Redletter

October 14, 2022

3 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

Farmers set my dog on fire.

October 13, 2022

On 10/9/2022 at 10:16 AM, Troo said:

Playing on test is sooo easy now.

Insta50 and Incarnates. Can even export an file with all the enhancement shopping in it. I don't know why folks don't play there more. Sure it can get wiped but it's so easy now to spin or re-spin up a character.

THIS IS WHAT I SAID! Like, between this, and Oro basically allowing you to hit up whatever content you want?! It's like, I dunno! I know I would like to actually PLAY on brainstorm more than just use it for testing beta build stuff (which coincidentally is ANOTHER reason to actually PLAY on brainstorm).

If nothing else, Brainstorm seems like the ideal PvP environs, due to how you can instantly complete your build, with everyone also having that ability (as opposed to temporal warriors, who need a non-pvp toon to bankroll their pvp exclusivity lifestyle)

October 13, 2022

14 hours ago, lemming said:

It's a great place to run trials out of. You can even bring Praetorians along.

YOU CAN FUCKING WHAT?!!

This changes everything...

October 13, 2022

5 hours ago, Number Six said:

Whoever designed the trial? We didn't change the damage values -- I checked the commit log just to verify. Foot Stomp and Prism Blast always did a stupid amount of damage -- Scale 1.32 Smashing damage and Scale 3 (!) Unique1 damage. From an archvillain class enemy that's... a lot. Especially for an enemy with a +100% tohit bonus, so defense isn't going to help you much...

October 13, 2022

On 10/5/2022 at 8:47 PM, Lines said:

Maybe CoH is too specific. A more general theme may attract a broader audience. How about just comics?

Yes! This is a great idea! Some kind of organized gathering for comic lovers! A sort of... Comics Convention! A comic con!

It'll be the first of its kind!

October 13, 2022

On 10/6/2022 at 12:49 PM, Oklahoman said:

I am collecting influence to build a War Wall around Croatoa, and I need your support TODAY! Can I put you down for 1 million inf?

Wait, did I misread the thread title?

Build a wall, and make the Rikti pay for it.

October 13, 2022

On 10/5/2022 at 6:22 PM, Living_Hellfire said:

Seriously, someone should organize that.

Not it.

But someone should. Wouldn't take too much, probably just a nice hotel somewhere with a reasonably large conference centre attached, done over a weekend.

Let's get the conversation started.

Apparently, a cursory google search revealed such an event did exist, once upon a time -- when the dinosaurs roamed, and /jranger ruled as god king of the universe.

But, that was also in the time where "City of Heroes", as a game, was a product that could be purchased.

It's been like, ten jillion years since then. Now, "City of Heroes", as a game, is no longer a product. It is an intellectual property owned by NCSoft (i think), and the game we play today operates in a grey sea of legality. The less we remind NCSoft that this IP is something that exists, the less inclined they are to exercise their right to sink this ship.

So. Instead of a convention. Maybe we just do a community event to celebrate "City of Heroes", as a game, within the game...

Im pretty sure they already do that tho, so maybe just wait for the party? Idk lol.

October 13, 2022

On 10/12/2022 at 8:45 AM, Luminara said:

Worry not, my fellow conspirators, I've taken steps to ensure that they cannot read this. We may speak freely. Now, down to business.

As you will all recall, some years ago, a concern about undesirable elements was raised, that they might disrupt our plans for a New World Order. After prolonged discussion, we agreed that the best approach would be to welcome them, embrace them like brothers and sisters, and make them feel comfortable in our regime... only to lower their guards so we could implement a years-long insidious plot to drive them away. It would require patience, perseverance, cunning and deception the likes of which many cannot imagine possible, but nothing which was not within our capabilities.

From the outset, we would adopt and maintain identities as "the HC team", each of us posing as different members of a fictional development organization, so none of what we were doing could be traced back to us. Under the guise of "the HC team", we would garner "donations", which we would pocket (faith, comrades, in another century or two, we'll all be millionaires). We would implement minute adjustments and alterations to the game, specifically targeted at them, designed to frustrate and anger them, to make their experience in the game, their approaches to playing, so infuriating that they would leave.

My loyal friends, I am pleased to report that the plan about which I just diabolically monologued is working. They are displeased. In another decade or three, they will all become so irritated that they will abandon the game, spending the rest of their lives wishing they had never picked it up again.

However, some have asked why we did not simply refuse their petitions to join us. Why we did not take the expedient route of shutting off all XP and inf* in Architect content and implement timers to everything which could be farmed. Why we could not just as easily make badges unobtainable. Why we bothered to create a thriving and stable economy when we could have turned it into a hyper-inflated mess right away. Why we improve powers and sets when we should be nerfing. Why, essentially, we did not make them unwelcome in the first place, ban them, destroy what they loved and deny them the happiness they sought, rather than bother with a plan which would take decades to reach culmination and take up so much of our infinitely valuable free time.

Well, the people who asked those questions are buried in our mango grove in Antarctica, because they were stupid questions. We are an Evil Organization, we use obscenely intricate plans with numerous failure points to create schemes which otherwise would only exist in fiction. This is how we do things. Remember that, or you, too, will disappear to become mango mulch.

It has, however, come to my attention that some of them have begun to see through our clever plot and question the validity of our fictional personas, their motives and, surprisingly, even suspect that there might be a secret organization behind all of their misery. Go out, then, and sow discord amongst them. Keep them rattled by comforting and reassuring them, even as you scheme and plot behind their backs. Shake the very foundations of their belief in reality, so they may never know our true sinister purpose.

Stay the course.

And if anyone blabs, I'll eat your babies.

As ever,

Your Evil Overlord

October 12, 2022

20 hours ago, Snarky said:

I must have been fantastically unclear in my post on this. Or people speed read.

I was not comparing WoW to CoH. I was comparing CoH 2 months ago to CoH in the last week

Ukase says my perception could be the issue. But it is my perception.

on CoH, nothing to do with WoW except that is where I was. This has nothing to do with WoW. Wow, stop it already.

Man, I can't believe Snarky is back to disingenuously compare CoH to WoW. I can't even fathom it. How could he do this? How could such a thing be something he totally is doing, right now, as we speak.

October 10, 2022

3 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Is that why they are destroying IR?

What's IR?

October 10, 2022

I like reading the writing.

It's maybe me, because I'm baby and I never really played the game during live so like, im willing to bet most people i end up with have already read the crap i wanna read because they read it back in the cretacious perioid when this game first launched.

But Im new. Prior to homecoming, my only exposure was briefly making and playing a character on a friend's account after playing with their character for a bit, then going home, getting the game to work on my mom's computer (my computer at the time, but it was older than I was by the time i got it) and getting lost in the tutorial before just skipping it on a new toon, getting lost again, and got stuck during a zombie invasion, dying a bunch, until like, 4 heroes came around and fucking crushed the zombies. About 5 minutes later the event ended (one was even a PB! I thought they were like, a shapeshifter powerset, turns out no, nothing that sophisticated). They were very nice. There was a not-so-nice person who was really into DMX though, not sure if he was roleplaying or genuinely a fucking asshole, but he liked slurring at people so... ya know.

Anyhow, after that I made a villain, DIDNT get lost playing the tutorial and actually having a lot of fun, but a kinetics defender had hit me with a buff once I was in mercy (i had no idea what had happened at the time) and i ended up leaping across Mercy, landing in the destroyed slums where enemies were more than double my level, and I tried to hide from the mobs because i didnt wanna die, so I ended up logging out, because I thought I was using the 'help' chat, but, i was sending to 'local' instead, and i just thought I wasnt getting any answers because like, this character was a VILLAIN! Villains don't help other villains, obviously, right?

I was very young. The fact the game didnt have voice acting made me just think the game had no story and the mission text was just directions to the objective. Now that I'm older, I know that SOME videogames DONT have voice acting but DO have stories! And CoX has some REALLY nice writing.

