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I miss mice with balls. I liked balls. They felt good. They felt right. You could do things with balls that you can't do with lasers and infrared LEDs. Yeah, sometimes you had to pull your balls out and clean the gunk out of the hole, but it was worth it. 😕

*shrug* https://www.ign.com/articles/2003/08/21/city-of-heroes-diary-volume-2 https://www.ign.com/articles/2003/09/17/city-of-heroes-diary-volume-3 https://www.ign.com/articles/2003/10/16/city-of-heroes-diary-volume-4 These articles, written by Emmert eight months before the game launched, walk us through the design process behind creating the archetypes available at launch. Of particular note is how, in the second article, he outlines the thought process behind categorizing abilities and how that influenced archetype creation itself. "Next, we took these very narrowly defined abilities and grouped them into larger categories. Things like rooting, mezzing and sleep were all related to controlling the behavior of the AI characters. So we dubbed that category 'Crowd Control' (to be honest, I call it now just 'control' but we didn't want to confuse it with our previous named control powers). We ended up with six basic areas: Melee Attacks, Ranged Attacks, Personal Defense, Buff/Debuff, Crowd Control and Movement abilities. At the time, we didn't quite know where we were going with this; we were just trying to get a handle on what exactly the things were that MMORPG players could do - and would want to do - in our game. Pretty quickly, we decided that an individual hero should be able to have powers in two of those categories." They didn't start with a trinity model. That's of critical importance. There was no tank/damage/heal categorization in mind when they began, no foes requiring a perfect blend of the three in order to win. They began with a freeform selection model, noted the flaws and addressed them by gradually and carefully pulling things together, into general categories, then further refined those into classes. Moreover, CoH launched before WoW, and the trinity model hadn't really be fully cemented at that time because there weren't nearly as many MMORPGs (Everquest, Runescape... those were the only big ones, as i recall). Cryptic had no-one to copy, no game to inspire them (beyond P&P RPGs and tabletop board games), so they weren't eyeing some other wildly successful game and hoping to replicate the success by copying the design (as so many have done since EQ and WoW blew the gaming world up). But the key here is in the final sentence of that quoted material. "An individual hero should be able to have powers in two of those categories." This is significant, because those categories, essentially, correspond to the more basic tank/damage/heal categories. The process of narrowing down the power selection process and creating classes inherently required them to combine two of the three trinity aspects in order to make each class, due to the way they laid out the categories and how they assigned them in pairs. The blaster was the exception that appeared to adhere to the trinity model, but it did so within the constraints of Cryptic's archetype model, being Ranged Damage/Melee Damage, and as such, isn't a true representative of a trinity model class. In the third article, Emmert says, "Early this year, when we made some changes to the design, these ideas were knocking around the back of my head. As I explained in earlier columns, we came up with Archetypes - and each one had two "roles."" That sentence is even more clear. Every archetype specifically and purposefully fulfills two roles. And with everyone fulfilling two roles... the trinity simply doesn't exist. Our characters are, by design, too diverse to be narrowed down to the simplistic categorization of tank/damage/heal. There are also numerous interviews archived all over the Internet, and in the Wayback Machine, some even linked on the wiki, in which Emmert and other Cryptic developers outline an intent to ensure that players aren't forced to dedicate hours of their lives to playing, to making the game as "casual friendly" as possible, as we'd refer to it today. They wanted to create a game which people could log into for brief periods, feel like they accomplished something, and log out again. They didn't want to create a game which required players to log in, patiently wait for a trinity team to assemble, go beat their heads against WoW-style Elite mobs for three hours, et cetera. "Casual friendly" was always one of the most important design goals. The trinity model is not casual friendly, it never has been and as demanding as it is, it simply can't be. I don't have a direct quote from a developer, a link to the old forums in which one of them says, "Yeah, fuck that holy trinity stuff, we do what we want!". I don't have it because I'm just not going to dig through tens of thousands of posts on the Wayback Machine to find it. It's there, if you want to go digging, because I do clearly remember it being said several times over the years, but I'm not going to look for it. Nor will I e-mail any of the former developers to ask (all of them are quite easy to find with a few minutes of searching). I don't need to. The evidence, both in actual play and in looking at developer comments like the ones I've linked, speaks for itself. This is not and never was intended to be a trinity model game.

