ZemX

Can't say I have. One of my favorite characters is a Ice/Shield stalker and emoting at all with a shield in hand is a pain. You have to do something like "/em idle1" first or most emotes won't even play. And then some get mixed up with others it seems. Unless I want to turn off all shield defense powers which... bad idea in the middle of combat. 🤪 Ah well. Sounds fun tho.

Played a Sonic Blast corruptor once.... once. Also Kinetic Melee. Although with Sonic, it's probably just the audio, which might be fixed with a mod maybe. Kinetic Melee also has awful sound effects. Now that I've heard it called "NASCAR Melee" I can't think of it any other way. But the animations are awful too. The one character I made with it was a mime. Because that's what it reminded me of. Other than that, I tend to just stay away from VFX heavy powersets. Never have, and probably never will play a Stormie. I don't care how good it is. And MMs. Can't play MMs. Visual spam fest. Ninjas and Thugs aren't too bad but I don't see them nearly as often as robots or demons or wolves. Would love a minimal option for Rad Armor. I can tone it down decently well with color choices but I still have spinning ping pong balls I'd love to lose. I can put up with it though.

Looking into it some more... It looks like the radius and arc buffs weren't done by editing the arc or radius in the power details. But by this line in Gauntlet: "+50% Radius, Arc Strength for 10s (self only) for 10s." So it's an enhancement. Powers like Foot Stomp, that aren't supposed to be affected, have an icon near "Activation Details" on the left that says "Strengths Disallowed" and includes "Radius" or "Arc" if they are not meant to be affected by the Gauntlet buff to those attributes. Played around in game a bit and it certainly seems like things like Sands of Mu are wider than I recall on other toons. Way easier to hit three targets in front of me without sidestepping and trying to line them up. Unless it's my imagination. The max targets hit cap increase WAS done just by editing all the powers affected. So while Sands might be wider (if it really is) it won't hit more targets like Tanker cone powers.

So Gauntlet's descriptions says it is an area taunt around targets you attack and also as something that widens the arc of cones, increases the radius of AoE attacks, and extends the length of chains. So yeah... I've heard of punch-voke and the AoE buffs from time to time but never dug into them. And my searching has not answered all my questions. Help a Tanker newbie out? Does anything punch-voke? Primary, secondary, and epic/pool/prestige attacks? Obviously only the tanker's primary/secondary attacks allow taunt enhancement. But shouldn't everything punch-voke? Except, I assume, Taunt itself? 🤪 On to AoEs... does every AoE not excluded in the patch notes get a radius or arc boost? Is Taunt, again, an exception or is it actually a 22.5ft AoE on Tankers instead of the normal 15ft?

There certainly are a lot of ambushes in Praetorian missions, but they are not unique in the whole "ignoring Hide" aspect. I find most ambushes anywhere work this way and the ones that are location-based instead seem to be more rare. It's certainly true of redside, since I've just been doing an all-redsider arcs character. Regardless, if the ambushes hit you while you're already fighting it's no worse on a Stalker than anybody else. If they hit you while you're between fights, you usually have time to choose where you will meet them. Pick a corner. Re-Hide. Pop the first one around that corner with a quick Hide crit. You won't likely have time for a Hidden AS, but that's not a huge deal either in this day and age of Quick in-combat AS. Yes, escorting hostages is a pain on a Stalker, usually, but that's also true anywhere, not just in Praetoria. The benefits of running a Stalker through story arcs more than outweighs that, IMO. You will often be able to skip a lot of pointless fighting. Especially pointless if you are stopping XP so that you can do all story arcs. Then again, you can do the same with Tanker/Brute "Stealth" (which involves a broad grin, a middle finger, and a general disregard for anybody trying to hurt you as you run past them with your hair on fire).

Power Loyalist is fun if you're headed to Villain and especially if you're gonna be a Rogue eventually. It's all about self-promotion.

Are you on Ultra graphics settings? Maybe try turning it off temporarily to see if that translucency effect goes away. I doubt they intentionally added translucency to the masks. It might be a result of the shaders that got added with Ultra and why you remember it looking different/better way back when. Just a guess.

Not agreeing to your framing of the issue isn't "beating around the bush" nor is it being dishonest. Yes, a name release policy can result in people coming back after a long absence to names that have been generic'd. That's already been stated. More than once I think. But it's also true that the policy gives people time to keep names they want to keep. That you don't consider any such time period reasonable is your opinion, not some fact. I don't agree with your opinion. I think its more than reasonable and have said so. I actually think the "two-year log in anywhere" idea was even more reasonable than the written policy which, while it does protect 50s indefinitely, seemingly also requires you to log into every other character in your roster on every server with increasing frequency the lower their levels are. But if you want any vindication, you're already gotten it. The mere fact the stated policy has never been implemented is the devs agreeing with you that this just isn't (yet) a big enough issue with the playerbase in general to give it priority over other things they could be doing. Might want to take that "W" and flash it around a bit instead of rehashing old arguments that won't go anywhere. Just a suggestion.

Even I wasn't sure if that was serious.

They don't. This isn't the goal of any name release policy. It's not about every person getting exactly the name they want. From the perspective of the people running an MMO, all they care about is that more names are available for active players. They aren't concerned which players or what names. One person not getting the name they want doesn't "perpetuate the issue" because that isn't the issue. Never was.

Well.. was the point. Can't believe none of us thought to scroll up and hit the F.A.Q button! It's right there! Embarrassing and hilarious at the same time. 🤪 But it makes both the two-year name release idea AND the name auction idea and the whole silly slap fight over it moot. This is the way name release will be implemented... if it ever is.

I'm evil... but I'm not a monster!

Patience?! Ain't nobody got time for that! 🤪

It makes sense. When doing this as an actual Praetorian, after picking a starting faction in the tutorial you're presented with TWO storylines worth of contact chains amounting to six alignment choices. Hence you could get the badges if you stuck mostly to one alignment but picked the other just once. I'm playing a red-sider now doing all redside arcs but I might expand to the rest like Snarky is doing if I don't lose interest before then. But if I had to do it all over again, Praetoria is still my preferred starting area. These four arcs just work better in the open world, especially the undercover aspect and the side-switching, and the story hits home better when you're a Praetorian. Having just done most of redside and finishing up Grandville now... I think I'd rather do 1-20 redside via Ouro than Goldside the same way, then leave Praetoria for the Rogue Isles at 20. As much as the redside arcs are better written than blueside, goldside is yet again that much better.

If I understood @Zhym correctly, you only need to pick each alignment once. You don't need to pick one five times in each of the four alignment arcs. Once you've picked one of each you can literally flip a coin for the rest and get the badge because there are so many alignment choices you can't help but get one four more times.

I never claimed people literally couldn't name their characters right now OR that there weren't still good names to be had OR that this policy would somehow make it so you would always get the name you wanted. But you and others keep demanding I defend these positions I've never taken, so I'm done with all of you. I've said what I want here more than once and we're just going in circles. So I am fine leaving it at that.

It is, in no possible universe, a prudent thing to try to explain something in game that you already know is a four (or maybe five by now) page flame war WHILE you are trying to form a GM league.

Anybody try turning it into a proc bomb? That's a long recharge. Wouldn't it have relatively high proc chances all around if it's not a pseudo-pet or does the redirect power work the same way as Pseudopets for PPM? Or is that still not enough to save it?

I do love snark, but in this case the answer to your snarky question is... "no". It is, in no possible universe, a prudent thing to try to explain something in game that you already know is a four (or maybe five by now) page flame war WHILE you are trying to form a GM league. Honestly, the best thing to do is pretend you didn't hear them and if they continue pestering you over it, put them on ignore. Best for everyone really.

(a) I just told you it wasn't a need. (b) I never said it was. Not once. (c) So what? Stuff gets added to games all the time because it's wanted... not because it's needed. Nobody "needed" any of this. Stuff is added or changed because the people proposing doing it think it makes the game better, not because it needs to be.

No, I think I'm done with you. You're about 0 for 100 in logical arguments in this thread and that's quite enough for me. Ta!

One post ago you were asking me to thank you for saving myself from my own policy and now it "benefits me at the expense of others"? Can you make up your mind?

I'm not trying to twist anything. I asked what I thought was a simple question. You misunderstood it. And now you're insulting me over your misunderstanding. You might want to notice I haven't returned fire. I believe you're upset and I'm trying to tell you that's not my intention. The entire point of asking was to establish about how often you name check and hit a taken name. A name that you want for a character. The only point of asking that is to establish how many taken names are wanted names. Remember when you told me none of the released names from Live were "wanted"? I said I had a hard time believing that and to support that I am trying to estimate how many wanted names might be in inactive accounts. There is no trickery here. If you know a better way to do that, tell me.

You are not quoting fact or law here. This is your opinion. Mine is that logging in once in two years is more than reasonable to keep your "stuff" from being considered abandoned. It is far more than most other MMOs allow. I neither want or need your gratitude. The policy I'm talking about would apply to all including me. And since I consider two years an acceptable time to log in if I want to keep MY stuff... ACCEPTED!

Nobody ever said it was a need. There isn't a single thing in this game that is a "need" including the game itself. Literally every thing in it is a want, not a need. In other words, what you just said is also no reason NOT to do this.