BasiliskXVIII

And again, you’re framing this as if it’s just a quirk of the setting or a concession to comic-book logic, when in fact the real world already works this way. Radiation exposure doesn’t make things radioactive—except in very rare, specific conditions like neutron activation. Radioactive contamination happens when radioactive material—not just energy—gets spread around. So unless your blaster is spewing clouds of Strontium-90 dust or some other uncontained isotope, there’s no reason to assume they're leaving behind persistent contamination. If the power is just high-energy electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays, say), then it's about as likely to cause nuclear fallout as turning on your microwave. This isn’t special pleading for a fictional setting—it’s just how radiation works.

If you're producing radiation—that is, emitting high-energy particles or waves directly rather than using something like enriched uranium to decay and generate it—then residual radioactive contamination isn’t really a concern. Despite what pop culture often implies, radiation doesn’t make things radioactive just by hitting them. There’s an exception for neutron radiation, which can induce radioactivity in certain materials. But that’s a specific interaction with specific elements—usually metals, not concrete or drywall—and it requires sustained exposure. Neutron radiation also has an incredibly short range in air and is easily blocked by skin or a few centimetres of plastic or water. It’s wildly inefficient as an offensive weapon. So the biggest actual hazard is likely heat—radiation can scorch, melt, or pit materials it hits. That’s more of a contact or collateral danger than something that "lingers" in the environment. If radiation did leave everything it touched dangerously radioactive, then walking into a room with an X-ray machine would be a death sentence. It’s not. Now, if you're firing gamma radiation, which is extremely penetrating, there could be a concern with long-range misses—those beams don't just stop when they hit air. But in-game, the visual effects show radiation blasts dissipating after a certain range, implying there’s a controlled decay or limited emission distance (say, 60–80 feet). So even that concern is clearly accounted for in-universe. TL;DR: Unless you’re flinging fistfuls of uranium around, a Radiation Blaster isn’t leaving behind a hot zone. They’re just burning and battering with focused energy—and maybe giving safety inspectors a reason to carry a thermometer, not a Geiger counter.

I tend to think of most of the radiation blast sets as being less beams of radiation than it is using the radiation to produce and throw ionised plasma instead. In the most general terms, it behaves more like plasma—poofy clouds of gas and visibly glowing pulses of stuff being thrown around. That is in opposition to real radiation, which is invisible and tends to travel in straight lines. Plasma dissipates and isn't going to be causing problems with stray radiation if you miss a shot. It's not gonna be safe by any means, but it's not any worse than a fire blaster. Let's face it, just about any of the random heroics going down in the city probably would come with a body count in the real world. One minute you're fine, walking down the street, and the next you have Captain Density super-jumping blindly through the city and landing on you. A Spines Scrapper somersaults through a crowd and takes out a toddler and a flock of pigeons, Mercs and Thugs MMs sending so much lead through the air it looks like a mobile recreation of the D-Day landings... You kinda have to suspend disbelief.

Sorry, I forgot to take my mind reading potion today. Maybe they haven’t unlocked Clarion yet, or maybe they’re expressing their own experience imperfectly — something fairly common among, you know, human beings. That doesn’t make them wrong, just not a perfectly efficient communicator. All I can really speak to is my own play experience, where powers like Clear Mind increasingly feel like relics of a time before IOs and Incarnate powers and XP boosters to get to 50 in an afternoon made them substantially less valuable. In the rare cases they’re actually relevant, the problem’s usually solved by my own build or someone else’s. And in the places where it can really come in handy, like a low-pop MSR that's getting stun locked by Rikti, it's almost impossible to use. It’s not that the power is worthless — just that it doesn’t carry its weight in most modern builds. I don't know if I'd say that the OP's suggestion is necessarily the path forward, but I do feel like it could use something, whether that's an AoE toggle, or even just being able to AoE cast it to hit multiple targets like the FF, cold and thermal shields got.

Not necessarily, if the opportunity cost for taking it is too high. There's a lot of powers that live in that bubble of "This effect would be nice to have, but it's hard to justify picking up something that I will use one team out of twenty when there are three others to choose from that will be useful in every fight." CM and comparable powers like Thaw are particularly difficult to justify if you're doing a post-50 respec since their function is generally done better by the Clarion Judgement power.

I'd go through and deal with all the little niggling annoyances which still hang around from live: Regen Paragon Protectors' MoG changed to match the player version. T9 Armor "godmode" powers lose their total crash, reduced to 25% Endurance instead. Fix mobs like War Wolves and Red Caps ignoring boss scaling notoriety settings when transforming. Add mez protection to Kheldians in human form Offer some kind of tool to allow players to fix mobs stuck in walls that doesn't involve using TP Target. Remove Longbow Eagles' "afraid" mode. Rework Regeneration to bring it back in line with other defence sets. Ban everyone who make a "nerf Regen joke". Make some way to bypass enemies' "affect only self" powers like PFF on Fake Nemesis to make them stop turtling up, only for them to stand there stupidly waiting for it to wear off. That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more.

It’s a Special Edition Mother Ship Raid, and we’re putting influence and IOs on the line. 50 MILLION influence to the player who lands the killing blow on the Rikti Dropship A FULL SET of Overwhelming Force IOs to whoever takes down U'Kon Grai That’s right—come for the XP and mayhem, stay for the prizes and bragging rights. This is your shot to make the scoreboard actually mean something. When: 8:30 PM Central (1:30 pm UTC) Where: Rikti War Zone Bring: Damage, endurance, and spite Win: Wealth, power, and the love of your peers (or their jealousy, your call) Whether you're a badge chaser, a damage junkie, or just here for the loot—get in, get loud, and maybe walk out rich.

The Doppelgangers are essentially the same as creating a custom enemy type in AE with your primary and secondary. The Sentinel armour sets aren't there, so they draw from the standard armour sets used by Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers. I'm pretty sure Stalkers are the same way-they get a kind of Hide as an inherent, but their primary and secondary is still the tank/scrapper/brute version, rather than the one for stalkers that gets shuffled and gets powers removed to accomodate hide/placate/AS.

Ghost Falcon's contact info says he's in "Perigrine" Island instead of "Peregrine" Island.

I do think some are easier than others, mind you. For example, Beasts don't think get major model changes, instead picking up a breath aura which wouldn't be nearly as difficult to transfer to others (though admittedly there's very few NPCs using the same "beast" skeleton to swap for. Thugs and Mercs would also be a lot easier to transfer over since their costumes are just basic humanoid, and model changes are simply handled by adding costume pieces. That said, I don't think Devouring Earth would be a fantastic choice for beasts. Players have a very specific idea of what Devouring Earth "feel" like, and I think even if we assume that it's mostly straightforward to simply use completely different models, which given the animations for the pets assume a quadruped, it probably wouldn't be (your pets would behave really weirdly any time they went to do anything) it wouldn't at all feel like Devouring Earth do, with specific resistances per enemy type, emanator pets and the like. That said, I do think it would be nice at the very least to get the vanity pets as an alternate option for the beasts MM. Sure, they're just palette swaps, but going with black wolves vs. grey or a black panther vs. a lion would be nice alternatives, since the colour tintable options only change the colour of your "scream".

There's also Enchanted Impervium, which is a separate salvage drop. The exact reason it is enchanted and its properties are currently undefined, so as far as we know it could take the position of just about any fictional metal. Possibly multiples if there are different enchantments.

I don’t have much to add in general, but this take is a bit concerning to me. I don’t think moderation should be based on a list of 'approved' or insults, or whether an insult is, by your metric, sufficiently insulting. Personally, I’m not offended if someone calls me an idiot either—but I wouldn’t use that as the standard for how others should behave. Intent matters. If I were to call someone a 'cup of flat diet Coke' with intent to denigrate, it’s still an insult—even if the phrase itself isn’t on a list of bannable terms or even particularly rude. Whether you personally find it offensive isn’t the point. The goal of moderation should be to set expectations for respectful interaction.

Not quite there yet, but working on it. But I agree the plaques would benefit from being highlighted in some way. Even if it's not bright white, giving them something like a shiny bronze finish instead of the patinated brown would be a great idea. I've been through the history badges enough at this point to have a rough idea of where the majority of the plaques are, and sometimes even then they're hard to track down.

Maybe, but I used to work tech support, and you just can't assume. It's better to verify on the easy things than to spend forever chasing zebras

Might be a silly question, but have you closed your client and restarted after saving the changes?

For future reference you really want to stay out of the argument, then the best way to do that is by not commenting in the thread. See, when you present a suggestion that's super obvious and has been made in every one of those threads that you claim to be tired of, then what you're actually doing is making a passive-aggressive swipe, thereby starting the argument. No. Stripping the visuals takes away what makes their theme to you. But the limits of your imagination are not a fair restriction to impose on others. If the manifestation of Stone Armour on my character were something like that the rock armour shows up, then about 5-10 seconds later fades away with a persistent "crumble" effect to let you know it's still running that's more than sufficient to indicate, to me, that you have empowered yourself with rocky armour and that either it has incorporated itself into your body in such a way as it is not obtrusive, or that it's just accepted as present without needing to be visible. Energy Aura mostly behaves in this way, where activating the armour initially shows big spinning whorls of energy, but eventually fades down to a subtle glow. Plus, if you actually like one of the armours, such as, let's say, Crystal Armour, but find that the misshapen lumps of the crystal form of rock armour are a detraction, this would also empower you to display the armours that you like without needing everything on at all times.

Ah, the post directly above yours was talking Triage beacon, so I thought that's what you were talking about. For Dark Regen specifically, if it worked the way OP was probably hoping, it would theoretically proc on multiple targets every time the power fired, giving you a big chunk of +HP and +End for each target hit whenever the power was used, much in the way that it works with Theft of Essence.

Dropping it in Triage Beacon means it can proc on anyone hit by the Triage Beacon, making it quite a bit more useful, especially for MMs.

