mechahamham

According to the in-game story, most of the stuff they used, including the Excelsior drug, was initially stolen from (or actively clandestinely provided by) Crey. A lot of Freakshow parts are probably supposed to be stripped-down Crey power armor parts. The Freaks then branched out, stealing stuff from the Council and other tech-focused groups. This is the point of the Sister Psyche TF. The various sonic Tanks are using Council robot or Ascendant armor parts. Doc Buzzsaw talks about this a bit in her issue 6 arc. She then goes a step further, kitting out the Freaks with Nictus fragments. The Sneaky Freaks you encounter about this same time are using... Arachnos armor parts? I may be mistaken about that. Later on, we see Freaks with stolen Rikti tech. They *try* to incorporate some Circle Thorns into their cybernetics, but that doesn't really end happily for them.

As the saying goes, if you're not afraid of water, you simply haven't thought about it enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassophobia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaphobia There's a 'horror' subreddit dedicated to images and videos of terrifying aquatic phenomina: https://old.reddit.com/r/thalassophobia/ Water's pretty damn deadly, especially for how little we think about it.

No, if people *want* to use them, that's reason enough to unlock them. I'm just honestly and genuinely surprised that people want to use them.

The problem I have with this is that if you spend time really looking at them, the Freakshow parts are nasty and rusty. They're very low-poly-count compared to even the issue 1 costume pieces. I've seen images from other servers where the Freakshow parts are unlocked for players and they look very out of place in my opinion. You have a person wearing a Playstation 3 quality suit and then Playstation 1 quality rusty spikes sticking out of it.

You might as well say the same thing about guns or fire or, frankly, any of the other powersets that can be used in a lethal fashion. How many people drown every day? Compare that to how many people die of radiation exposure every day and you'll see a pretty ridiculous contrast. People think of 'radiation' and immediately go to 'Nuclear Weapon' or 'Chernobyl Disaster'. It's been made out to be hugely scary when car accidents are several orders of magnitude more dangerous. Far more people are burned by fires than radioactive isotope exposure. Far more people are medically helped by x-rays, radioactive imaging like PET, and oncological radiation therapy (cancer treaments) than will EVER be harmed. Radiation is very literally all around us all the time. Even if you discount all the forms that pass through us without harming us, we're immersed in damaging, ionizing radiation. It comes from LED lights, your smoke detector, bananas, granite countertops and a plethora of other sources. The Sun, giver of life, bathes us in ultraviolet radiation the second we step outside our homes. Our bodies have developed to be resistant to the constant damage. For a hero, imagine a person that could locate and murder cancer cells at a distance with gamma beams. Or could use microwaves to jam radio communication between rogue robots. Or could forcibly cause a reactor to power down, leaving a warship stranded. Like any of the powersets, radiation is presented purely as a tool. How you use that tool, positively or negatively, is entirely up to you.

Every time I've seen Max outside a mission, he's inevitably got a GM right with him. I imagine he gets reported all the time and so the GMs just hang out with him. It's not something he does or even wants to do on purpose, but he's apparently attached to the character. The GMs and devs are obviously aware of the problem, but there are two issues facing them: CoH is SPAGHETTI, and a lot of the dev work that's been done on it since volunteers have been working on it is untangling the mess. There's always a noodle of code touching something it shouldn't. Max's bug is an example of that. Changing the way it works may (almost certainly *will*) have unintended side-effects. Second, it's that volunteer thing. We have an entirely volunteer dev and GM staff who work on the game for free. They have to do the coding on their own time, at home, at their own expense, and largely with their own computer hardware. They've never been able to accept financial compensation for their work and nobody buys them laptops to connect to the development server instances. Do you want those volunteers fixing a highly visible, but very limited scope bug, or do you want them fixing less visible, but more important bugs? Prioritizing development work is always a difficult problem, even when you can pay people for the work they're doing.

I've always wanted to convert the full-screen windows like the costume editor and enhancement manager to modular windows. When CoH was first a thing, it seemed to be optimized for 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 monitors. The smaller elements become like grains of rice on our newer displays. I know me, and I know my skills at c and c++. The closer I am to real hardware addresses, the less useful I am, so I don't think I'd be a great match for someone to work on the CoH codebase. However, I was *okay* at understanding Win32 calls, and window management like that is *usually*, but not always just window handle properties, and then layout work.

There's always a spaghetti noodle touching some other important part of the game in CoH. Tweak hat models and we might find that Regen was taking some of its values from the hair geometry.

I don't like the huge. laggy, crowds, and the extra exp doesn't really do anything for me. I don't begrudge those who do enjoy the Mapserver Invasion event, but it just ain't for me. That said, one of my biggest complaints about the event is that the huge crowds tend to drag entire zones to a crawl. Please consider spinning up non-invasion zone instances during the event to allow those uninterested in the invasions to bypass the lag. Thank you, and enjoy the event!

I kinda wish /stuck would nudge enemies out of walls as well as nudge the player out.

I joined a delightful Defeat All Penny Yin TF a few days ago. The hard part of organizing it didn't seem to be getting people who wanted to do the content. Rather, it was keeping them from jamming that 'Exit' button out of habit. The team leader made the statement, "Every last enemy on the map must die. I'll stay on the map until everything's been killed," and the team seemed more than happy to try to stay with them. I suggested at one point that there should be a 'Must Defeat All' challenge setting for TFs and story arcs, a suggestion I've made before. Most of the team seemed to agree with me. Accordingly, here are some suggested badge titles to go along with such a setting: Completionist Complete a taskforce, strike force, or story arc with the 'Must Defeat All' challenge setting enabled. You came. You saw. You defeated every last enemy in front of you. Unresting Complete 5 taskforces, strike forces, or story arcs with the 'Must Defeat All' challenge setting enabled. There's no rest so long as there are enemies in front of you. Action Addict Complete 10 taskforces ' ' ' ' It's not the reward that matters. We're Not Done Here Complete 50 taskforces ' ' ' ' They can run and they can hide, but not from you. You Heard Me Complete 100 taskforces ' ' ' ' "I said 'Defeat Most' is for amateurs. Problem?" Delivery Driver Complete 200 taskforces, strike forces, or story arcs with the 'Must Defeat All' challenge setting enabled. Because you absolutely, positively HAVE to deliver every enemy you see into another world, parallel or otherwise.

On the first mission of The Ouroboros Initiation, given by The Pilgrim, Mender Lazarus sends you to a Council base to collect information. There are several glowies to click on, including one that starts you collecting letters from the 'Mysterious Letter Writer'. I just happened to get one that was on a map that had the 'Jail Room', and the letter writer's crate was hidden in the back corner of that room, on the bottom floor, between two of the jail cells. After destroying all the doors in the room for my Doorbuster badge, I went to click on the crate to get the 'Dear <Heroname>' letter clue, but was surprised to find that something was keeping me from completing the action. At first I thought I'd nudged my mouse while doing the clickie-thing, but I found that I could repeat it fairly easily. It was the 'anti-teleport' field mob that covers each jail cell interrupting me while I tried to click the crate. I tried several positions near the crate, but was reliably interrupted in all of them. Eventually, I found that if I climbed onto the wall between the two jail cells, I was just out of the radius of the anti-TP field and could complete the action. A newer player, unfamiliar with the anti-TP effect, probably wouldn't have any option but to try to skip this optional clue. It's surprising that I haven't run into this before, but, to be honest, I LOATHE Council Caves and avoid them whenever I can manage. In other jail rooms, like the Orenbega magical barrier room, the few glowie detail locations are well away from the cells themselves, so are not affected by this. There are a couple obvious ways to fix this. The first and most obvious is to simply remove that detail location from all the maps that have council jail rooms. That seems kinda sad, reducing the map variety very slightly. The second, more difficult way is to adjust the coding or data on the interrupt effect so that it can still keep players from teleporting, but doesn't interrupt attacks or clicks.

These people are going to soil themselves when they hear about hard Roman 'C's. Kinema. Keaser Kenturion

I have yet to do it with EA, but my ice armor characters dominated it as well. The characters that seemed to have the best time was my Darkness/Time controller. She didn't do a lot of damage, aside from doggo, but she kept all the NPC allies alive to fight the waves of enemies. It seemed like it was over in just a few minutes with her. In a team with a few other controllers, Recluse poofed like he was lieutenant.

You knocked it out of the park with this one, Arachne! I always felt a bit miffed that the original Wedding took place in a way that locked some players out of attending. I completely understand WHY they did it that way. Your effort to bring it back as a faithful recreation is VERY appreciated. IIRC, Sister Psyche was wearing the Bridal Heel with the Bridal & Lace texture option in the screenies posted on the original forums. (It's been more than a decade, *OUCH*, so I'm willing to be corrected on this front.) The mismatch in net textures between that and the full fishnets texture has always put me off using them for my characters. I REALLY like the anklets she's wearing in this incarnation of the event, and I want those for my own characters! At first I was put off the event from the huge mob of people swarming Sigil and Kadabra Kill in Pocket D. After doing it a few times on various characters, I've turned around 180 degrees. I love the chaos of doing it with a full team. I love the 'Boss Gauntlet' effect you get while doing the event solo. The flavor text from the NPCs you can speak with in the wedding is top-notch. I've noticed that if you can protect the ally guests at all, the event plays out MUCH faster than if you can't. Ironically, that seems to make it FASTER to complete solo with low-damage tanks, controllers, or defenders than with high-damage blasters. I don't mind that at all, and I like that it's tougher challenge for my favorite AT. 'Down in Front' is touch of genius. Let's give the players a badge for trying to bomb the cutscene, and then forcibly escort them out! You can stand in the Maid's or the Best Man's spot, but can't be in the center. I TRULY APPRECIATE that there's now a universal damage set that doesn't nerf KB. I think that with the length of the fight, the 20 hour lockout is spot-on. 10/10 all around. I'm very happy with the event and am eager to see what else is going to happen this year!