megaericzero

Oh definitely; SCR is always relevant. Funny anecdote: I went to check Beam Rifle's animations via COH Titan's icon in expanded mode and forgot to set a rifle so, since the UI defaulted to none instead of legacy, the animations' origin point was the character's pelvis. Very likely spaghetti issues. I believe Laser Beam Eyes (X-Ray Beam?) has an alternate animation where the lasers come from your fist. That could be evidence that alternate emanation points are possible - at least in non-weapon to non-weapon applications. We may never know how much of a duct-tape solution the alternate animations/fx options are without a dev informing us. On the flip side, I would hope that gets looked at long before we end up with, for example, Fire Blast, Fire Rifle, Flaming Bow, Burning Sludge, Pyromancy, and Fire Bending all as separate power sets in a single category (blast in this case).

So then why can't it be called Elemental Blast with animations that apply to a broader spectrum and have the [magic/arcane/whatever] animations as the alternate? And again... yeah - Beam Rifle really probably should've been an update to Energy Blast alongside the implementation of a "choose your casting method" customization update where you can choose most any set to have (or not have) a weapon - guns, staves, gauntlets, tomes, etc. It's an idea some of us have suggested/supported before in other threads as well as putting slews of alternate animations to existing sets that let them be more magical, more feral (slashing/breath animations), more bender-y (martial arts animations), etc.

You're being facetious but, honestly, yeah - those are great customization ideas. Let people use AR/BR/DP with alternate animations for integrated body weapons - "Gun Gauntlets", "Laser Arms," or "Tech Blast" don't need to be their own set. And no one is saying to take away anything; Arcane Blast (or whatever name you pick) doesn't exist. By and large, we're actually saying add a heck of a lot more options to existing sets. Heck, some of us (just me?) are saying go crazy and have an elemental set(s) but let them be open to all origin interpretations at their base. I joined around issue 5 but - at least from what I hear from someone who played since launch - Katana used to be "Broad Sword for weebs" because weapon and power (animation) customization were not a thing. That's why their power tables line up visually 1:1. (Heck, the internal name for the Katana icons are Broad Sword's power names.) You can't take that away now - both because people would complain but also very likely the database just wouldn't be able to handle it. The two sets could try harder to be different from one another though the cottage rule would likely get in the way. As for Ninja Blade I really hope you're playing around. You know it's because Stalkers always have to have Assassin's [Something], Build Up, and Placate as their t4-t6 powers. Why they renamed the set on Stalkers *shrug*. Probably to give it a slightly different model and unsheathing animation because it also existed well before weapon/power customization. Yeah BS, BA, and WM - or the latter two at least - probably should've been one set called Medieval Weapon or something and had a Swap Ammo-type power to go between the two/three but here we are, still repenting for the sins of our fathers original live dev team in many aspects of the game.

Wouldn't tables introduce the potential of RNG manipulation? At least inasmuch as card counting. Not that it would necessarily be easy but that it would become possible.

(Repeating from a previous thread about old/new Mercy: ) I wonder if it's possible with phasing tech to have both in one zone and characters get "old" Mercy if they come from Breakout or "new" Mercy if they came from Galaxy City or skipped the tutorial.

Welcome, tiggertoga. The multi-element set(s) suggestion crops up quite often on the forums. Personally, I lean more towards Rudra's stance - origins are the "how" for your character's lore, primary/secondary power sets are the "what" it manifests as; better to add more animation/fx options rather than design origin-specific sets. I'm not opposed to multi-element sets; it's just probably better to have them be called Elemental [Blast/Melee/Affinity/etc] and load them with multiple animations to choose from. That way people can theme them after concepts in any origin. For instance: power armor, gadgets, an unstable mutation, an alien that is naturally capable of wielding multiple elements, etc.

If they ever port super strength powers to an assault set, I'll have to thank you for naming my grav/ss dom.

I would imagine yes inasmuch as it functions as a visual queue for which henchman have which tiers of upgrade. You could do both - have one upgrade make them more ornate and the other give them an aura.

