megaericzero

There are some cyberpunk universes where the armaments are so small they're basically dots on the skin that are invisible at arm's length. Well, aside from explosives specifically. Also, personally, I feel that integrating more primitive animations for the non-bullet options like lobbing actual grenades or fire bombs is a better solution than making an entire redundant power set that would just boil down to AR in all but name and animations. Nomenclature would seem to be laying the groundwork for that possibility given the control and assault equivalents are named Arsenal instead of Rifle.

I can't currently be bothered to find a picture of a cyberpunk character with discrete, built-in versions of the weapons instead so please enjoy this generic smart-aleck image response for the time being.

I thought the visual theme was bullets? For the melee weapons, sure, though even that has some wiggle room as War Mace can also be a hammer or a wrench.

I don't think anyone is arguing about the discount. Most of us probably don't even care either way. It's the compensatory increase in base end cost in the second half of the suggestion, which we can probably assume would be obligatory because there's no way the devs just give us a free buff like that. It makes the worst-case scenario a worst-er-case scenario - if all your henchmen drop in combat, you are now paying more to resummon them than you would have been without this change. Given the choice, we'd rather keep the current status quo where we don't get any bonuses for having pets alive but we also don't have to pay more for re/summoning all six henchmen at the same time. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

can you explain why it would make the problem worse, Probably this part of your OP:

I'm all for it, even if it's a pipe-dream. Animation times would be the biggest concern. Purportedly, the engine doesn't do well when swapping animations that are different durations, so new animations would have to be made for existing powers that have no current weapon animations that match.

The GUI could definitely use a fresh pass. Visual hierarchy and sensibilities have advanced since 2004 for sure. Quick question in regards to the anecdote: /wdwload?

"We do this - not because it is easy but because we thought it would be easy."

FWIW:

I believe we got some wires crossed in communication. For starters: Wavicle's suggestion is for Group Fly to grant other players a temporary power that gives them flight when turned on, which you said was an elegant solution; your response now sounds like you assume the temporary power would remove the flight when turned on, though you hadn't elaborated as such in contrast to Wavicle's version.

Right. That's what I'm getting at. Having Group Fly grant a pop-up tray power is an elegant solution... for player-to-player interactions. If you change Group Fly to that wholesale, though, pets and henchmen will no longer benefit from it. When I said: ... I was voicing concerns that there might be spaghetti getting in the way of reprogramming Group Fly to simultaneously: grant other players a pop-up tray toggle but NOT give them +flight as a buff give pets/henchmen and themself +flight as a buff but NOT attempt to grant them a pop-up tray toggle The reason I brought it up is largely that I'm currently unaware if the game can have one player emit an aura that grants pop-up tray powers to other players (as opposed to themself). EDIT: On a different note, what's stopping Group Fly from granting a pop-up tray toggle to the caster instead that filters Group Fly to only affect the caster and their pets? That eliminates other players from having to fiddle with the pop-up tray and lets the caster swap it in real time with no one needing to visit Null.

Assuming the game can treat players like that but still give henchmen normal +fly; you know how pets/henchmen act with toggles.

Not knocking the suggestion but it is already largely covered by Willpower, both mechanically and thematically. Danger Sense -> Heightened Senses Inexhaustible, Integration -> Fast Healing, Quick Recovery, Reconstruction (Stalkers) Dull Pain -> Rise to the Challenge, High Pain Tolerance, Mind Over Body The Martial Combat stuff and Lightning Reflexes do give it its own flavor related to speed. The tier 9 is rather unorthodox; practical but a wild call from the kinds we have so far.

We had this thread two weeks ago. Here's a quick excerpt: Because I have incurable altitis and no wherewithal to micro-manage my enhancements on the way to 50. Some of us use SOs up to 50 and potentially even beyond. Not everyone has the time or energy to grind for IOs on every character, let alone for over half the character's career. Since SOs are currently the status quo, you're talking about taking that away from people.

