temnix

I'm referring to the graphics option, on by default, that blurs the outlines of objects and floods the background with diffuse lighting. Unfortunately, it is on by default, an even more unfortunately, it is common in modern games. People don't think twice about it, probably they don't even think once about it, because it's just there. Something they, and by "they" I mean you, need to realize, though, is that Ambient Occlusion/HDR/Bloom is garbage. It fills the world with fake fulness, obscuring lack of detail. Everything swims in a sea of glow, especially when the effect is so extreme as on the screenshots in the character creator illustrating the different Archetypes: Blasters shooting, Brutes slashing and so on. I shudder at that. Is that how people's game actually looks to them? Then they are buying brown candy. Those watery outlines don't represent anything in the actual world of the game. That isn't anything a real artist had to use skill and effort to draw. It's filler to trick you not so much into believing that the game's graphics are better than they are but into not looking closely at the game world. Bloom creates an atmosphere, literally, of droning acceptance of whatever fuzzy entities are wriggling there on the screen. I'm not against real imporvement in graphics. By all means, use antialiasing. There are no separate points or jagged edges in reality, the engine just squares the circle for you. Reflections and shadows, too, are fine. But Bloom is just a lie. This Ambient Occulusion does not add anything to the world, just as "image improvement" of films and pictures by pseudo-A. I. is not an amazing tunneling into the original look behind the wear and defects but an extrapolation. The algorithm sees A and C, it inserts a B. That is all those wonderfully restored classics give you - blarney. When a point of an image has been effaced, it is gone, and no one will know what it was. The same way, when an artist working on villain costumes has not bothered to draw them more convincing pants twenty years ago, obscuring the issue with a halo is the bullshiter's way out. There is therefore no question about how much Bloom to use, what options and variations, let alone for each personal taste. How much brown candy do you elect to suck on? Any particular brand or flavor? The people who will reply "But I like my world looking like a softly lit enchanted paradise!" give enchantment a bad name. To paradise, too, probably. Enchantment is only one thing: quality. Real, hand-drawn details of characters, buildings, tile sets, real music from an inspired human being, intelligent, deep and believeable texts from writers. And if any of that is not there, don't lie to yourself that it is. But I'm addressing myself to those who are not yet committed to that and might go on to become writers, poets, film directors, composers, fashion designers: wean yourselves off the habit of taking easy ways out. When you go on to write prose, you will have to work from a personal interest and life experience. When you compose poetry, it will have to be better than to toss together a few broken lines for free association. When you set about making a film, banal camera angles, predictable zooms, jump scares and a sort-of-convincing random script won't cut it. When you create clothes, don't expect to get away with showering sequins over the collection. How do you go about shaving off some of that cortex butter as far as this game is concerned? You do that by seeing it for what it is, the good and the bad. Go into the options and disable Ambient Occlusion altogether. Then see the world for the first time, as the poem went. Give yourself a full day... no, two entire days to travel about it and look hard at things. Come up to walls and stare hard at their edges. Stick your face in the leaves of shrubbery plants. Stand for a minute on the street and observe the pedesterians walking to and fro (talking of Michelangelo), to the cars driving slowly through the tunnels. Use Hover and float up: the monorail appears out of a black hole in one wall, grinds past and slinks into another. The sun above shines quite for itself, not your delirium. With the glow off, you will have a better chance of noticing, and much better of appreciating, the little things. A panhandler on the pavement waving his mug is just clever scenery when the world is smoothed over and it's all about you-you-you. When it is crisp and still, he becomes a neighbor, for better or worse, and you can place your appreciation of the area designer who thought to sit him on a street island on the same spot, into his cup. Then there is that tiny Cog kneeling on the window sill of an apartment building, diligently sawing off an air conditioning unit. The topology in the Hollows is also quite interesting, when you look at the hills, thickets, gullies - all of them individual, each drawn by a talented member of Cryptic's crew so many years ago, and none of them dissolved in visual fizz for quicker consumption by you, none of them prettified to please you, none of them "romantic," that is, implying relief at somebody else's expense. If you say you like this game, then see this game. And if you end up not liking some parts of it, that will be an even worthier discovery. To a hero, that is.

The launcher sends the program to the City of Heroes interface, blue and heroic, but the interfaces for City of Villains and Going Rogue are also in there. You can see those by logging out of a villain or Praetorian to character selection, where you will hear the matching tunes, and farther to the login screens. Well, the player should be able to set the client to launch an interface of his choice. My own is Preatorian.

They might rest together with the player outside of combat.

