djharr

Yeah, I thought it might be something like that. Oh, well, it doesn't hurt to ask. I realize that the dev team has many competing priorities and adding animations like these would be a lot of effort for very little gain.

I have a water blaster that I have named Lil' Surfer Girl. For obvious reasons, she uses the rocket board to get around. However, as I was trying for the umpteenth time to use a power from the rocket board and failing, as I cancelled the animation to start the fight, it occurred to me, "Why is this happening?" The three prestige fly powers (void skiff, rocket board, and magic carpet) give a great flavor to the game, but that is limited to going from one place to another because of the restrictions on the bought powers. At first, I was wishing that we could remove the restrictions, but I understand the reasoning: If they did that, then the careful balancing of power selection would be thrown off because people could get a fully functional travel power for free. Then I realized there was another option. If the carpet, skiff, and board animations were added to the costume creator as options for the fly power, wouldn't that give us the best of both worlds? In order to get a fully functional travel power, you still have to take flight, but taking flight wouldn't preclude the stylish choice of a different kind of flight. Is this technically feasible? Or am I barking at the moon here?

My math is off, you say. I am not doing any math. I am using the reported values of the powers as given me in-game BY the game, and in my combat logs. As I said, according to them, not me doing any kind of math, but simply the value written in the info tab of the power, the DPS of brawl is 150.13. The DPS of Storm Kick is 98.2. And the DPA of Thunder Kick is 60 something. Now, you tell me that Mids contradicts this. Who am I to believe?

So, I was reading a discussion about MA/WP scrappers. The OP was looking for some build hints. Along the way, the thread diverged somewhat into a discussion of attack chains. The posters seemed to agree that the optimal ST attack chain was something like Crippling Axe Kick->Storm Kick->Crippling Strike/Crane Kick->Storm Kick. They bemoaned the fact that this is a very difficult chain to pull off seamlessly, as it requires a 225% recharge reduction on Storm Kick, which is difficult to achieve in an MA build. One of the considerations they had was that Thunder Kick, in particular, was seen to be an inferior choice for MA because it is not damaging enough to really warrant inclusion in a chain. I started playing around with adding some different attacks into this "optimal chain" to see if I could solve the problem of the timing hole. Pool powers like Air Superiority and Jump Kick I ruled out immediately, as they have DPA less than half of Storm Kick and significantly less than Thunder Kick. Then, for some reason I can't explain, I took a look at the most laughed-at, the most despised, the butt of most of the power related joke in City of Heroes, Brawl. Imagine my shock to discover that, not only does Brawl have a DPA that puts it firmly in the same class as these "optimal" MA attacks, it is actually the highest DPA attack of the lot, with a DPA that is more than 50% higher than Storm Kick, the highest DPA attack in the entire Martial Arts powerset. On my character, Brawl has a DPA of 150.13 and Storm Kick has a DPA of 98.94. So, what am I missing here? This seems a total no-brainer. On first glance, all you need to do is to flesh out the attack chain with a couple of Brawls, and not only do you maintain your "optimal" ST attack chain, you actually raise the damage potential considerably. It can't be that simple, can it? Has everyone's total contempt for Brawl made them overlook its possible utility in a situation like this? The thing is, this would mean really integrating the attack. We are talking six-slotting the power and putting a decent set of enhancements into it. Now, I can see why most powersets would not be attracted by Brawl as a regular attack. They use some kind of weapon and sheathing and unsheathing the weapon would destroy most of Brawl's utility. Of course, this doesn't apply to MA, which is all barehanded attacks anyway. Not only that, but Brawl's low-damage, ultra-fast recharge style is an almost perfect match for the other attacks in the MA set, nearly all of which are lower damage, quicker recharge type powers. Tell me why I have never seen anyone using Brawl seriously as an attack (obviously SOMEONE somewhere is using it, but it seems to be almost universally ignored by the community at-large). Unless there is some compelling factor that I am missing here, I believe that my MA scrapper may be throwing a few punches along with her acrobatic kicks and backflips.

All right, so I was unable to get the High Contrast Cursors package to work from the mod manager, but the blurb mentioned the original thread. There the original author posted the files loose in the path data/texture_libraries/cursors or something like that. By unpacking the files and placing them in that specific location, I finally got my big cursors. Many thanks to everyone who suggested things. I still have no idea why the mod manager doesn't work for me. My wife installed everything just fine on her computer, but none of the mods seem to take on mine. Weird. Nevertheless, happy ending, so good.

Again, to be clear, I downloaded the City Mod installer. I used it to install the high-contrast cursor pack. It is not that the high-contrast cursor pack failed to solve my problem, it is that the high-contrast cursor pack did nothing, bupkus. No change to the cursors. The install either failed or something else happened. I have no idea whether the cursor pack would help since I never got the chance to test it out.

Yeah, I installed it. Doesn't do anything. Edit: To be precise, I installed the high-contrast cursor pack. Nothing changed.

Currently, the most significant problem that I have in the game is the inability to discover the position of the cursor. I trigger a power like Rain of Fire that requires positional selection, and I have to flail around trying to find the mouse. I am getting low on health and need to pop a green inspiration, but have to wildly search to try and find the pointer. I will admit that my eyes are not what they were 20 years ago, and while the 200% cursor sizing is helpful, 400% or 500% would be better. This seems like a small thing, but it would truly completely transform my Homecoming experience, and I have to think that it wouldn't require TOO much work. Of course, never having played in the code base, I don't know for sure, but I DO know that I am not the only person I have talked to that would like to see something like this. Thanks for your consideration.

Not use the tram! Blasphemy! How can anyone resist calling out "To the BAT TRAM, Robin!" when in a TF?

I get a LOT of email, and I would like to create a couple of macros to help me clean out my inbox. However, the commands /emaildelete and /emailread don't seem to do anything. Is there some magic I am missing? I realize that each takes a message number, and I have tried 0, 1, 2, 100, and nothing seems to have any effect. If anyone has any idea what is going on, I would appreciate some advice. David