Since powers from Veteran Rewards, Super Boosters, Paragon Market, etc. are nowadays under the S.T.A.R.T. vendors, I figured it would be nice to recycle/expand the use of the old veteran "laurel wreath" backing to include those powers. (Haven't done any pet powers because man there's a lot of them.) Here's a pack with various icons. Below is a list of the powers affected as well as individual downloads in case you only want specific ones. I've also included the PNG originals in the zips again, though after this post I'll probably stop doing that since they're in the post anyway and aren't needed in the game files. Runs Athetic Run Beast RunNinja Run Jumps Jump PackSteam Jump Shapeshift Travel Coyote Travel PowerPanther Travel Power Origin Pack Powers Mystic FortuneSecondary MutationSelf Destruction There's a few other icons I'd like to replace but are shared with powers that shouldn't be included so I'd rather avoid mucking things up. Those being the unique travel powers (skiff, board, carpet), Shadowy Presence, the prestige sprints, and Renewal of Light (which I'd use the "body explosion" icon to differentiate it from Return to Battle). Here's the PNGs for them nonetheless. ----- I'm also not really a fan of some of the rings used in the power icon lexicon. We'll start with this one: It's fine, visually, but I find its purpose superfluous. Personally, I don't care about differentiating team-affecting PBAOE from other PBAOEs. Here's a set of icons to replace (to my knowledge) all of the team-PBAOE borders with the regular PBAOE border (except Vengeance and Victory Rush). This affects: * Peacebringers > Cosmic Balance / Warshades > Dark Sustenance * Fly > Group Fly / Luminous Aura > Group Energy Flight * Illusion Control > Group Invisibility * Kinetics > Inertial Reduction (I believe I took this one directly from Vanden's icon fix pack; some of these icon replacements are actually years older than others) * Storm Summoning > Steamy Mist * and all of the toggles from Leadership, Training and Gadgets, and Teamwork Similarly, I also don't care for the distinction of "anchors to a teammate but affects foes" as opposed to just using the TAOE ring for "affects an area centered around your target" regardless of whether we're talking friends or foes for either, so here's a pack to replace the teammate-anchored AOEs in Sonic Resonance as well as the two outlier team-PBAOE rings for Vengeance and Victory Rush with the normal TAOE ring. It should affect: * Sonic Resonance > Disruption Field, Sonic Repulsion * Leadership > Victory Rush, Vengeance * Widow Teamwork / Fortunata Teamwork > Tactical Training: Vengeance Now I do think the team-PBAOE ring can be repurposed. While I don't think the distinction on chains is particularly useful either - I would probably just use the TAOE icon for those as well - aesthetically I dislike the ring that was made to distinguish them: The detail on the chainlink pattern is too small. At a glance, it looks like the TAOE ring with noise. If I was still running COH on a 1024x768 monitor, it might be a small enough screen in proportion to the pixel-tight detail of the design; in the world of 1920x1080+, though, it's just hard to read beyond "it's TAOE but has pixel noise - must be chain AOE." (This isn't to criticize the devs for making the ring - kudos on giving chain its own ring - I just think the design could've been better.) Instead, here's a set of replacement icons that repurpose the team-PBAOE ring as an abstraction of chain links. This replaces: * Electric Control > Jolting Chain, Synaptic Overload * Electrical Melee > Chain Induction * Martial Assault > Trick Shot * Psychic Blast > Scramble Thoughts * Electrical Affinity > Rejuvenating Circuit, Energizing Circuit, Empowering Circuit, Insulating Circuit * Storm Blast > Chain Lightning chain-ring-replacement.zip (EDIT: added Synaptic Overload on 06/18/24)

It's certainly possible. Shared power sets don't have to be copied 100%. Sentinels and Stalkers already change a power in every armor set they get to fit their roles better.

Love the ideas. Commander makes a great inversion to Mastermind. My only concern is that - even if you absorb a huge portion of incoming damage - your lack of a dedicated support set means damage henchmen do take is probably stuck for most of the fight and you don't have buffs/debuffs to help prevent damage before it happens or heals to undo it so they may get whittled-down in fights in late-game content or if you try to act as a tank for a large team. The inherent being reverse-bodyguard works but perhaps better as an insurance policy against AOEs and stray foes while the Commander themself takes the main aggro. (Also, since most inherents are a single word, maybe Rallying instead of Strength in Numbers?)

Posting this classic based on relevance.

What Rudra said; to the best of my knowledge, interrupt enhancements don't actually alter the cast time - just the portion of the cast time that you would fail the power if damaged. It lowers the threshold beyond which someone can take a baseball bat to your character's head and you'll ignore it and still attack but you still take the full cast time to perform the attack, so it's only really useful for powers that even have an interrupt time - snipes, rest, the medicine pool, etc. Beyond engine limitations, I'd be more concerned with game balance. Allowing powers to animate faster would really increase DPS.

Erm, that is a lot of holds even for a control set.

Definitely. Just suggesting a workaround in case you needed something sooner than later.

I noticed that too. [Bit of personal history here - go ahead and skip this: since live, I've kept binds.txt, chat.txt, options.txt, and wdw.txt in read-only mode. I found the settings I liked and made sure I couldn't accidentally overwrite them, then only unlocked the files as new settings came and, most of the time, edited the files manually in notepad instead of through the game. With all the updates to settings on P7, I figured now was a great time for a full-refresher so I moved the files out of my COH install, loaded the game with a brand-new character and saved the default files so I could see what's changed and what the game now considers default with the intent stitch the two files together (and maybe update a couple of things)... only to find that binds (and wdw) basically only list changes from the default now, though I'd have no perception of how long it's been like that since my files were untouched as read-only since like 2019. I'm guessing it's a memory or efficiency thing.] What I used as a quick solution was erasing all the binds by changing everything to the same key until I was left with only one, then saving it. This way, it exports a file with all the keys that should be bound in the current profile but with "nop" (the keybind file's designation for "unbind this key"?) as a starting point.