Well, there are other ways to raise money, as the others here have said. And if you want to go to auctions, that's a possibility. *I* wouldn't want to go near them for the reason that any in-game economics are such a horrible boring waste of time that no person mindful of the real world will want to touch them. My advice is not for min-maxers or nerds of any sort. It is for people who want to play the game without being dragged down by the unavailability of the things necessary to play it with enjoyment. You get those points, you spend them on SO, you never think twice about money. And you will still little by little accumulate enough to buy little toys like a flying disc or an extra Prestige power, down the line. Everything else that matters is either in your Archetype or in your power of imagination. What are the available items in the game? Icons. Completely abstract abilities that don't usually even have a sound associated with them. Converters, whatever. You want to waste your life learning this great science? Read a book instead. However, I want to add a caveat to my post. SO are not available for Merit Reward points early on. I don't know when they become available, but not at level 10. Archetype Enhancements are there, but not SO. Perhaps they need to be unlocked somehow, but I don't think I have done anything special to make them available to me at (under) level 30.

I filed a ticket about this in game to support under Technical Issues. They marvelled and suggested that I write about this bug on the boards. I don't want to write about it AGAIN. The ticket should pass on to the bug fixers. If GMs can't do that now, make it so they can and will. All right, here goes: my dual-pistoling character ends up without holsters at her sides every time I go to edit her costume. The guns disappear, and I have to reenable them showing. Their colors also reset to the same palette, and so does the type: she uses Semi-Auto with Laser Scope (how come none of those scopes actually emit a ray of any length, by the by?), but they turn into simple Semi-Auto. I don't know whether this is a problem unique to that model. Another character of mine carries two Navy Colt Revolvers, and they remain in the editor, though he doesn't use holsters and they are not tintable.

I use letters to type in those tickets. And the letters combine into words, and the words describe the situation in all of the detail that I could give here. Let the GMs stop ignoring bug reports as curiosities and begin forwarding them to the technical team.

For a long time, playing, I have run into a problem that my characters never have money to fill their slots with Single-Origin Enhancements. I have been forced to disable XP accumulation and spend about half of my time grinding for money. This was and is on Indomitable with its double experience bonus. On a server without I would have progressed slower and would have acquired new powers and felt the need to upgrade Enhancements at a more languid pace, but quick progress is supposed to be a good thing. I had looked at Merit Rewards idly when I just started and thought I would never have enough points to buy those rare salvage drops and other specials (not that they are interesting anyway), so I never gave that system a second thought. Thirty levels later, however, I found myself with more than a hundred points - and still almost zero unspent Influence. This may not be discovering America, but people who find themselves in the same situation can spend their points on Single-Origin Enhancements at Merit Vendors instead of buying those with Influence. I wish I had thought of this long ago. Until Inventions begin to come in strong a good many levels later or until Homecoming slashes prices, this can be the solution to the money problem. An SO of any type costs a single point, and the Enhancement is created at the highest level the character can use. If you are level 10, it will be at level 13. To continue with this example: at that point you have around 15 useful slots to fill, but 5 or perhaps fewer will be slotted with Praetorian Enhancements (which are a bit cheat-like, but any port in a storm). Since you can live well enough, I think, with Enhancements that are two levels below your current level, i.e. weak but not too weak, you would need to refill the slots only every 5 levels. In that space of time you would take on 2-3 new powers and 4-6 added slots, which means 7-8 more slots to fill than in the last overhaul. A few of the powers may not be worth enhancing, or they may be unenhanceable, but in any case it is not a problem to earn that many Merit Reward points in that many levels. How do you get Merit Reward points? I got them by focusing on Story Arc missions. I didn't do this for points' sake, because I had quite put that system out of memory, but because I find them more interesting, yet it is all the same. Seek missions that begin with "Part One" in blue font instead of mob beat-ups or other random tasks. Have a wide network of contacts in different places and grab their Story Arcs. It is possible to outlevel contacts, but I think you will be able to complete a Story Arc you have begun even then. I don't know this for a fact, though. The wiki says that there are more smaller Story Arcs and so more chances to earn points for villains than for heroes. This is probably because City of Villains was written later and the developers realized the value of having more of actual meaningful actions. Another simple way of getting points is following tips that enemies drop outdoors. In Atlas Park you don't even have to beat up Hellions - use the free rocket pack you get at level 2 to reach the top of Atlas' globe, and you'll start the process. Exploring a map it would be too dangerous to walk across takes a flight power, but in this game you more or less have to be able to fly. Hover is a sine qua non, in any case. All my characters have Hover as their only travel power. (You can use the free Prestige Run for flat, easily crossed areas.) With a couple of slots added for speed Hover becomes a decent way of getting around, and you get to browse and familiarize yourself with areas and enemies in them while you move from point to point. Rocket packs you can get on occasion (at least a couple of Day Jobs as a villain, some free ones from quests) make up for all urgent needs. Exploration Badges are mostly in places where it is safe to land, but you only need to swoop over them, and it is worth the rare trip to the hospital. There are other ways of getting Merit Reward points, like trials, but those are usually prolonged and complicated. Personally I'm not interested. All this should keep you stocked with points. Of course, you would be spending what you could be saving for rare salvage and such, but honestly, what is more important, late-game Inventions that are still only words on a little icon and mostly boost your vanity with a few extra percentile points or the time of your life that you would be saving by avoiding the grind? Have fun and be powerful where it counts.

When I file a Technical Issues ticket in-game and support sees it, don't let them tell me to go to this board and report it. I have reported it already. It wasn't for their entertainment that I sent the ticket.

Deck them out in burlap sacks. I hope to convey to any people from Homecoming that might be looking here how extra ridiculous it is that not only the sinful, dire and running-away-screaming exposed flesh is forbidden but even wearing a body suit in fleshy tones. It must never even be CONCEIVED that someone is naked.

Something to store a location and then teleport to it. Call it Flashback, perhaps.

Whether or not your request is accommodated is going to depend on these developers' commitments to prudery. It is obvious that Cryptic did not want players to make characters who would appear naked easily, which is what your suggestion is most naturally going to be used for. And there is nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of reasons and concepts to make pretend-nude personages, if the idea of a hero is not locked within the format of U. S. comic books and the censorship masses overhanging it. But Cryptic didn't want to make it easy to hint at nudity. Maybe Homecoming has a lighter view this far, at least. My own choice for nudes is the second-darkest black and clothes of the same color, it is a puzzle finding other matches. You can also experiment with the "Body Suit" options - Glossy and Matte.

Twice a year a weather phenomenon unfolds in the part of the eastern seaboard of the United States that the Paragon City shares with the Rogue Isles. The francolingual islanders have long dubbed it Le Mélange. During this event, which is synchronized with the vernal and autumnal equinoxes of March and September, the city and the islands swap their climates. Paragon City becomes gloomy and drenched as well as subjected to flashing thunderstorms while the Rogue Isles bask in the serenity of azure skies, even with rainbows. This upsets the decision-makers and kingpins of both places, because Statesman's pants used as the flag on the Paragon City Hall droop with moisture and Lord Recluse's towers look a lot less imposing in clear light, but neither side have been able to do anything about this natural occurence, which lasts in both cases a little over a week. Natural yet strange. Things get shuffled and moved about in Le Mélange. Alignment changes twice as easily, and hero and villain groups can be found far away from their usual haunts, some to use the opportunities this time opens and others for less obvious reasons. The Coralax in particular treat these events as moments of celebration and venture far inland to enact strange dances and rituals. Some claim to have seen them mingle with Pumicites of Igneous, staging back-to-back roundelays. Inhabitants of the upper air have been known to descend to earth, including ozone elementals and cosmic rayfish. Speaking of fish, these sometimes drop from the sky and wriggle on the ground, but this, at least, is easy to connect to the action of the most enigmatic, dangerous and useful feature of Le Mélange - the standing tornadoes. Called les Flemmards by the French, i.e. the Lazybodies, these colossal funnels rise in every watery area of the city and the islands, swerving upwards from the sea higher than any investigator has been able to soar. They do not appear in quite the same spots every time, nor do they always lead to the same places. For les Flemmards are traffic tunnels. Entering one by swimming or boating or flying or teleporting deposits one in a random place, often over dry land. It could be another district of the city, another one of the islands, it could be a hazard zone. Only a few of the tunnels have fixed destinations. Some adventurous spirits still make a sport of venturing in, sometimes encouraged by the possibility of finding unique salvage from the ocean floor in their pockets when they emerge. Many stories have accreted around les Flemmards over the centuries. Supposedly an entire British man-o'-war from the American Revolution has escaped to one from French pursuers. It sails out when the Flemmards reappear with its ghostly crew; in 1891 it or something like it bombarded Founders Falls and fought two ironclads of the U. S. Navy before disappearing again. (There are fresh grounds from the rumor mill: Arachnos has lured the ship to their side and it is being modernized in a secret dock with the latest weaponry to rail destruction on Paragon City when the time is right. A few transparent, antiquated sailors on leave have indeed been seen around the bars of the Rogue Isles, and their thirst for English gin is unquenchable.) More obviously, several criminal groups make a point of watching for the tornadoes and investigating them as soon as they appear. Stable funnels make excellent smuggling corridors. Thus, little boats with mafia thugs and gangsters are usually found bobbing around them, sometimes holding signs that say "Superadine" or "Mr. Black." Mysterious Eurotrash has been known to fall out.

Like falling stars, they appear, chart a glowing path and fade in oblivion. This is a tickbox for permanent death at character creation. Defeated characters instantly become unavailable for play and their name becomes freed for taking. In exchange they enjoy a 25% bonus to experience. Dying is not necessarily the end of the story here. Others may yet rescue the character from the underworld. For a week afterwards missions to rescue him/her appear in the police radio, in all areas, and in the Paragon Protector, always on the bottom of the current list. In the radio these are 10-00 code alerts ("officer down"), in the newspaper - obituaries. All contain the name of the deceased, his level and the group that killed him. For obituaries this takes the form of "wreaths were sent by... (the Family, Skulls, Clockwork etc.)" or "in loving memory from... (Hellions, the Banished Pantheon, Arachnos)" or "is survived by... (Coralax, Vahzilok, the Legacy Chain etc.)." Vigilantes and rogues get to be listed in both sources. Any other character or group can take this "orphean" rescue as a strike force in Hades, a gloomy place, and lead the ghost of the dead one out. However, the level of the mobs in Hades is at least +3 to the level of the dead man and at least +1 to the level of the rescuers, whichever is higher. Yet they drop plusgood loot, and leading enough people out earns the rescuers the Psychopomp badge. If the name of the character has already been taken, he has to choose a new name. After a week the advertisements fade, but then the character becomes playable again for another week as a restless spirit. He can't fight or enter missions, but he can go around all common areas, including Pocket D, and nag people for a rescue, promising them, perhaps, riches or Influence. (Memories of Ultima Online come trickling in.) The ghost is marked with his last level so that the rescuers know what they are in for. All along the player in control of the character can ask for these rescues in chat channels too using his other characters, but he can't rescue himself. If the character is rescued when already a ghost, he loses a level. After two weeks all traces of the character become effaced, and he is deleted. The Meteor mode is incompatible with Temporal Warrior, where characters are bound to go down all the time.