I wanna like. I wanna make a really good Solo character (or, alternatively, beg the devs to let us run special versions of the strike/task forces with our level UNTOUCHED for no rewards, for those of us who just want to nab the badges for their completion OR for those who want the story bits), because while I've played a lot of Positrons, they go by FAST, and I've never read any of the NPC prompts. Which I wanna do, but i don't wanna waste anybody's time (imma slow reader).

I digress though. I really like the writing, I assume it's something people don't care much about anymore due to their exposure to it by now. But I'm still experiencing a lot of these stories for the first time, it's pretty quality stuff.

October 10, 2022

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

That's profiling, Yomo. Vampires are not a hive mind. Some can be lawful evil and some can be neutral snarky.

Bold to assume Snarky is, or has been, neutral.

October 10, 2022

I thought this thread was gonna be a funny meme thread where we talked about "changes" being made in the newest build, that weren't infact changes that were happening at all. Or maybe ever. Like...

"How do you feel about Scrappers getting Energy Blast proliferated as a secondary power set? Will this upset the PvP enviroment in Pocket D?"

"I'm not sure how replacing all the shivans in the Galaxy City tutorial with clowns will work out in the long term, but, this has been a change we've needed for a long time IMO and Im happy to see it."

"Another update where the devs cater to the toxic vocal minority asking for YET MORE blanket difficulty increases, I think it's going to KILL this game now that Back Alley Brawler has been moved to Butcher Bay, DEPRIVING Atlas Park of a trainer to help keep lowbies safe."

Sadly, it's not that. I'm sad now. How could you do this to me? CUUUUUUURSE YOOOOOOUUUUU, COOOOOWWWWARD DEEEVS!!1

October 8, 2022

15 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

This sounds like a great idea! However, what the devs ended up doing with it seems better, IMNSHO.

What do you guys think ?

I like them. The "no crash" really, REALLY makes the power better overall, the fact it's a "team" buff means you don't need to just use it on the rambo. I appreciate that it fades over time ass opposed to just STOPPING. I *do* wish it had a lower cooldown. Like, cute it by two minutes, because this power is *pretty* important and it is now in the very short list of powers where you're like "Im only going to use this once a mission, maybe not even then" and I do not think that's conducive to gameplay.

Mercs don't NEED that buff up ALL the time (anymore) but, you do want it, and getting it perma is real hard. Not to mention you get Serum before you get the commando, which means your lower tier pets are the ones who have to deal with that 8min cooldown the most, and they really don't want to be dealing with that, since theyre the ones who benefit the most from it.

October 7, 2022

On 9/20/2022 at 12:26 PM, Yaliw said:

We can all agree mercs for example are at the bottom I hope...

Ha! "I play masterminds a lot" he says. Well, Mr. Mastermind Man Guy Dude! If you play them as much as you say...

THEN HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS?!!

As you can clearly see, it is not MERCS who are the bottom, but THUGS! Thugs are the booooottom!

Now, you can take you fallacious slander and go home! Or face the UNMITIGATED. FURY. of my FIVE. DEGREE. COOOOOOOONE!!!

Also a way to make MMs better would be to find a way to make incarnate powers effect your pets. As it is, most of them are fucking useless for a MM who gets maybe 3 or 4 attacks on their own, and hardly has the best support stats to compensate for how little they do. Also, letting all buffs effect pets would be nice? Like, as it is, Kinetics is only halfway useful on MMs because all the +rech you do doesnt effect your pets. Why it doesnt is beyond me, but, I'd like my Rambo to be able to fire his rocket more than once every fiscal quarter.

October 7, 2022

On 4/18/2022 at 7:40 PM, Apparition said:

I know that soloing a Mastermind gold side is unwise. Praetorian ambushes completely ignore your henchmen and lock right onto your Mastermind itself, leading to a very dead Mastermind.

Yes and no. If you create a macro for the pet command that will set your pets to aggressive mode, and simultainiously send them to a target location, you can set them in the path of ambushes and they will engage the hostiles on sight. Once engaged, Ambushes with fight the things that attacked them.

