Luminara

The Invention system was designed this way purposefully to maintain a degree of balance. We're not supposed to six-slot every power, which is why, to highlight one glaringly obvious example, we don't get enough slots to do so. We're not supposed to gain six-slot bonuses for every power, either, we're supposed to make choices about which powers need more slots and which can function well with fewer. This is part and parcel of the balance within the game. Don't hold your breath.

I did ask you to provide some evidence of this rampant, egregious abuse to which you've alluded. Your response was, "This conversation is over". The absence of evidence is, in and of itself, evidence. That's not flawed logic, it's one of the most basic tenets of observation. For instance, we know that there are no Tyrannosaurus Rexes alive now. We know this because we have no evidence of them being alive now. The sum total of missing evidence for their continued survival to the present day is, therefore, evidence that there are none alive. You know what, I'll ask someone else. Hey, @GM Impervium, how many people have used the in-game report tool to report: being kicked from a team for using KB being verbally harassed for using KB being griefed by someone using KB? We don't need names, dates, times or anything like that. Just totals. And while you're at it, the total number of active player accounts would be helpful, so we can determine the percentage of players these issues affect.

One post stated that the poster left teams with players who used KB without regard for teammates. One. You know, like Seismic Blast having one KB power, rather than "all about KB"? One.

The "KB got me booted and called names" chatter? It's amazingly silent chatter. I searched, I dug, I listened, and it's pretty damn quiet, because I can't find it. The "I knowingly, willingly selected a set with KB and I don't like KB, and instead of dealing with it, I'm going to rant" comments? I expect literate adults in full possession of their faculties and not struggling with intellectual disabilities to be capable of accepting the consequences of their choices. I don't think that's too much to ask, as it's no less than what I expect of myself. The "Someone knocked a critter back and now I'm so mad my head is about to explode" posts? Apparently, they're not mad enough to do anything about it. No-one's being kicked for using KB. No-one's being verbally abused for using KB. Having to use Hover, or Fly, or vertically joust with Combat Jumping, or spend a slot on a KB->KD IO, or position the KB effect so it blows critters in a preferred direction, or fucking press W, is not the worst goddamn thing that can happen to people, not even in this game, and going spastic over it is immature and ridiculous. It's not that important. Worse things happen to all of us before our first cup of coffee in the morning.

No "People are mean to me/kicking me off of teams because I use KB" controversy.

The evidence presented thus far (none) indicates that the "controversy" isn't there. As I previously noted, there aren't any posts reporting players being kicked for using KB, there aren't any posts reporting verbal abuse for using KB. Some people don't like KB, and some people don't like "having" to use slots to mitigate KB, and some people are vocal about these things, but that "some" isn't even, based on the overwhelming lack of evidence, a significant percentage of current players. That's not evidence that KB is "so controversial", it's evidence that people are different. Shocker. And the very notion that we'd stop including anything simply because some people don't like it, is ludicrous. Some people don't like bubbles. Some people don't like Speed Boost. Some people don't like IO set bonuses. Some people don't like particle effects. Some people don't like zone music. Absolutely everything in this game, every last thing, is disliked by someone, and expecting future development to avoid using anything that isn't universally adored is akin to expecting the entire game to be stripped down to a blank screen.

I laughed so hard, I thought my lung had recollapsed again. Jerk. 😁

My understanding is that it's location-targeted, and that it has a comparatively massive area of effect, so it can be used behind or to the sides of spawns and knock them all in a chosen direction, such as directly toward the tank, or the wall, or into that dude you hate and would love to see eat a dirt sandwich. If so, I'd think preventing the four corners scenario would be pretty easy.

It is a good thing. Refusing to accept that choices have consequences doesn't change that. We make choices in everything we do, and we deal with the consequences. Every character we create and play is an exercise in choice and balancing the effects of that choice. One character might be AoE-oriented, another might be focused on single-target damage, another might be low damage, high mitigation, et cetera. We're always trading one of something for one of something else. Slotting KB->KD is trading slots for increased soft control, positioning and damage output over time (by keeping critters near your character, you can use your high damage melee attacks more readily). Nothing costs nothing, not even in this game, and something for nothing is worth exactly what's paid for it. It's also not benefitting me in any way after I hit double-digits in levels. It's completely useless. I get absolutely nothing from it after the starter levels, because it's obviated by basic slotting. It's not high enough to allow me to skip Accuracy enhancements, and slotting Accuracy enhancements obviates the secondary effect, so ultimately, it's pointless and useless. In contrast, KB, by itself, increases survivability, and can be converted to KD for further benefits (see paragraph above). So while you can slot your KB powers to improve their secondary in some way, all I can do is accept that mine is an irrelevant number displayed on the power info panel. -Recharge suffers from a similar issue. If critters had a single attack, then small amounts of -Recharge would matter. They don't. They have multiple attacks, and -Recharge doesn't prevent them from using those other attacks. And it can't be slotted to improve it in any way. It can't delay those other attacks like KB and KD can. It can't give me opportunities to leverage my own higher damage attacks like KD can. Unless it's massive, and the character can survive the critter's attack chain before it cycles back around to the first power, it does absolutely nothing worthwhile or noticeable... and even that benefit is dependent on critters not being defeated before that first attack recharges. If I'm two-shotting minions in 4 seconds, and downing lieutenants in 6 seconds, the value of my -Recharge is even lower, since it's only applicable for bosses and higher. And, again, I still can't improve it in any way, it's just a tiny number that floats in the power info panel, mocking me. Those are fair comparisons. You can do something with your KB. You can benefit from those conversion IOs. Other sets don't have that option, and never will. You could've used custom-colored Rad blasts, Dark blasts or Fire blasts. You could've made that character without the KB, and the only consequence would be a different name on the set. You chose not to. Choice, consequence. And Archery's +Acc isn't doing a thing for teammates. It's not a PBAoE, it's not a buff to teammates, it's not a debuff on critters, it's not even making the Archery/* or */Archery character better. But you missed the point. If the HC team added a slot specifically for global KB reduction, but didn't add a slot for all other secondaries to benefit in some way, it would turn into the biggest shit show since the Nixon administration. Like it or not, willing to admit it or not, slotting KB->KD changes the profile of a set significantly. It allows for additional damage output. It allows for better management of soft control. It adds advantages. If you give one set the ability to redefine itself and gain advantages, the same has to be done for all sets. All of them. Failure to do so would be catastrophic. It would show favoritism toward one secondary effect and disregard for all others, and incite furor. Being able to redefine the play style of KB-heavy sets with a single IO that doesn't even take up a slot in any power, allowing increased survivability, increased damage output, AND the extra slots to spend on additional special IOs (damage procs, Force Feedback +Rchg), and that not being applicable to everyone, would lead to riots. You can't drop an unbalanced and unfair change like that without players going ape-shit. That's the point, in case it still wasn't clear. Not whether or not different secondaries are comparable in any way, but that granting one secondary a special global IO slot and not doing it for the rest of the secondaries would be very, very bad for the game's health and the wellness of the community. And since it's a given that all secondaries can't be given a global IO slot which improves them, it's a guarantee of insane drama and strife. There isn't an iota of evidence that I can find anywhere that what you say is reflective of the real mindset of players in general. None. No threads with KB users holding hands and weeping en masse because they're kicked from teams or verbally abused for doing what they do. No reports of abuse for using KB. No screenshots or logs showing someone having been kicked, just... nothing. You make it sound as though team leaders are hovering a finger over the kick command, and teammates are heaping vitriol on KB users, but there's nothing supporting that. You haven't even posted about being kicked from a team or told off for using your attacks, only vague musing about KB users being hated. It never happened to me, it never happened to my friends, the original forums weren't hammered with complaints from KB users, and these forums aren't rife with outrage over kicks for using KB, so where's the beef? Seriously, where? Is it under the pickle? Did you drop it? Did you knock it back too far and lose track of it? If people are so averse to KB that they'll commonly, frequently, regularly or even occasionally denigrate KB users and throw them off of teams, why isn't there a mountain of evidence showing that? Come on, man, no-one here hates you for using KB. We love you. We respect you. We appreciate you. And we're damn sure not going to stop feeling that because we have to press W for half a second. I meant stop obsessing over Meteor appearing out of nowhere, rather than being precisely modeled after a real impact event, complete with sub-orbital trajectory and travel time.

In revisited the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, the Tarot series, the Mode series, the Apprentice Adept series and the Incarnations of Immortality series a couple of years ago, when all I had was a tablet and not much else to do but read. It was an eye-opening experience, having read all of them decades ago and seeing them in this light now. Rings of Ice held up well to the test of time, and I do believe he's a good science fiction writer in general, but being bludgeoned by his libido in so many books took all of the charm out of them and left me wishing I hadn't re-read them. The conclusion to the Freedom trilogy felt strangely out of pace with the other two stories in that series, like it was rushed to print before she'd finished it. I had a similar feeling about the final Crystal Singer novel, Crystal Line, it just took an entirely different tone from the preceding novels and left me wondering if I was reading something from a different author. And the end of the Talent series, The Tower and The Hive, relegated The Rowan to a background character, which irked me. It was still good, but it wasn't The Rowan good. But everything else still hit me in the same way it did the first time. I blazed through all of the Dragonrider, Talents, Dinosaur Planet/Planet Pirate and Brainship novels and they held up really well, despite having read some of them for the first time over 35 years ago. Her son took over the Dragonriders franchise after she died... I can't say he's carrying the torch well. I didn't enjoy any of his entries. I don't recommend them, though you might take something away from the experience of reading his works in comparison to hers. I also delved into the Acorna series. I don't think McCaffrey contributed anything but a name on the covers. The writing style is definitely not hers, and the quality isn't even on par with the weakest of her works. Avoid this series.

Do you know what else no other secondary effect has? The choice to do everything you just stated. I can't slot an enhancement which makes the +Acc in my Archery powers do something different, I'm just stuck with a shitty secondary effect. I can't make the -Recharge in my Ice attacks change in any way, I'm stuck with a fixed amount of -Recharge. No-one puts a gun to anyone's head and orders them to create characters who use KB powers. There's no coercion or deception being perpetuated, no information being deliberately obscured. Attacks which deal KB state that they deal KB, and just looking at the power information at character creation or in the game proper tells players exactly how high the KB magnitude is and whether it's guaranteed or % chance. People choose to take those attacks and use them, and if they want to, they have the additional option of converting that KB to KD. Yeah, we get it, you hate KB. But you chose to make that Energy blaster, you chose to slot those attacks with KB->KD IOs. You're neither stupid nor ignorant about this game, so you damn well knew what you were doing when you made that character and spent those slots in that way. You are responsible for your own choices and the consequences thereof. And yes, I do, in fact, understand. I have three KB->KD IOs on my Grav/TA controller, three more on my Grav/Fire dominator and two on my Bots/TA mastermind. But I don't feel a need to shout at people on the forums or blow up because I used those slots for those enhancements. I made that choice on each of my characters. I paid the price to convert KB to KD. I weighed the pros and cons and made the decision. And I'm grateful that they're available and happy to exercise the option to use them. Spending those slots on those IOs allowed me to turn my Grav/TA into a melee-centric character, pulling entire spawns with Wormhole and beating the crap out of them with Sands of Mu, Seismic Smash and Fault while my Singularity keeps them exactly where I want them. That opened up an entirely different style of play on that character. That's the kind of change those IOs make. They're that powerful. They're that effective. They're worth the price, in slots and in inf*, ten times over, because they can do that. Lastly, there are a lot of secondary effects, and allowing players with KB powers to slot a single KB->KD IO and reap the benefits while all other secondaries are not given the same opportunity is bullshit, and you should damn well know it. If we allow you to slot that way, we cannot, in fairness, deny similar opportunities to every other secondary effect in the game, and the reality is, that would just make a nightmarish mess because those opportunities just don't exist for some sets and powers. The divisiveness created would be horrific. If your ultimate goal is to turn this community into a slavering mass of hate and fury, that's exactly the right move. If not, drop it, and either learn to live with using KB->KD IOs in individual powers, or delete your KB heavy characters and move on. And the derelict cars my Grav/* characters send flying toward enemies don't come from between the floors of office maps, nor would it be reasonable to expect there to be a junkyard churning out beaters just for Grav/* characters to wormhole to themselves and fling at foes, or even for that many junked cars to exist in the entirety of Rhode Island. It's called "suspension of disbelief", but you can go with "I really don't give two shits where it came from" just as easily. Maybe the Seismic Blast user is opening a magical portal. Or a technological portal. Or fiddling with gravity to create a mass and move it with extreme velocity. Or a space rock junkyard. There are guaranteed to be as many explanations for how Meteor's projectile appears are there are players. It doesn't have to be a perfect scientific model of an impact event, it merely has to lend a degree of verisimilitude, and it does. Don't obsess over it.

Do you mean, they'd be jealous because it's ranged, thus usable to knock foes in a direction of their choice, or were you under the impression that the KB was higher for Meteor than for Nova (it's the same magnitude for both)?

Not with mag 16.617 KB. It's a rock, not Ralph Kramden.

Clowns with seltzer bottles.