"Commander" does seem to be suggested quite often as an archetype to make use of (a modified version of) the henchmen set category, yeah. In fact, here's a thread from a few months ago suggesting Henchmen/Armor specifically, as opposed to this thread's Armor/Control or Armor/Support in the OP. Personally, I do think the name fits better with a henchmen set. For something like the OP, I dunno, maybe "Warden"?

*shrug* I was responding just in case Rudra was conflating this Commander thread with past threads where the same name is suggested for an archetype that does use henchmen. Not that I don't trust Rudra's memory; just that we've had a lot of duplicate topics in close proximity to one another lately, either by coincidence or one leading to another.

I mean... technically the thread was "Tank primary & Controller secondary powers [...] or Controller primary and Sentinel secondary" (however you want to interpret that) per the OP and just got steered to MM-related stuff. 👀

Gonna give Papias the BOTD that they meant to say Armor for primary and Control for secondary but listed the archetypes instead of their respective primary set categories. (Or they could actually be insane and suggesting an Armor/Support archetype. It's funny picturing how impossibly slow-but-safe it would be, sporting combos like Stone Armor/Radiation Emission.)

Dunno that I'd want this change applied to their current fights - we've seen the backlash updating enemies in existing content can have and it's not like those fights have a reputation of underperforming - but overall the suggestion sounds good. Could even be used to refresh their powerscaling by having them transform during a newer, harder encounter with a much-expected "I was always holding back!"

Having the tier 7 be a Swap Ammo-style power that also applies to the henchmen could work. Instead of picking branched options, you could hot-swap your henchmen's element at will. Granted, most people would probably pick fire or whichever ammo gets used most often on Dual Pistols and run that 99% of the time. (Mechanically, I'm thinking the henchmen have transparent models and apply their visuals via a passive power that changes with your current element; similar to how Jack Frost and Spectral Terror are, just not hard-baked to which VFX are used. The element toggles themselves would be similar to Dual Pistols' ammo options with an additional pbaoe component that flags henchmen. Henchmen would, of course, have default elements as well; probably a mixed bag with some of the better effects as a tradeoff for not mono-focusing an element.)

Based on my understanding of what's on COD, powers can be made to redirect based on given criteria. For instance, snipes and assassin's strikes redirect to snipe_normal/snipe_quick or assassin_strike_stealth/assassin_strike_quick based on a check that the power button in your tray performs when activated, with the redirected version of the power being the one that actually does something. You could, theoretically, add an option to Null the Gull that - based on how people have described him granting invisible powers that add flags to your character - tags you as "stayHumanoid" and then update the nova and dwarf powers (both the toggles and their attacks) into redirects that go to nova_power_classic/nova_power_human and dwarf_power_classic/dwarf_power_human. Heck, the dwarf attacks don't seem to even need redirects; just the two toggles and the four nova animations. (This is assuming "remain human" is the only option. I can't speak on custom forms, which would significantly complicate things, so I'm writing under the assumption that those are not an option and only classic vs "minimal" exist.) Yeah, sure, this further divorces the implementation from power customization but I'm honestly not worried; it still retains the heart of the idea. SCR goes both ways. We don't know how hard or easy something could be unless we're told by someone who knows better.

Wut? (To my understanding) this thread has always been a purely cosmetic request; everything would still function the exact same except for the model swap.

Not sure if the engine is capable of it but you could try using the same flag combat-only auras do.

You're definitely not the only one. Alchemystic and I have posted our own take on the power sets before, and surely others have before us as well.

That's still apples to oranges. Heracles is a single, signature figure. There are multiple Kheldians. You even work for one of them when you are a Kheldian yourself. I also haven't seen anyone mention avoiding playing the storyarcs but it's neither here nor there; the concerns with the arcs is finding where they explicitly outline how the forms work and look. Because people keep saying it's in the lore and others are sifting through the lore for where. In regards to your screenshot: I already posted how game UI flavor text is already directly contradicted by power customization options. It got hand-waived as not as important for any other powers even though it was multiple, direct examples.