A few days ago I ran this concept by people on Indomitable to hear their feedback. Now I'm going to post it here, but one of the things I heard said was that Homecoming hasn't got the manpower and budget to introduce new gameplay mechanics, assuming they would even want to. If this game is really a "weekend project for the developers" and they are content with fixing bugs, sometimes adding a new power set, adding one archetype, then there is no point in suggesting deeper interactions. The role-playing suggestions thread is probably like a mass grave of all the things that could but won't. But who knows? I am quite done playing now, but writing is writing. The idea is that supergroups can declare themselves open to PvP robbery by other supergroups or solo characters. Here I have to mention that in the old times there was a mechanic, aborted before long, for raiding bases. It was limited to supergroups, it was very abstract and had the character of a sports match: the raiding party tried to capture an "item of power" from the defenders' base. In that form that mechanic must have had little appeal. To make it appealing the process must be made very simple, open, left to players to sort out between themselves, and the goal of a raid lucrative. Hence robbery. Changes can be made, but they should not be in the direction of making things harmless, plush, cumbersome to start, difficult to understand or again abstract like a 0:1 score, because then once more no one will bother. Chopping beets, cabbages and tomatoes into anything will turn it into borscht. Real interaction is driven by desire for advancement and passion. Take those away, and you have beach volleyball at most. Now, I imagine that a supergroup opting into this system is listed in some easily accessible window. It could be directly a part of the interface, but for better immersion information kiosks might be the way (some equivalent for the Rogue Isles where they don't have kiosks on the streets... oh yes: pimps, leaning against walls in white suits and feathered hats). A combination would probably work the best: accessing a kiosk for the first time would give the character a mobile app (21st century), a temporary power. Pimps would just give their phone numbers. Both ways the player would get to see all of the information, including current wealthy bases. On the hero side they would be listed as "public exhibitions," on the villain side as "rich mofos." Heroes would be liberating ill-gotten gains, villains would be ill-getting them. To have their base listed a group needs to commit some Inf and any selection of Enhancements, recipes and salvage the members contribute to a treasure chest. The group can put any amount of Inf there above a bare minimum, in principle even a small sum, to attract those who like a fight for a fight's sake, but naturally the better the stash, the more tempting it will look to more viewers. Make it real, and people will come. (My late character would certainly have killed for the money that would relieve him from having to spend half of his time grinding for Enhancements.) The contents of the chests are all browsable from the listing so that potential robbers know what they stand to gain. A total value of the chest, in converted average market prices, is also shown. The chest's contents can be changed only once a day, which immediately delists the group for the next day. The strength of defenses, in points, is also shown. Defenses might include turrets, golems, svelte succubi with deadly kisses (double up as cocktail waitresses in peace time), powers nullifiers, fiery moats, fields of slowed time, dragon heads, hired goons from one of the mob groups etc., but this is unknown beforehand. The base can defend itself, but the listing is only active while at least one member of the supergroup is online. He plays the part of sentinel without having to be at the base. All of the members are informed if a base is invaded and might use their teleportation powers, if they have them, to get there quickly, but every one has to decide whether to quit the current mission at this signal. No extra information is provided, like the number of attackers. Too much knowledge stifles initiative. E-mail can be configured to send out these warnings to offline members. I won't dwell on how the attack itself must go except to say that the robbers' goal is to crack the treasure box, not to destroy all defenses, that any defenses and other items that do get destroyed regenerate quickly after the end of the fight, that the group might set a time limit on the robbery (also shown in the kiosk/beggar info) and that the attacker may not teleport out but must either win the prize or end up in the hospital. This rule is a protection against vandals. If the supergroup makes the treasure box inaccessible, that is grounds for complaining to support, but otherwise the invisible hand of Ares gets to sort it all out. A base with a small chest, lots of defense points and a time limit will probably never give a chance of entertainment to its defenders, who have only wasted salvage putting up useless protections, while an expensive and easy-looking base might tempt many and end up being well-served by a host of teleporting members. Would-be robbers can get extra information before an operation for a non-trivial price. At auction houses heroes and vigilantes can pay a logistics specialist for a profile of any listed group. This gives a full list of members of the group and their levels and powers but costs one fourth of the treasure value. Villains and rogues can consult the black market and obtain the floor plan (minimap) of the base with generic markers for defenses, something that also costs one fourth of the prize. This makes it important for groups that want to specialize in the assets of others to recruit characters from both sides of the fence so that they might get the most complete recon info where the prize is big enough to justify the expense. Recon money goes to the hosting group's common budget with a day's delay, that is, the robbers are betrayed after a day, and the investigated group can then pay another, smaller, fee to find the identity of the customer group or master thief, if the attack has not happened. This should motivate robbers to act on the information quickly (if they dare, after what they find out) and lay the groundwork for some backlash. This second fee is wired back to the attacking group one more day later so that they know that the others know that they know. If the chest is cracked, the robbers, or, again, the solitary king of thieves, all escape. Dividing loot can take some form of an escrow window, or the group's leader can make all the decisions about distribution, or the plunder can be automatically sold at current market prices and handed out. In villain-headed groups PvP is in force during these deliberations, and whoever kills the leader can make the decision instead. In hero groups this is not allowed. Naturally, squabbling over a dead man's chest is bound to lead to some expulsions, bitter feelings, wandering ronin and revenge brewing in breasts. Very good. What can be the benefits for groups to build their dungeons? Excitement is one. Getting to know people is another, and who better than the ones that wanted to bump them over the head? A place to apply new recipes and salvage is third. Recon fees are fourth. And then, of course, they can get badges. You can always give people badges. "Badgered" may even be one. Those animals build such elaborate mazes, and they are fierce in a fight.

The only reaction this post requires is a fix from the developers to exclude taunt powers' effects on greys. And I'm not doing anything special to fight them. I don't even approach them with the Evolving Armor on. They smell it from long yards away. I don't go around invisible either. I could take invisibility, but not seeing myself all the time I walk across town is a steep price to pay for being left alone, especially if that wouldn't even work. And, as I said, before I picked up that power I still had trouble avoiding enemies, probably because of the Tanker's special autopower. How would that be fixed? Easily with greys, with others - perhaps no mobs should be taunted by these side effects outside of combat.

Legends linger, but who should care? Superstitious masses who once believed in matzoth with the blood of Christian children and now in mind-controlling vaccines or something? What is the interest in seeing all this tripe all over again? Inspirations from life, creatively transmuted, are one thing, and pulling together cliches is another. Take the Carnival of Shadows. There has been any number of books about some evil circuses and suspicious crooks, pied pipers, Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is one such, but do we have an interesting, masterful, personal and authorial take on the concept here? No: it's just the bare notion plunked in front of us. What I'm saying here is simple: this game's ideas for most groups are not good enough, and neither are most of the quests. Maybe they are for those who have read nothing, but even twenty years ago I was interested in seeing Paragon City and not investigating who the Clockwork King is, because I more or less knew it would be disappointment. I'm not going to lower my expectations for storytelling, and it is too bad that I didn't get an answer to my request - a plan to avoid the worst offenders. Then again, maybe I should be thankful, I'm spared a compromise that could shame myself. And @Ukase, superheroes do exist, of course. Wonderful, fantastic powers are all real. It is only a very shallow view of reality that fails to register them. Any real creativity can create a miracle. This game just falls short in too many places. This argument about "we are all different" doesn't fly. The blind, the lame, the crooked are also "all different," but that is not a spectrum anybody wants to be a proud part of. A man of sound intelligence knows that nostalgia is an embarrassment, so is illiteracy. And suspension of disbelief is not an excuse for weak concepts. That the game is about comic books did not entitle its authors to reuse the same schlocky approaches to storytelling that make the Marvel Universe a hell hole. As far as I am concerned, I have simply outgrown this game. Which is a little achievement, at least, in twenty years.

