Grouchybeast

I duo a lot, and I'd say that my most fun Blaster duo was a Dual Pistols/Martial Combat Blaster with a Thermal/Sonic Defender. DP/MC is a ridiculously fun combo anyway, and the Defender buffs and debuffs make it absolutely godly: no mez, 50% damage buff all the time, shields, lots of debuff for EBs and AVs, all excellent stuff. You'll have some good heals backing up the shields for when things go pear-shaped, and you'll both be very busy and having fun. It also keeps the Blaster out in front kicking ass and taking names, rather than having a Tank or Scrapper out in front and the Blaster tagging along behind.

Sounds like what we need here is a Bullet Control set. Fear effects as mobs cower, Knockdown as they dive for cover...

I've only played since I13, but I don't remember ever seeing anything like that. Maybe search for old screenshots, see if you can find any with the effect in place?

No, they're talking about a duplicate version of the current live server but with all the usual beta cheat codes available. to use now as part of testing I27. Say I don't currently have a Trick Arrow defender on live, but I'd like to test the proposed TA changes. I can make a TA Defender on the test server, but I can't compare how it plays to the current live game TA Defender unless I level up and slot out a character on live. If there was a 'live copy' test server I could easily make the character there to use for comparison.

AFAIK, there's a closed beta server and a closed beta Discord. It's fair to assume that players who have access to those (I'm not one of them) will have seen more of the devs' thinking about these changes.

Knockback's the most fun. Confuse is the funniest. The rest are all fine.

Can't you save that? My windows all stay in the same place, anyway, but I'm damned if I remember how I did it.

FWIW, I would have been happy enough with you guys simply disabling enterbasefrompasscode. I managed to get into my base without it on live, it would be fine on HC, too. I just think that adding two more base entry powers to what is already, as you say, a messy system, is entirely the wrong direction to take things.

Having seen this I now understand much better how you managed to end up with this weird multiplication of almost-but-not-quite identical base powers, when HC's redesigns are usually so neat and logical. It still hurts me in my soul, though :-)

Although it does have a 30 minute cooldown unaffected by global recharge. I would much prefer one base portal summon power, matching Ouro portals in its cooldown, and get rid of all the others. it's so much simpler and cleaner. We don't have four types of Ouro portals with four different combinations of function, charges and cooldowns. We don't need four different base access powers, either.

A lot of the accolade powers are like that, though. They might be nice to pick up 'for free', but you wouldn't want to spend a power pick on them as the top tier power in an epic pool. I actually really like the idea of an accolade that gets more useful as characters pick up more zone exploration badges. It seems well in line with the effort required to get popular accolades like TFC. However, I can see why people who already use LRT as part of their character concept are annoyed that they'll lose the power and have to regain it. I don't know how easy/feasible this is, but would it be possible to grant character who currently have LRT the option to automatically gain the exploration badges for those zones currently covered by LRT? That way they aren't losing anything the character already had. (Optional because I'm sure there are some people who wouldn't want to take the badges, for whatever reason.)

I'd prefer to have a clean initial design than expect players to use moderately obscure features to work around UI issues.

Four different base access powers taking up a slot in a power tray. Two of them are pure teleports, two summon portals. Two have charges, two don't. All of them have different length cooldowns. This just seems like a lot. Personally, I would rather have one base portal-summoning power that has a five-minute cooldown like an Ouro portal, and call it a day.

Look, you can't just expect the Halloween mobs to show up line-perfect once a year on demand. They need a week of rehearsals before their big day!

Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes the editor decides to randomly count them as another few. Fixing the editor would be a great first step for improving bios.

I am! I'm generally too lazy to write any for my own characters, but I like reading other peoples'. ETA: That said, I think they're a pretty good length at the moment. Long enough to convey a reasonable amount of info, but short enough that I can read a bunch of them while waiting for a team to get rolling.

You're close! I just searched my chatlogs, and it's actually said by Slag Heaps redside.

@philtrum - Heeeeeeeey! Nice to see you :-) I don't know if you remember me, but I used to join your speed ITFs on Defiant. The last time I saw a dev post about enterbasefrompasscode, they said that it wouldn't be removed until there was a replacement. IIRC, the thinking was something like the Ouro power, that would allow a temporary base portal to be created anywhere. Passcode macros would still work, if used next to a base portal (permanent or temporary). So basically, it would preserve the convenience and functionality while adding a cast time to stop it being used as a get-out-of-death-free trick.

I think The Most Basic Blaster would be Energy/Energy. When I think of blasts in comics, I think of characters being knocked flying, and Energy animations are very KAPOW and BLAM.

The last announcement about Page 6 is here. It doesn't mention asymmetrical wings, but the last photo includes asymmetrical shoulders, so they're obviously still working on expanding that aspect of the costume creator.

I think if this is the direction that content creation ultimately takes, then the single most important thing that the HC team could do would be to update AE and put in a comprehensive and accessible tagging and search system, so that people can actually find content they want to play within the game.

That sounds like a great time! Smaller teams can be so much fun. I keep meaning to try to catch the TWANG team (I made an Archery/TA blaster specially for it) and then I always forget to log in on the right day. I'm going to make an extra effort next week!

Well, sure, when you preemptively decide that all games like Animal Crossing, Candy Crush, The Sims etc that entirely coincidentally happen to have a large female playerbase are Not Real Games, then suddenly it turns out that a lot of women are Not Real Gamers. Good Lord.

"Aww, c'm0n m@n, I d0n't w@nna b3 @ f00t a9a1n. VVhy @m I a1wayz 0n3 0f t3h f33t?" "C4u$3 U 5M3LL."

So, my duo partner and I have a new pair of characters, my Ill/Storm controller and their Storm/Energy defender. We've been spending a lot of time hanging around in Atlas, running tip missions. My character's bio literally says 'I slot for Knockback'. Would you like to guess how many random tells about KB we've accumulated between us? I'll give you a clue: it's somewhere between nought and zero.