You're the one who inserted yourself into the argument. But the only reason that the set has a distinct set of strong visuals is that it has been decided that they do. The whole premise of power customization is that you're not forced to be bound to what the developer decided was the best way to represent their idea of the power was. Until it came along, invulnerability also had strong visuals, making you look like a walking light show. Or worse, if you were a villain, some kind of weird negative-light show. It isn't as though what the game chooses to depict as "stone" actually looks like stone—it's a representative abstraction. It's a low-poly blob with some gritty textures on it which kinda reads as stone because we've been primed to accept it as such by seeing the name "rock armor." They have already given the option to do away with Ice Armour's big clunky visuals by replacing it with auras that give the impression of frost forming on your body. Even if the "baby's first 3d modeling practice" rocks are considered an *absolutely essential* way of representing the powers in Stone Armor, there are so many ways that they could made less obtrusive. Have them appear and then fade them out after a few seconds and give the character the "crumbling" aura so it's clear that the rocks are there, but you're not being forced to see them. Or even have them pop up for combat only, like how they do it for spines-not my favourite option, but still an improvement.

Aspiring to be good, working to try to better yourself, and maintaining a moral code is not a Mary-Sue.

This ignores the fact that mechanically, Stone Armour is extremely different to Invuln. If your objective is that you want to try the set and not necessarily that you simply "have a stone armour concept" but you don't like the visuals there's not a lot you can do. For a game where the ability to express how your character looks is such a well-developed aspect, the idea that "you'll have a strong armor set, but you'll look like someone glued poop to you" feels wrongheaded. If Ice Armour can get a variant without ice, I don't see why Stone and Bio can't do the same. Especially when, as you point out, the armour can very easily be represented by the costume.

Honestly, all of the Hazard Zones from launch are like this. Even Boomtown, which is probably the easiest to get around, has these absurdly impossible megalithic retaining walls dozens of stories tall. Meaning that if you want to get to a mission in the Powderkeg or Cannonade districts without flying or teleporting, you need to memorize a labyrinth of ramps to reach the summit. This was Super Speed's supposed balancing factor - it was faster than any of the other travel powers except possibly Teleport (which was a massive End drain), but its lack of vertical movement made it substantially slower in a lot of places.

I've been thinking about this some more and I'm not sure I can agree with this premise. Every group is obviously going to be only as strong as their weakest link, so in the real world we have to make some allowance for the fact that there may be some failures in the lower branches. But there's plenty of groups who've been around forever and who provide an aggregate good. Think about your municipal humane society or homeless welfare groups. At larger scales there's organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and the Red Cross/Red Crescent. Habitat for Humanity. The thing is that the news doesn't report on "Group does nothing controversial, continues to make world a better place", and even if they did, let's face it, people wouldn't read it.

Starfleet, at least as depicted up until TNG era. Yes, there's some asterisks where badmirals go rogue, but for the most part, the organization is shown as being a morally good, stabilizing force whose purview is intended as primarily diplomatic and peace-keeping, which follows the rule of law and upholds and enables self-determination among its citizenship. The knights of the round table might be another in their original form. The inevitable problem with this kind of question, though, is that any long-standing organization which stands for good in media, inevitably gets some cynic behind the reins and goes "well, this isn't realistic, we need more drama. So let's smear crap all over this." Sure, but I'm also not playing City of Murky Real World Bullshit. If we can accept that anyone would live in Paragon City at all with all of its constant alien, zombie and Nemesis invasions, where crime is so overwhelmingly prevalent that you can stand on any street corner in the city and see at least three active assaults, attempted murders, or extortion attempts, and yet still accept that there's a functioning municipal government and police infrastructure then it really feels like we're already conceding that the way things work in the real world is not how they work in Paragon City. And that doesn't even account for the superpowers. I can acknowledge that in the real world, someone who got godlike powers like Superman would basically inevitably turn into a despot. Or they would give up on all the crap and go to live as a hermit somewhere. Best case scenario, Paragon City should turn into The Boys, worst case, Kingdom Come. Because there's just no way that someone with that much power is gonna happily look out for the public good indefinitely without eventually reaching a breaking point and deciding that they're done with humanity's crap. Even if they started with the best intentions, that's gonna get worn down real quick. Look at any bureaucrat. Give the average person the authority to say "no" to things, and overwhelmingly they will use that power at any time. And yet no one is jumping up to say "well, superheroes are unrealistic!" They are. We all know they are. That's the fantasy, that bad people are held accountable and that good people are so inexhaustibly good that they can't be stopped. I just want to be able to suspend that disbelief to a hero group too.

A bit of a different type of AI generation, I asked Suno.com to create for me a '90s-era cartoon theme song for my SJ/Energy brute speedster, Neon Fist. It took a couple of tries, but I like the result I got: https://suno.com/song/12cd365d-4da4-4e7b-b3ce-d928d8977618?sh=vxQ5NZ6ujhDQyoKU