The only "aura" that my character has got on that might do this is Evolving Armor. And I don't care to turn it off and on again all the time. I shouldn't have to. I'm not fighting greys, in fact, THEY are not willing to fight me and react to me, by definition. But even before I learned that power my tanker used to aggravate mobs much farther out than my scrapper.

It wasn't always like this, but these days, when I know and understand so much of what CoH includes and shows so much better, playing the game falls into two parts: reasonably interesting and not at all. The former can also be dubbed pleasant, charming, educational and meaningful, the latter - repetitive, immature, banal and ridiculous. For example, a Prussian Prince of Automatons is ridiculous. I don't ever want to come up against him or fight his Nemesis dressed in 19th century uniforms, thank you very much. On the other hand, the Skulls or the Hellions are not very ridiculous. It is possible that a gang may involve death or devil worship. There have been examples, but even in itself it is not stupid. Nemesis is. So is, e.g., the Malta Group, and here let me quote to you from the wiki. Rinse your mouth with apple vinegar first, to stop convulsions stomach content: "Secrets within secrets. Black helicopters and balaclavas. Shadowy agencies with limitless slush funds, and black-hearted agents with licenses to kill. Hushed conversations on internet chat-rooms that mysteriously vanish. Men in black with blank identities, and deadly women with a dozen passports. A high-tech paramilitary force divided into clandestine cells and dispersed around the globe – this is the Malta Group. In a world of super-powered chaos and costume-clad adventurers, there are still mortal forces that try to control the storm. One such group is spoken of in whispers, even at the highest levels of power. Rarely seen, those who know of them detect their fingerprints staining the headlines with frightening regularity. Young heroes may never encounter these forces directly, but paranoid government analysts and conspiracy experts believe the Malta Group’s machinations are ubiquitous." Is it possible to muster more cliches from every "thriller" movie of the past 50 years in the same place? God damn it. And I'm going to spend my time bashing these? I don't think so. As I said, there are moments when I don't feel like I'm wasting it, for example: when I hear a new area district tune, written by a talented composer those 20 years ago (the one from Cap Au Diable are some of my favorites); when an NPC tells a story whose development I can't see from a mile away or uses unfamiliar or forgotten words ("rubes" came up twice lately; haven't seen "rubes" in a while); when villains show a sense of fashion; when I come into an area made charming and believable with excellently drawn buildings, arranged with details lifted from life or cleverly invented. Then even the basis of the gameplay, the dull combat, is tolerable. On the other hand, when I come into the First Ward with its vortex and forced "insanity" (bo-o-ring), or see Seeds of Hamidon I'm supposed to fight as a (sigh) Giant Monster, or I am supposed to hunt for badges and log out for Day Jobs, or stockpile Merit Rewards, or any of the other nonsense for sloped-browed juveniles, I say: uh-huh. You might think I am of the opinion that the game is pretty stupid on the whole. Yes, it is, but not everywhere. There are flower beds of talent making themselves felt, mostly when it comes to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, and then there is the stuff for uneducated idle kids to waste time on. And I do need some kind of alternate reality to act in, the original having been spoiled and debased. So I would like to play only the smart bits, hopping from one sweet spot to another. I want to avoid fighting Nemesis, for instance, and the Circle of Thorns should be banned for unoriginality (Oranbega is a great choice for a name, however), but the Family is not overly ridiculous, Freakshow is tolerable as far as it goes, the Gold Brickers are annoying yet not without promise... My criteria are not abstruse or whimsical. Any person of sound mind recognizes total nose-blown bullshit when he sees it. What I'm asking for, then, is a way for me to level up my characters on the villain and the hero side past the worst offenders. Don't talk to me about Shards. Don't give me Roman legionaries stuck in time, the bastards. But guide me past the vortices where pop culture eats itself to endgame so that I might discover Lord Recluse's factions, what corresponds to them for heroes, enjoy the parts that have art and sense and in the process write a not-meaningless story about my character.