On 4/18/2022 at 7:40 PM, Apparition said:

Despite this, I attempted soloing all of Praetoria on a Thugs/Time Mastermind a few months ago. Got up to level thirteen, and did the second Resistance Warden morality mission, "Mind Freedom." I believe the difficulty was set at -1x3 IIRC.

Here's how that went: I chose to side with the Resistance and help Seer 1381/Katie Douglas. I was ambushed and overwhelmed by T.E.S.T. squads. Died. Went to the hospital, came back to the mission. There were even more T.E.S.T. squads, and they came to the door. Died. Went to the hospital, came back to the mission. Ate a purple, entered the mission. There were a whole bunch of T.E.S.T. at the door, and they aimed right at me. Before my henchmen even finished loading into the mission (which takes about six seconds), my Mastermind was dead. Went to the hospital, came back to the mission. Ate another purple, entered the mission. Dead. Rinse, repeat literally nine more times until I gave up and deleted the Mastermind in frustration.

This can happen with goldside missions in general, due to how the way ambushes work. If you go down, things can snowball. If it's any consolation, this can happen on NON masterminds. Even to teams of characters. All it takes is one thing going VERY wrong, for things to spiral wildly out of control and force hard resets where you just go do something else, or relog.

On 4/18/2022 at 7:40 PM, Apparition said:

Any suggestions of how you'd handle that situation differently? Now, generally I'm not one to ask for help. Never have been. But even if I wanted to, I couldn't as this was a solo morality mission. So that's out the window. I could have ate a dozen more inspirations just prior to entering the mission, but even then there were so many mobs I don't even think my henchmen would have survived being spawned into that. I figure though that I'm missing something and I know that I'm far from the best player in the game, so I'm curious.

For starters, taking Stealth would have been my first option. While yes, ambushes WILL follow you regardless, their ability to actually ENGAGE you is diminished. People have pointed out that stealth, in praetoria, can lead to funny situations where the ambush comes in and the group just runs up and their AI breaks, sending them jumping up and down, nuzzling up against your toon, but unable to effectively attack due to functionally being unable to target you. This is how Stalkers solo Goldside.

As for the numbers advantage over you, i would say that theyd super murder your henchman. I would have walked in with my henchies, then, left them to die at the door. Usually, Gold missions have an objective that the ambush is there to simply distract you from. B-lining to that (especially in stealth) would help immensely. Because really, it doesnt really matter how many ambushes they spawn, as long as you get the clicky or kill the dude you can click the exit button. It doesnt work in THIS case, since the mission is such that you kinda NEED to fight.

Thirdly, there's a 'hard' reset option. Simply relogging the toon would reset the map, and the ambushes. My goal would then be to have done that, then i would have lowered the difficult from -1x3 to -1x0. This would load the mission with the lower difficulty, with a fresh map. Depending on where you are with the mission, it may even reset your choice of objective (I can't recall if youre locked in WHEN you decide or AFTER the objective as a result of the decision is complete -- if the latter is the case, you could just choose to fight the seer instead. Her ambushes are hard coded at health intervals, so you could limit them by playing around her health bar).

Thugs happens to be a rough way to play Goldside. Their single target is really nice, the arsonist even has AoE online earlier than robots, but that means you NEED to prioritize your targets, and praetorian enemies hit REMARKABLY hard even at the minion level and thugs arent the toughest bunch.

Finally, and im not sure if this works for morality missions, but if im right, you can just call the contact who gave you the mission and force complete a particular objective. Youcan do that once every day, give or take, so if it TRULY is just wholly insurmountable, you could long-con through and force skip through it (if it works, ive never had to do that, it may not work, but it should).

October 7, 2022

On 10/5/2022 at 1:02 PM, Faultline said:

It intentionally doesn't because otherwise people read the patch notes, don't bother testing anything, and argue for pages after pages on performance based on what they read, rather than any actual play testing. While this always happens, last page it was egregious enough that for this Powers Preview patch we're just not going to be giving extreme detail on things. People should test. We want feedback based on how all the changes combined impact performance, rather than people isolating a single change and crying bloody murder while ignoring everything else.