If you mean how long will they continue to hop on boxes and fences, trying to reach you as you hover just out of range, they'll do it until the server is reset, as far as I've been able to determine. Note, though, I've never stayed logged in continuously for an entire week, so I haven't tested it to the full extent possible. I have had the little buggers running around in circles below for several hours, on the original servers. If you mean how far will they chase you, they despawn once you put a certain amount of distance between you and them, but I don't know exactly how far that is. They won't cross entire zones to give you your small inspiration and little inf* bonus. They're not that grateful (they're going to be mugged again in a few minutes anyway (we're the worst crime-fighters in history, apparently)).

People were accustomed to the trinity mindset, since that's how every other MMORPG worked, and expecting CoH to conform to it. Of course they were forming trinity teams. People do what they're trained to do, or what they know works. They stick to a tried and true method. But that's not how the game was designed, it's how some people chose to play it because the MMORPG market revolving around the trinity model and mindset trained them to play that way. That was the alpha stage. It was changed not because Cryptic felt that a trinity model was better, but because play testers were making characters with all four travel powers and no attacks, or every heal available and no attacks, or all defensive powers and no attacks, and they couldn't level. The alpha was trashed and they started over, with archetypes designed around the basic concepts used in comics to guide players as well as guarantee they'd never find themselves incapable of progressing. It was never to impose a trinity model on the game, it was to prevent players from shooting themselves in the foot. They talked about it several times on the original forums. I'm sure you can find the posts if you dig around in the Wayback Machine. IO sets didn't break the trinity model, they just made it more obvious to more people that it wasn't applicable here. Words of truth.

More frames per second.

And no-one receives the Power of Greyskull. 😞

It never was.

Concurrently, the flow of electricity through the body results in muscle contractions which can't be relaxed until the electricity is removed. Having one's musculature subjected to such leads to general weariness, amongst other things. This is why taser devices are widely used as a less than lethal means of subduing people. Not only is the subject briefly incapacitated by the jolts of electricity, but they're also far weaker after regaining control of their limbs, making it easier to subdue and restrain them. This feeling of weakness translates into endurance loss in Co*.

If I had to make an objective assessment based on the ready availability of -Res for all characters, in pools, procs and Incarnate abilities, I'd surmise that the fact that specific archetypes, and specific sets within those archetypes, allowing significantly greater amounts of -Res than external sources can provide was what was considered important during the original development cycle of the game. In other words, my TA/Dark's -Res is always going to be higher than your Punchy/Dodgy's -Res, and guaranteed in both availability and application, and that's what the developers considered important. Everyone can deal damage, but some specialize in dealing damage while others deal just enough damage to "get by". In the same vein, everyone can apply -Res, but some specialize in applying -Res while others work within a more limited application framework (from a single-target pool power, or from a long recharge *PP power, or rolling the dice on procs). I believe the only people who would consider it important to rely on a support character for -Res are the ones with the specific agenda of making teams "need" or want support characters. No-one else really gives a shit, as long as the job is done at the end of the day.

-Res what?

Mohair, as requested.

Not until @Jimmy and Co. finish my red carpet with cheering crowds travel power for Star of the Show. 😛

There are a few sets which exist in the data files, but not in the game (yet). Don't know if the HC team is actively working on them, or if they're just legacy code from the old days that just sits there, taunting us, daring us to reserve names like Broken Wind. You can have that. 👍

?

KB protection with Hover prevents the flip, just like it prevents the knocked back/down animation when you're on the ground (presuming your KB protection is higher than the magnitude of the KB, of course). The flip is animation time spent not attacking or mitigating, so a -KB IO does tend to be useful.