By a passing tanker. Here, I wrote a poem about it: As the man with a mace strapped to his back leaps high, The seagulls try to peck at his eyes. As he comes down, He hears the grumbling of NPC stomachs: The microflora is rising up in arms.

Most of social interaction in this game happens within supergroups and temporary groups players form to take on task forces and such. Other than this the most involvement other characters can have in one's life is when some passing player casts a boost on you (outside of PvP). There is also a background presence of others in the form of consignments, but by and large people just lead parallel lives. I am interested in mechanics that would get them to cross paths. Two possibilities can be called cliffhangers and sudden entrances. By cliffhangers I mean interrupted adventures that are resumed later. In comics books this is due to the scope of the story that must be spread over two or more issues, in TV series both because of that and commercial breaks. Either way the story halts at something enticing, and sometimes these breaks are literally moments when the hero is hanging off a cliff on the top of which the villain stands gloating with his whole gang. It makes one cry foul when, fading out of the commercial, the hero is somehow found standing up on the cliff, the villain is not that close, the situation is a lot better than when we left the scene. And not infrequently another hero appears just then to change the balance. Now, this is all cheating and bad writing, but it does create opportunities for stories. To implement these cliffhanger moments here I suggest giving characters a temporary power once a week or even two weeks. This is a power of emergency log-off. When the character's hit points are very low, under 20% let's say, he activates this power and is safely logged-off, but becomes unavailable for play for entire three days - the space of "To Be Continued"... The mission and the situation are captured; when the character is played again, the player returns to the same area and the same point on its map instead of materializing outside, as usual, with perhaps half hit points but also with all of the enemies still there, and maybe slightly teleported around for different breaks. (Trials etc. would be excluded.) By itself this mechanic would only make life a little easier for players, and there is no need for extra help, but it would be worthwhile with a social element included: logging back in takes a whole minute in limbo, and during this time and for a minute afterwards the mission is advertised server-wide in a special channel. Any number of other characters can hop into it with one click, exemplared up or down, and appear next to this hero to fight alongside for the remainder of the mission or simply to help him out, if outside. Sudden entrances would be similar, but without the need for logging off and spending time away from the character. Instead all characters get a toggle: while this is on and the character's hit points are low, he is listed on the server roster of sudden entrance invitations, like a standing distress call. The toggle is on by default, somewhere left of panel 1, and it can be kept going even at high health, but the character only appears on the list while he is wounded and for a minute afterwards. If switched off, i.e. if the player opts out, the toggle has a slow recharge time. As long as a character is listed as valid for a rescue, others can instantly jump into the mission. A defeated character can keep the toggle on instead of teleporting to the hospital, if it was enabled before he went down; his listing then indicates that he needs revival. Members of the supergroup get pop-up windows when one of their own is in trouble. My inspiration for this is one of the countless moments when, say, Spiderman is losing to Venom and the Iron Man flies in. Both of these mechanics would give players a chance to actually do something heroic and not motivated by powergaming and greed the way task forces usually are. Instead of banding with others for rewards let's band for others. And it should be interesting, rescuing others from unknown enemies in unfamiliar places. What the implementation would need is a good interface - a clear, simple panel for quick dispatch to one of the standing cliffhanger and sudden entrance opportunities. Those would be blinking in and out all of the time. There should also be an option for pop-up notifications and a "Respond to first call" option. Some characters might even make a name for themselves specializing in deliverances.

Another power: Corporate Control. It has two mutually exclusive subpowers: Merger and Divestiture. Merger melds the target enemy and the one nearest to him into one of a higher level with their combined hit points, for extra challenge and better rewards. Divestiture splits an enemy into two of lower levels and equal portions of his current hit points (and actually tinier).

No, it's an opportunity.

There are so many multiplayer online games old and new that I detest from the first sight, that are stupid, repetitive, unoriginal, irrelevant in all events, and because of that they are not dangerous. But a great deal of talent was poured into City of Heroes those 15-20 years ago, and that is what makes it too appealing to this day. The strongest asset of this game is its city. Paragon City and its suburbs, the Rogue Isles, are a vision of what a real city could be, to some extent what a real city was. Never mind Shards, floating isles in the sky and Pocket D that tries too hard to be cool. Any team can create otherworldly places. But a believable city that is a pleasure to be in (even without dogs, cats, pigeons, children and old folks) is a real charm. Plus there was Praetoria, and it is also glorious. It had its own style as well: except on posters with Cole the designers resisted the temptation to make it Art Deco, a natural choice for its theme that Bioshock adopted, for instance. They gave it a unique look, and it is still a pleasure to hover over it and look at the line where the distant woods meet the sandy shores beyond the river. And it is because of all these virtues that the game is a honeypot. It sucks away our time. We need to quit it. Not collectively, but everyone needs to make the decision for himself. I'm making this decision, because I'm dreaming away what is left of my life. Now I'm not being coy here or talking for the sake of talking. There are moments of painful awakening when after a very charming time in CoH one runs into some real, true art in life. A dark kind of art or a light kind. Unfamiliar or well-forgotten. Either one is like a jolt. Just now I accidentally noticed Chris Rea's 1989 clip for "The Road to Hell" on a music video service and watched it, and remembered the song. A real city? "And a perverted fear of violence chokes the smile on every face..." For the other kind I had watched "Party Girl" from 1995, with Parker Posey, the day before, and boy, I never stopped smiling. The music is wonderful, she is so beautiful, and even in the opening credits the camera crawls up the stairs past all these weird, wonderful, goofy ravers standing about, talking, transvestites, weed getting smoked, DJs, and the funky tune is climbing all the way through too. And when you see something so genuine and smart and talented you earn to party yourself like that and be with all these people and make independent movies and have fun while you can. So it is reality checks from both sides - the lonesome truth of things and love, ambition, wanting to meet the world. And I am not coming back to CoH to move my tanker around and click on the same three power buttons and then come around these boards and talk about balance or brainstorm for some new clever features any longer. This is all a surrogate. It's a honeypot. Let's give applause where it is due - but then, applause was given those 20 years ago, and get out of here. We will find something to do.

For a hero the system for getting new missions is simple and pleasant: you do quests and you get introduced to an expanding net of contacts. There is always someone to ask a mission from. As a villain there is no such thing. Referrals are rare or just broken, and it is anybody's guess where to find contacts other than by covering every inch of ground in seach of yellow circles over people's heads. For example, after Mercy I was shooed away to Port Oakes without any referral. I managed to find Mr. Bocor, but two missions into working for him I had him outlevelled, and there was nothing more. He introduced me to a contact, but that was only a broker, and I am not interested in robbing banks. Where is my expanding net here? Mission-giving NPC don't congregate in any particular places, go fish! I now hunt by hospitals and ferries for someone to please hire me. It is doubly disappointing that the plot line of working for Arachnos has fizzled out, or rather there was no such line. Arachnos rescued a number of "Destined Ones" from prison to raise them within the organization, gave them a few missions with promises for advancement, and then what? Dismissed them to freelancing? I know that characters from Arachnos appear from time to time in missions, but that doesn't amount to working for the organization nor being a part of Lord Recluse's master plan. Maybe that's because he HAS no master plan, and the whole faction is as empty as all the other villain groups. Where the hell is anything resembling a plotline? What am I doing around these islands? Bumping around Pocket D? Putting down mobs 10 levels below myself aggroed by my tanker? Listening to the fucking Radio?

When fighting NPC enemies there are two bars that supposedly matter, the pink and the blue. But I never pay attention to their Endurance and all powers that are said to drain Endurance don't do anything as far as I am concerned. They matter when used on me, they may be of some relevance in PvP, but not for defeating computer-controlled enemies. If the enemies are stronger than myself, their economy of Endurance is the last thing I care about, and if they are weaker than myself, they won't be around for long enough to let that matter. All attacks cost a laughably tiny amount of Endurance from them, hand-to-hand attacks practically none. The highest damage in the shortest time is the only objective in this game, all the other effects and protections make that possible. The most Endurance I have seen spent in difficult fights I was lucky enough to prolong was perhaps a third of the blue bar. And from my side to drain any amount of Endurance I must score a hit first, which is the number one challenge against stronger enemies. My suggestion here is twofold: first, reduce enemies' Endurance by a factor of five at least to make draining them and waiting them out a meaningful strategy, second, make them surrender when they run out of it. This would become an alternative road to their defeat. They are not SUPERvillains or SUPERheroes, after all, only smaller fry, and when they can't keep the fight going, they give up. (They are not connected to a medical teleporter either.) When this happens they should play suitable animations - raise hands or turn around to be handcuffed if beaten by a hero PC, prostrate themselves and beg if beaten by a villain. For inhuman creatures there could be a jump or they might retreat, fly or hobble away, because we don't lock zombies up. The enemies should become unselectable, yield their experience and drops, then disappear after a few seconds. Lieutenants and Bosses might have higher Endurance beyond their better overall stats and this mechanic would need adjustment in Archvillains' case, but it ought to apply even then. What is the difference between laying someone out on the floor and making him beg for mercy? You win not by knockout but by going the distance.