I figured it was because the sheer volume of changes made to mercs in particular were too numerous to even begin to explain with any amount of brevity.

When I saw that Mercs, my precious babies (see: Dark Curse) were going to be molested by the REVAMP HAMMER i grew very concerned. I was told, long ago when the accursed knowledge was passed to me, that making mercs good would require truly RANCID rituals of coding that no creature of man was fit to undertake.

Thankfully, it did not take much research at all to see my fears were misplaced.

THE CONE REMAINS -- OUR DOOM WILL WAIT ANOTHER DAY...

October 7, 2022

On 9/30/2022 at 2:08 PM, MaskedMan said:

My cop/hero... I could never come up with a good name for him (and I'm open to suggestions).

For now, he is Peace Officer.

Is... is that...?

IS THAT DAVID HASSLEHOFF?!

September 29, 2022

4 hours ago, Mr. Apocalypse said:

So i have been inspired yet again, this time by barnyard animals..

The Mighty Moootation Rad/Rad Tanker . He is a bull, that has mutated and become a smart, and tough superhero, with a grudge against bull fighters.

This next one has been a tough one to name. and pick a power set I like. Currently named Diabolus Gallus (Latin; The Devil Rooster) and is a Fire Aura/Titan Weapon tanker. But I think I am going to re-roll. Any suggestions on AT and powers? One power set must be fire.

The concept is The angry God of Chickens. Sometimes seen by humans as evil, but always championed by chickens. He is here on earth to stop the cruel slaughter of his fellow chickens.

God im a sucker for huge bulls and furious black cock...

What? There's NAUThing fishy here! Let's just all float on...

September 9, 2022

A candid picture of everyone's favorite dragon warrior and ski slope enthusiast, caught in the wilds of Oro.

September 8, 2022

13 hours ago, RikOz said:

My alleged fire farmer, a Spines/Fire brute has, nearly three years after rolling him, finally reached level 40. So here's Girra's new costume:

The top hat and cigar are the only consistent bits from one costume to the next.

High def butt

September 2, 2022

On 8/30/2022 at 12:15 PM, Six-Six said:

Heeh. I just stumbled upon this combination while trying to fiddle with an alt.

no way to work in those tubes to his cheeks, though.

I'm loving the 7 free costume changes for each toon. 😃

September 2, 2022

On 8/28/2022 at 2:42 AM, Spaghetti Betty said:

This is so damn cool

Don't you mean so RAM cool?

September 2, 2022

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

You're not playing it wrong, just differently.
Historically, I will chime in and rebuke those who use the word "blapper" to refer to playing a blaster in melee. It's ludicrous, as blasters very often go into melee, particularly a fire/fire blaster.
Firesword circle - melee
burn - melee
Inferno - melee

Fire sword - melee
hotfeet - melee
Combustion - melee

Consume - melee

These attacks do not make the blaster a new AT. No, they are simply a way you need to play it to make use of many of the attacks you get.

It can take some familiarity with your character, and some defensive stats to be comfortable playing in melee. You get used to it. Of course, you can always "joust" your melee attacks and only be in melee for a fraction of a second. It's all a matter of playstyle, and working with what the powerset gives you. And what's fun for you, of course.

I know a number of folks who love their blasters but despise being in melee. That's why Rune of Protection was so great for some of my characters. I could use that to drop inferno without having to worry about a mez or a stun or kb. And yeah, I'm well aware of how awesome blasters still are, despite this change.

So, no, you're not playing wrong, just differently. But it's still the same AT. It doesn't need a new name to make the distinction. A spines scrapper doesn't get called a blapper because it has impale and throw spines. And it's not playing wrong for being at range when it uses them.

What's weird is that blasters are the only ones that get this treatment to my knowledge. Like, we don't call dominators "domiappers" whenever they go in to throw hands. It's just blasters. Scrappers who pick up ranged powers don't become scrasters.

ONCE AGAIN! BLASTERS! GETTING ALLLLLLLLLLLL THE SPECIAL TREATMENT! AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIN!