srmalloy

I've accumulated a random mix from unslotting commons when I replace them with sets; normally, the only commons I buy any more are for the corner cases — slow, confuse, to-hit debuff — the power aspects I don't have enough characters using to have built up a reserve.

I swap earlier, running SOs until 22, when I swap them for 25 IOs, accepting the small reduction, and using higher IOs as I level for new slots. Then, when replacing them with sets, I use unslotters to pull them out, dumping them in base storage for the next character, so besides the incremental cost of the unslotters, there's essentially no cost involved in switching to IOs at 22. And at 50, I go back and replace any leftover 25s with 50s.

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." — Robert A. Heinlein, "Life-Line", 1937

I noticed this evening while (for lack of anything better to do while my dinner cooked) getting the exploration accolades for the four Shadow Shard zones that FBZ seems to be the most damnably finicky about landing intermediate hops with the gravity geysers — the Chantry and Storm Palace have more well-thought-out jump targets, instead of the twitch-gaming platformer that the devs made FBZ and, to a lesser extent, the Cascade Archipelago into.

The 1973 SPI boardgame "Sniper!" had rules for a 'Super soldier', representing the heroic character from books and movies; they were equipped with a submachine gun that never became unloaded, combat effects against them were reduced one step, they never panicked, they didn't have to ready their weapon after using a grenade, and they started the game with a satchel charge. I remember that it made for a fair representation of the 'plot armor' that the hero got.

Now go back to every other powerset to introduce a mechanic — separate from endurance usage — that also functions for those powersets to disable the ability to use certain powers in that powerset until they do something time-consuming. The 'reload' mechanic you propose functions like a second endurance cost for each power. Assault Rifle is already gamed to make it comparable to the other powersets. If you're going to start tracking ammunition usage, make it work like a firearm — you have a full magazine of 30 rounds, and you fire a six-round burst, you just pull the trigger again to fire another burst; there's no 'recharge' before the weapon is capable of firing again. The game mechanic of 'recharge time' folds reloading the weapon into something that doesn't require the player to micromanage their ammo load. Basically, there should be either End costs and recharge times OR tracking ammunition usage, but not both. If you're going to impose a second accounting system only for Assault Rifle, then its power needs to be significantly cranked up to balance the additional disadvantage you slapped onto it.

Trying to recreate Dr. Ghoti from Supermegatopia?

I couldn't fit the teleport pool into the build for my Grav/Traps Controller, so I had no way to test whether it would do the same thing if teleported (if it could be teleported), but I figured that it was such a corner case that it wasn't worth poking at -- between its recharge and its lifespan, it's easier just to drop a new one. If it stayed up longer, then whether it could be teleported might be worth knowing (or discussing as a possible mod to the powerset).

It's not worth addressing as a bug that needs fixing, because I expect that it's a bug that it actually leaves missions at all, but if you have an Acid Mortar out when you exit a mission, between 50% and 75% of the time it will appear outside the mission with the base and turret sections side by side, rather than stacked. I have yet to exit a mission with an Acid Mortar to encounter mobs close enough for the Acid Mortar to target, so I don't know if it's still functional at that point. All told, I'd be happier with the Acid Mortar despawning on mission exit rather than pulling it out with me; that seems more appropriate to the power's visuals.

Sometimes the citizens get a little... disjointed... about their conversations. [NPC] Lino: Well look at this... 'The Paragon Transit Authority has re-opened the Kallisti Wharf station.' It's about time. [NPC] Antonietta: Really? I wonder what DJ Zero will think of next.

I remember participating in the all-Kin ITF that Kay ran back on Live; the pets buzzing around like hummingbirds on crack was hilarious. The all-MM ITF was less so, as this was back when MM pets still obstructed movement, and the cave maps were painful with eight sets of pets out.

Anyone who has played a character with the Gravity Control powerset long enough to get Singularity should know that it picks up loose items to produce a little 'gravity fountain' effect — loose leaves, spent shells, the debris from FFG exploding, etc.; I was curious — and bored while waiting for a timer to run out — and looked at the various emotes that tossed stuff out to see if you could 'populate' your Singularity with stuff for it to toss. Both 'Throw Confetti' and 'Throw Rose Petals' produce objects that Singularity will capture and toss. 'Throw Rice' doesn't; it appears to be a purely visual effect with no actual particles. Similarly, the spray of confetti from 'Open Present' does not get caught up; it likewise seems to be a purely visual effect. So if you think your Singularity needs some glitz, you can toss in some confetti or rose petals to give it something to do when you don't have convenient debris for it to grab.

_I_ think it's a typo. Lacking insight into the reasoning behind the dialectical peculiar to the Freakshow, I reported it with the acknowledgement that it is a common error in usage, leaving it to the HC staff to make a final decision; I have seen both excruciatingly precise and grossly loose grammar from different Freakshow, so I don't have a basis to determine whether this particular instance was intended that way.

But you have fixated on only the first part of my post, utterly ignoring my acknowledgement that the error, despite being wrong, is still common usage (much like the people who would say "I literally died laughing" despite obviously still being alive to recount their reaction), particularly being spoken by a Freakshow, who as a group are not known for grammatical rigor.

I think that it might have been just 'Paragon', a name in line with the aspirational names of other communities across the Colonies, and later the US.

The Thompson SMG, which equips my character Rolande, whose costume was chosen to look like a Troll, but with no head -- Rolande the Headless Trollkin Gunner.

You can also get the badge from Harvey Maylor when he sends you to Madison Place to rescue six citizens from the Carnival of Shadows. Since his level range runs up to 50, you can just keep hitting him up until he gives you the mission.

Also remember that the Alpha slot acts like enhancements, not a direct addition to a stat (I made that mistake myself, back on Live). So if you had an unslotted power that gave you 15% Energy resist, that Alpha would boost it 33% to 20%. If you had two Resistance SOs in it, the Alpha would increase that 40% to 51.5%+16.5% (half of the 33% not being affected by ED), raising it from 21% Res to 25.2%.

The camera doesn't arbitrarily switch from third person to first person; what you're seeing is camera-wall collision — in third-person view, your camera is a certain distance behind your character, but when your character is closer to a wall or other solid object, your camera is shifted inward to keep it from moving through the wall/object, and when you move to have more space behind your character, it shifts back out. To demonstrate this, go to your base, and position your character with their back about 20' from a wall. Use the scroll wheel to zoom out, and your view will zoom out until the camera 'hits' the wall, at which point you can't zoom out any further. Now back up using the 's' key, and it will look as if your character is moving toward you; this is because your character is backing up to the wall, but the camera can't move. Now, if you turn your character, your camera PoV will zoom out as the line from the back of your character to the wall shifts and lengthens. The camera is constrained to be inside the map because the map textures are single-sided, and letting the camera move outside the map geometry would allow you to see parts of the map you shouldn't be able to see from your position. There are conditions where you can get a viewpoint outside the map, but these are glitches, and if they're easily repeatable should be reported as geometry errors.

This is why, even if I've got a tricked-out character crammed so full of VR and Superior sets their skin tone is purple, I try to stay with the team on a map, even if objectively it's not as efficient; it's more fun for everyone if everyone's involved. There are special cases — in a Council base mission, I took my Grav/Traps Controller off to a side room the rest of the team bypassed, and was doing the 'put down mines, Wormhole, finish off survivors, repeat' routine; I knew some of them would come back before I had the room cleared (the build plays extremely safe — I ran a +2 defeat all where two mobs in the entire mission got an attack off — but with 'all deliberate speed') so we would be finishing the room as a group.

Tips vanish if you change alignment between side-restricted alignments (i.e., between hero and villain); otherwise they don't disappear until you zone to a side inappropriate for the tips. You can, for example, have blueside tips as a hero, change to vigilante, and still have the tips; if you then zone to Sharkhead, those tips vanish. It is a limitation of the game that you can't have tips for more than one side at a time.

Another really tiny change -- make the guards at the doors where they tell you to stop so they can check your identity before entering smart enough not to say it when you're exiting.

No less innocuous than the 'trees' growing in the middle of a hall in an office building...

For both Trip Mine and Time Bomb in the Traps set, it appears that the secondary color for each power is irrelevant -- for Trip Mine, the triggering lasers and the explosion both take the primary color you pick, and with Time Bomb, both the blinking light on the aerial and the explosion use the primary color. It would be nice to be able to use the secondary color for the explosion, so you could (for example) emplace Trip Mines that had green lasers for the trigger, but an orange explosion; it feels a little confining to have to accept a less-than-desirable 'impending boom' visual for the sake of having a nice boom.

Or, to make things more confusing, 'truck' is also used in US rail operations, but is the name for the frame under the car to which the wheelsets are attached: