (nothing was more sacred than the places where the dead were buried), He Who Sits on the Mountain (mountains being symbolically important as representations of tombs) and many other names. Anubis was a god of different things, but he was also "just" a god in the sense that he didn't rule a place like Olympus, Tartarus or the ocean. Despite Anubis not being the "ruler of the underworld" (ancient Egyptians didn't have an underworld. Duat was neither a place of punishment nor reward, it was simply the next phase in living. they didn't believe in any kind of Hell, instead, if a soul was deemed unworthy of entering Duat, it was devoured by Ammit), he was immensely important in that culture, as important as the Nile, because, to them, the afterlife was just more life, and Anubis was the one who made that life possible in the same way the Nile made their mortal life possible. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

I know a dev who's tough but neat He's so fun, he can't be beat He's got posts that I desire He sets the General forum on fire I want @Jimmy I want @Jimmy I check the forums when the sun goes down Ain't no @Jimmy posts around You're my dev, when you're not hiding You're just fun, without even trying I want @Jimmy I want @Jimmy (yeah!) @Jimmy come back, there's nothing better I also like your forum letters Some day soon I'll make you post And then @Jimmy won't be a ghost I want @Jimmy I want @Jimmy I want @Jimmy I want @Jimmy Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

/bind LBUTTON "+mouse_look"

It reminds me to turn off endurance-hogging travel powers in a mission, sometimes quite abruptly.