I'm for both allowing customization to existing sets (eg: Banished Pantheon and Vahzilok for Necromancy) as well as new sets for more themes. Bouncing off of Player2's post: Elementals: fire, ice, and electric sprites for t1; stone and wood golems for t2; elemental for t3; I'm apprehensive to say a swap ammo mechanic applying to the whole set but maybe to the t3 as the set's special gimmick Knights: two bowmen and a priest for the t1, knights (mace, axe) for the t2, and a crusader (titan weapon sword) for the t3 Mad Science: generic faceless minions in uniform for t1, lab assistants (radiologist and cryogenecist) for t2, and a superhuman experiment for t3; customizable as Crey Time Police: time cops for t1, watchers for t2, and a fate for t3 Wasteland Survivors: your typical post-apocalyptic desert-wastelanders; junkers for t1, berserk ravagers for t2, and an irradiated/mutant for t3

Hrm, not sure about primary/secondary powers. The hybrid slot acts like that, if you want something that sees combat use. It's still a buff rather than a CC, though.

Jump Pack / Steam Jump / Double Jump come to mind.

Right. That's why it would be interesting to have the statistics from the servers themselves on who has played redside. That way we get a better picture than forum respondents on who hasn't touched villains before versus those that have but don't play it, in response to your question "how can that be what's keeping people away if if no one's playing in the first place?"

It would be interesting to see the number of people who have at least one substantial redside character to compare with the percentage of players who play redside. I'm willing to bet there is a good chunk of people who have played redside a fair amount before deciding they prefer one of the other sides - at least in this thread, given the number of responses referencing the contacts/arcs.

Rogue Arachnos exist. Also Soul and Mu mastery would allow even an alignment-swapped SOA to summon live people (a Widow and Striker).

I made some icon replacements for various powers and am sharing them here if anyone wants to use them. First, a few disclaimers: DO NOT ADD OR REMOVE FILES FROM YOUR GAME DIRECTORY WHILE THE GAME IS RUNNING! It will crash the game. Please don't ask me how to install or troubleshoot the files. You should be able to drag the texture_library folder directly from the zip into the data folder in your game directory. That said, I don't know computers - I'm just a monkey that learned how to edit textures and, even then, not in the way people are doing it nowadays. If something doesn't work, I have no idea why. Please don't ask me to tweak the icons or make icons for you. I use photoshop and an old, "working" copy of Leandro's splasher but it crashes every time I make a texture with transparency (all power icons) so it's a P.I.T.A. to generate things. I'll attach the PNGs of the icons in the zips if you want to modify them. The replacement icons were made to my own taste. I'm aware they diverge from the game's icon rules/patterns. Note: If it asks to overwrite a file, you already have something replacing the icon you're trying to install. If it doesn't work... *shrug* No idea; as I said above, I don't know how to fix it if it's not working out of the box. Also always remember to back up your files first so you don't lose anything! As for the icons: Ouroboros Portal Gave it the glossy accolade backing. It's not an accolade but it can be earned via certain badges. Plus I think it deserves a little special treatment. ouroboros-portal-accolade.zip Assemble the Team Simply added the "location" ring for the icon since it's a placed power. iconfix-assemble-the-team.zip Base Transporter I prefer this icon as the "teleport to a different map" symbol to go with the Long Range Teleporter. Don't use this one unless you also replace the Mission Transporter with something otherwise you'll have two of the exact same icon! iconfix-base-transporter.zip Mission Transporter & Team Transporter (black) Gave both a dark-gray normal icon backing and the former the aforementioned "teleport to a different map" symbol, since they both teleport to mission doors. mission-teleporter-black.zipteam-transporter-black.zip Mission Transporter & Team Transporter (green) Same as the above but green to go better with the quick travel popmenu icon. mission-transports-green.zip Architect Comlink Gave it a glossy(-ish) accolade backing. It's a macro instead of an actual accolade but its function is unlocked by the Mission Engineer badge. architect-comlink-accolade.zip Hope you guys find these useful.

Thank you. I forgot that one.

Are there more than just SR and Nin? I agree Practiced Brawler and Kuji-in-Rin are annoying to keep up because all other armors get their mez protection on a toggle that can be left on 24/7. Those are actually the only powers I auto. My actual contention was that your example always listed hasten as the auto; thanks for providing an alternate example. I think there's something to be said about requiring active physical engagement in keeping multiple buffs up to elevate your character's performance. You want to do sick street racing maneuvers in your suped-up car, you better be ready to shuffle between the clutch, the handbrake, the gearshift, etc. Yes, and we draw lines at different spots in the sand. It happens that those of us voicing in opposition are all on the other side of your line.