[Taint]

Win/win. Also boots. Hate when I have to wear mismatched boots.

Tested and verified on controllers. EMP Arrow doesn't affect critters in any way, doesn't even draw aggro. Badge that gnome, and fix EMP Arrow or I'll eat someone's babies.

Blogger?

Check the post history, folks. Then walk away.

/screenshitui 1

This arc starts out well enough. Missing person, Big Pharma possibly involved, okay, that works. But, only five missions into the arc (which is seventeen missions in total), it just falls apart. You discover that the missing woman had a criminal record, and supposedly died in Europe years ago, but the body returned to the woman's mother is discovered to be that of someone else, not the missing woman. Janet Kellum concludes that the missing woman murdered the other woman and stole her identity. And that's the problem with this arc. This is the moment when it stops working. The story portrays young Julianne Thompson as an idealist crusader seeking to unite heroes to combat a host of societal ills, rather than simply "fight crime", and then makes a massive U-turn in rush hour traffic (without using a turn signal!) with a single reference to a criminal history and a dubious conclusion that she must be a murderer and identity thief. There isn't even a nod to whatever Julianne did to warrant a felony conviction. For all we know, based on the narrative as it's presented, she was arrested for protesting, or rescuing animals from a testing facility, or marching in a Free The Nipple parade. Not one word is spent explaining how a socially conscious, moral person could degenerate to ending someone else's life and stealing their identity. Worse, though, is the accusation of murder. Where's the evidence for that? There isn't any mention of how Clarissa van Dorn died. Nothing. She could've died in her sleep. She could've died in the middle of a socialite party after snorting too much blow and having a heart attack. She could've gone swimming and drowned. If she was murdered, there's no evidence presented to indicate that Julianne did it. Nothing. The narrative doesn't even specify that Clarissa was murdered, only Janet Kellum is saying that, and she offers absolutely no evidence to support her accusation. So, based on Ms. Kellum's wild and unsubstantiated claims, you break into Crey buildings, assault Crey employees, eventually uncover some evidence of illegal activity... this isn't heroism, it's a grudge, a vendetta against someone you hate and want to see brought to her knees. You're so determined to find some way to hurt Countess Crey that you break all of the laws you used to uphold. And even if you were to try to use this to "clear" your name, which has only been tarnished because you slandered the Countess by accusing her of crimes of which you have neither proof of, nor even evidence they even occurred, no prosecutor in the world, not even in a pretend world, would ever consider allowing it in a trial. It's fruit of the poison tree, it's evidence you obtained while conducting illegal activities and not only would that evidence be thrown out in any court, any evidence linked to it would also be inadmissible. This is the kind of stuff that destroys your name permanently and ruins any chance of obtaining a conviction, not turns the case around and sets you free. And then, instead of going to the police, you break more laws by entering Crey property illegally, destroying Crey property and corrupting Crey data... and the PPD pats you on the back, tells the press what a wonderful, upstanding citizen you are and offers you the opportunity to "bring in" the Countess? FUCKING WHAT? WHAT? Nothing about this arc is heroic after the fifth mission. It's potentially the best vigilante arc in the game, though, because this is exactly that kind of thing, vigilante justice. You and Janet decide someone's bad and needs a beating, and you go on a one-person crusade to hand-deliver said beating. I get the whole, "Big business is evil" mentality, but this arc just goes too far. The logic is so specious, the conclusion jumping so powerful that it could be a travel power by itself, that it's just bad. I'm actually sorry I stopped to read any of the text this time, because I rather enjoyed fighting Crey before. I enjoyed the arc before. Now... I just feel like a moron for blindly and blithely letting Janet Kellum use me for her personal vendetta against the Countess. This arc is desperately in need of better writing if it's going to remain part of the game, because as it stands, it's just wrong. Janet Kellum is a manipulative, lying asshole as far as I'm concerned.