Changelings reproduce by budding, essentially, and they have a "Great Link", which is basically all of them puddled together and intermingling, so they have little sense of personal identity. They struggle to understand biological functions of humanoids, like knocking boots, and attach no emotional meaning, such as romance, to contact with one another. Scientifically, they recognize the role of sex, but since they don't need to do it, and they spend so little time outside of the Great Link, they don't grasp its significance in other contexts than reproduction. Odo (wonderfully played by the late René Auberjonois), who was one of "the Hundred", a group of "baby" changelings scattered across the Gamma quadrant by the Founders so they could expand their empire (they assumed all of the Hundred would experience the same prejudice they did and return (some kind of genetic programming which made them want to go home, to the Omarian Nebula), bringing with them knowledge of new worlds to which the Dominion could bring "order"), happened to pass through the wormhole linking Gamma to Alpha, and grew up amongst humanoids, so he learned to attach emotional meaning to physical contact, he learned about sex and how to engage in it, he developed friendships and even fell in love a couple of times. Cut off from his people, not even knowing there were others like him in the galaxy, he became far more like humanoids than the Founders did. This plays a key role in ending the Dominion War when the series reaches its conclusion, and ending the Dominion itself. Odo brings "humanity" to his people.

Burn is overpowered because cooking at low temperatures consumes more fuel than cooking at high temperatures, due to the necessity to increase cooking time significantly in order to kill all pathogens. You're pumping less CO2 into the atmosphere, and you're ensuring that your meat victims detainees aren't infested with parasites and bacteria. Good for the environment and good for you.

The Dominion was an empire in the Gamma quadrant, created and controlled by shape-shifting beings known as The Founders. The Founders created the Dominion after spreading out across that quadrant and discovering that "solids", humanoids who couldn't alter their form (the Founders were a gelatinous species), distrusted them and frequently killed or drove changelings (individual members of the species) off of their planets. They genetically altered the Vorta, a primitive monkey-like species, to act as their lieutenants (controlled through indoctrination, cloning and genetically imprinted belief that the Founders were gods), and created the Jem'Hadar, a militant species, to function as shock troops (which they further controlled through short lifespans (typically less than 20 years (they grew from babies to maturity in a matter of days)) and addiction to a chemical known as Ketracel-White (which regulated Jem'Hadar biological functions. without it, they died slowly and painfully), and took control of the Gamma quadrant, establishing their dominance through intimidation. Having the ability to adopt any form, any likeness, whether it was an emormous, terrifying creature or a two-dimensional surface, or even raw plasma, meant they could sow dissent or monitor politics on any planet in the quadrant, with as few as a single changeling. They were masters of subterfuge and had millions of Jem'Hadar at their disposal, so they could take over a planet, or destroy all life on it, with extreme ease. They committed genocide to set examples of what happened when they were disobeyed or their "offer" to join the Dominion was refused. They weren't a nice species. Manipulative, scheming, cold, ruthless and thoroughly determined to impose their sense of order on everyone, everywhere, with themselves at the top.

I still love everything Anne McCaffrey wrote. Barbara Hambly's Windrose trilogy hasn't lost any of its magic for me, either. The Piers Anthony novels I enjoyed as an adolescent, though, come across as obsessed with sex, poorly veiled pedophilia in many cases, and not as scintillating as they seemed to my younger self. Some of what he wrote is still interesting and imaginative, but even the good material is overshadowed, in my estimation, by his failure to reign in his erotomania. The AD&D novels that fired my imagination and filled me with wonder, though, come across as bad fanfic now. The only reason most of them were even published was because they were in-house. With all of the grammatical and spelling errors, and the childish writing, no respectable publisher would've ever given the manuscripts a second glance. These days, I spend most of my reading time on subjects like building a brick oven, heating water without electricity, dam engineering and hydrodynamics and other things applicable to improving my life in the cabin, so I don't revisit the books from my past (other than McCaffrey/Hambly novels, which i re-read annually).

Seismic Shockwaves deals knockdown (KB < 0.75). Upthrust deals knockdown. Meteor deals KB. That's only three powers, including the set mechanic (Seismic Shockwaves), and only one of those three is full KB, so your assertion, that the set is "all about KB", is exaggeration. If the real question was, "Why does Meteor deal such heavy KB?", then the answer is "Verisimilitude". Real meteor strikes release an enormous amount of energy, causing debris to fly far, far away from the impact site. The impact can be so forceful that it scatters rubble for hundreds, or even thousands, of miles, and sometimes even into solar orbit. In fact, there's an entire group of meteorites here on Earth which studies and evidence suggest originated on Mars.

That would explain why so many porn starlets know him. Intimately.

Pool attacks alone won't do the job, but a primary or secondary with -Regen will. I did it in 2005. With IOs, and better pool attacks than were available then, it'd be comparatively easy these days.