srmalloy

It's not a sealed gate; you can go in and out through it, crossing between Talos Island and the Dark Astoria incarnate zone. I was cruising the area twice during the X:15 and X:45 'noon' periods, and that whole area was dead, with just a few civilians wandering, and two Freakshow on the next island to the west. I made sure to cover the area around the two buildings as well as down on the lower level along the east War Wall. Nothing for more than ten minutes each time.

Something I noticed this evening is that the southeast portion of Talos Island -- the area where the Banished Pantheon spawns at night -- has nothing spawning there during the day. It is a little disturbing to zoom through this part of Talos and not see any of the gangs that spawn over the rest of the zone. If this area could be set up with one or more other groups that spawn on the opposite timer to the BP spawns, so that as the BP disappear they're replaced by Tsoo, Warriors, or Freakshow (and vice versa), it would improve the feel of the area.

Julius Fucik's "Entry of the Gladiators". 😉

What's funny about all of this is that I remember the really old days of D&D, when it was three saddle-stapled books in the white cardboard box, and when TSR released the first AD&D books, Gary Gygax tried to claim that if you didn't adhere strictly to the rules in the books, that what you were playing wasn't D&D, and you couldn't call it that. And it seems that WotC didn't learn from that failed attempt to grab it all to keep control over it...

From the OGL 1.0: "in consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content". In 2004, WotC clarified what would occur if the license was changed; it "already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway". The recent release of the 'draft' of the new OGC license specifically stated that it 'de-authorized' the original OGL -- an action not permitted under the terms of the original OGL -- and would immediately subject anyone continuing to publish OGC content to the terms of the new license, including material already published under the original OGL.

"We lose 10,000 inf on every sale, but we make it up in quantity!" Putting common IOs on the AH is done for one of two reasons: a) you've got the crafting badges and get a discount on crafting costs and don't pay for recipes, or b) you're working toward the crafting badges and need to get rid of the resulting IOs. Only the former is likely to leave you with a profit.

It's not 'nothing'. The new license explicitly gave WotC full rights to use any content created under it for any purpose, which would have allowed them to take anything 3rd party publishers created and sell it as their own, and it imposed a 25% fee for companies making over $750,000 on OGC content, with the fee based on revenue, not profits -- the profit margin for game companies is typically less than 10%, so the terms would wipe out their profit, and make them lose more money the more sales they had.

It's all pets, actually; it has its limits, but you can target through a pet during an invasion and be able to attack mobs you would be unable to attack on your own. I have my suspicion that this is due to the pet logic being entirely on the server, letting them get targets the moment the server enables them, while a character attacking involves several handshakes with the server, delaying response.

It already does. Try to target a rezzing Freakshow, and you'll see that they complete their rez animation, and a second or two past that, before they're even targetable, much less attackable. And mobs spawning in during things like the Nemesis and Rikti raids are even worse -- mobs will spawn in, become targetable, in many cases fire off their own attack, and only then do they become attackable. And targeting is further complicated by the mobs that spawn in, become targetable, and then despawn without ever becoming attackable, wasting your time trying to attack mobs that are invulnerable.

Proof of the detrimental effect Superadine has on rational thought: [NPC] Torvald: Give drug now. [NPC] Mr. Mann: As usual, your violent tendencies complicate the simplest of matters. Haven't you learned? When you take hostages, masks show up. (My tank gets close enough to the bosses to be spotted by them) [NPC] Torvald: We smash you up good! [NPC] Mr. Mann: Heroes, naturally. Attack!

Changing this requires reworking the upper and lower body definitions. Right now, with a very few exceptions, all textures and patterns applied to the body apply to one side, and are mirrored onto the other; this is why costume parts and patterns are symmetrical. There is nothing defining the other half of the body; it's just a mirror of the one half that's in the database. There was already a structure in the database for asymmetrical arms, and the HC staff extended that to gloves, boots, and shoulders -- the low-hanging fruit. The body will be much harder to do.

Reading the wiki page on exemplar effects on enhancements, I noticed something that contradicted what I'd believed -- "set bonuses are always on, even if the power in which the Set is slotted isn't activated, and even if that power is greyed out due to exemplaring!" I had been operating under the assumption that if you didn't have the power, none of the effects of its slotting -- including set bonuses -- would be active. Finding out that set bonuses continue to work within the slotted IO level window makes the choice of sets a more subtle process, and increases the benefits of attunement.

...then your target moves before you finish activating the power and isn't in the cone to be affected. CoH is not a twitch game; don't try to make it one.

Tell that to the lone level-12 Controller or Defender on an eight-hero team that suddenly finds themselves, solo, facing a spawn of CoT sized for the whole team... and finds that going back through the portal just makes things worse.

And they've improved their enchantments, too -- how many people remember, back on Live, when going through a portal on an Oranbega map would sometimes pop you out of a randomly-selected portal on the map, potentially scattering teams across the entire map?

I'd also like to see more groups get properly-themed maps -- the 'check out Nemesis base' missions in generic lab maps, instead of wood paneling with brass accents and steampunk equipment, or even going back to a Victorian esthetic, like the Crossness Pumping Station:

Now I have the mental image of characters frenetically shambling down the street at high speed to the accompaniment of "Yakkity Sax", à la the Benny Hill show...

Taking the 'main armament' from the Crey 'tank' mobs and swapping them in for the ranged attacks on the Praetorian Clockwork would be a good way to go about it -- certainly Crey already has production lines for the weaponry, so it's just a matter of integrating them into the Clockwork frames.

Dendis Moore, Dendis Moore, riding through the glen Dendis Moore, Dendis Moore, on his horse Concord Steals from the poor, gives to the rich Stupid bitch!

Now, on the other hand, having Praetorian clockwork appear as scenery, some partly disassembled, in a story arc, then clearly-prototype Crey copies (at first nonfunctional, then perhaps semifunctional, and finally a few functional), where you get dialog through the arc from Crey staff bitching about how their project isn't getting the funding they deserve because of some other big thing that's drawn the Countess' attention, and they've only been able to make a few functional ripoffs new models, then finding out that Crey has, due to some oversight or shortsighted maneuver, drawn the attention of the Praetorians, who are mounting a (supposedly) covert operation to take back data that Crey stole, leading to a final mission where, like the Halloween "Whispered Rumor" tip mission to recover the Malleus Mundi, you recover this data, then have several choices for the disposition of the data Crey stole, with different badges and rewards for your decision. Giving the data back to Crey might get you a few charges of a Crey mob as a pet, selling it back to Crey or to the Praetorians might get you inf, keeping it to use its information might get you a rare recipe, destroying it might get you a piece of rare Tech salvage, etc. And this gives a lead-in for making a second arc where you trace down the rumors about this 'other big thing' that Crey is working on, whose content I leave as an exercise for the student.

So you're using a tool that attempts to drive the UI to do something faster than it was designed to do, and even though it worked in the past, it's not working now, so it must be a bug in the game that you can't overdrive it the way you used to, even though you have no evidence that anything has changed. "I used to take this turn at 90mph, but when I did it just now, I skidded off the road and wrecked my car! There's something wrong with the road! I'm suing the city!"

You can blame Disney and the Mickey Mouse Perpetual Protection Act Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. I don't know how the argument would hold up in court, but the way that changes to the term of copyright have been applied retroactively to works already created and under copyright would seem to me to be a violation of Article 1, § 9 and 10, which prohibit Congress and the states from passing any law that applies ex post facto. Under this reasoning, there is no impediment to passing a law extending the term of copyright, but the term of copyright for already published works wouldn't change -- if you publish a work when the copyright term is 28 years, extendible for another 28 years, then a year later Congress passes a law extending copyright to 1000 years, your work still enters the public domain a maximum of 56 years after publication.

@BEGIN(Sarcasm) Because, as we all know, there can only be one definition for a word, so the other usage "to pursue or approach stealthily", as when hunting, is completely irrelevant. "Run" has more than 600 definitions in the OED, but, like 'stalking', only one of those can be the real definition; all the others are improper use. @END(Sarcasm)

West side of the island, on the roofs, particularly the south warehouse complex (the building west of the triangle arena there); you can find a dozen or more snakes sleeping on the roofs in twos and threes.

The problem is that, when this happens, you're killing your accuracy, because you can't hold a consistent aim point. And since the snipe needs to be more accurate because of its longer range, having it jumping around works against the concept. I can see how you'd be pushing yourself in practice to be drawing more weight, but when actually out fighting villains, you don't want to be handicapping yourself.