Andreah

WALK is the most important power! ❤️

Thursday night, Stanton Memorial Auditorium, Steel Canyon Campus of Paragon University. "As part of our Extradimensional Perspectives series, I'd like to introduce tonight's guest speaker, who will offer a unique first-hand commentary on the prevalent philosophical stance of another world. She comes to us from a Delta-Zeta dimension which endured a tragic history resulting in terrible loss. Our guest had a distinguished career in that world. Born into the Aristocracy of a variant British Empire, daughter of a duke and duchess, graduated with a distinguished certificate in Imperial Service, Lieutenant Commander in their Meta Command, holder of the Medallion of the Superior Order and the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, as well as knighted Dame Commander of the Imperial Guardians. Here, on our Earth, she is an FBSA certified hero managed through ELITE, Cooperative Agent in Standing with the Paragon Police Department, Associate Member of Vanguard, Member of the Freedom Phalanx Reserve, and Member of the Global Defense Force. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Dame Victoria Crawford, also known to the public as Lady Warspite." "Greetings, distinguished professors, fellows, students, friends, and new acquaintances. I must say, ordinarily public speaking is not, as you say, my thing. But after that glowing and overly generous introduction, I am moved to do my best. As Professor Williams prefaced, I am here to speak on the essential nature of my former home's official guiding philosophy. You will find it odd, that a government would be guided so abstractly, instead of by what you call political parties here on this Earth. Some background exposition will be needed. In October of 1760, in my world as well as yours, George III took the throne of England. In your world, he had a long, and somewhat spotty reign, and was heavily checked by Parliament. In my world, he was a Titan of the highest order. He took the reigns of a government split between parties, an aristocracy crass and confident, yet divided and mixed in their views of the future of the Kingdom, and worse, beginning to manifest a deep introversion resulting in both inbreeding and a lack of ruling vigor, both physical and spiritual. In your world, over time, I believe this left the empire unable to guide itself through the storms of the 19th and 20th centuries, ending in a rump state, bereft of its pride and stature, meandering through history, bending to its every wind, living among residues of past glories they no longer appreciate or even wish to preserve. Hold back your outrage a time, and bear with me, if you will. In my world's 1780's, while contesting with the rebellious colonies in North America, the King instituted the 'Georgian Reforms'. A man of great vision and strength of will, he restructured the workings of the Aristocracy. In outward form, the system retained the same feudal forms, structures and hierarchy. But internally, requirements were placed upon it. Rank has privileges, so the saying common to both our worlds goes, and also responsibilities. Well, in my world, rank then took on far, far greater responsibilities. Public service was no longer an abstraction; it was concrete, measured, and required. Inheritance of lesser titles in each generation was assured, but maintenance and enlargement were not. Service to the State; mercantile, industrial, scientific, administrative, or military, would be required. Nor would procreation entirely within the great families be tolerated any longer. This, as you can imagine, was met with resistance. But George III was up to this task. There were penalties, expulsions and executions. And then there were marriages. No title could be passed to a child not of one commoner parent raised. My own father was born the son of a cobbler, but married a Duchess, and became a Knight, Baron, and Duke on battlefields. New blood; even if we lacked the genetical knowledge that came later, was welcomed into the old families. Marriage was less frequently the result of romantic notions of youth, nor obsessions of emotionally stunted bachelors or maids, but rather of wisely paired matches with official sanction. Honestly; the literature of your 19th century is insufferably dramatic and tortured, and I think on this account. Our Aristocracy became a means of aspiration of the people. With success in private life, or in public service, a commoner could win a place; a mate, titles, authority in governance, a seat in parliament, and even lands to call their own. And not only blood, but lineage. The aristocracy found new ties to the people, new obligations to Britain Herself. And from this Empire was born. King George became His Imperial Majesty George III. In my day, though he bore little resemblance to this England's Prince of the same name, Emperor Charles III reigned, with vision, strength, and will. Simultaneously to George's reforms, the war with Bonaparte did not go well. Your rebellious counterparts in the Americas, and I add fortunately you all here tonight are quite different than that traitorous crowd, allied closely with his armies, caused us to abandon North America, and nearly brought ruin to the continents. In 1821 we killed Bonaparte, triumphed in Europe, and gained the provinces of Gaul, Germania, Italia, and Iberia. Lands to be granted to the many new Houses of Nobility created on battlefields around the world. And then continuing wars; many more than you have suffered here, sadly. Wars with the Czar of All the Russias, wars with the Manchu Emperors, and worst of all, Wars with the United States, and after it swallowed Canada and the Empire of Mexico, The Eighty-Eights States of the North American Federal Republic; a republic in name only, I assure you. Political factions, these parties you struggle with, became moot. Our guiding philosophy we call "Imperialism" -- the Aristocracy, properly following the enlightened popular self-interest of the Nation, leads in all things. We held to the long run; what would we pass to our descendants? Higher status, or lower? Greater lands or lesser? A better world, or worse? Sacrifices made in the short run were not to be avoided, but the be cherished, and lauded as investments in the greater future. Lord Tennyson, one of our great Philosophers, and champion of the Imperialism school, said it best: "To Desire the Ends is to Desire the Means, to Desire the Means is to Desire the Power, and for Power, to Desire the Will." Perhaps you understand better why my world was so different. We were achieving great heights. Some you could hardly imagine. Industrial power a century stronger than yours. Damming Gibraltar. Irrigating the Sahara. Populated stations in orbit, and on the Moon. A bright future for Humanity under Imperial rule was on the horizon. But for the opposition of the Americans, Russians, and Manchu; who all had their own visions of the future. And London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin radiated wastes; struck by American Hellbombs in the war of October '62. Other places laid waste. Four times in the hundred years such weapons were known, we exchanged them with our great adversaries in the West and East. Eight years ago, there was an accident in an Imperial Science Command laboratory in Guyana. We had many such; secret laboratories and military installations around the globe and in space. A scientist I only know of as "Forbyn" became a mutated blob of biogenetically virulent virus particles, and began to spread like wildfire. Does this not sound familiar? Quite. According to Portal Corp, the majority of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and especially Delta mode dimensions experience some sort of biogenetic plague. Some, like your Devouring Earth here, are only modestly intelligent and controllably virulent. Some, like Praetoria, are vastly more intelligent, and more virulent. Ours was much less intelligent, not even sentient, and yet incredibly virulent. We killed our world fighting the Americans while trying to stop it. But more than that, our burning desire to dominate the world created it. Sometimes the Power and the Will to use it are too much for the Ends we wish to achieve. Take from this what lessons you may. I know I have. Goodnight, and peace."

And we even have a forums thread here filled with game change suggestions tailored for roleplayers! Ones they solicited from the community, and we discussed at some length. Is it a critical near term item ... no, but it's on the radar. 🙂

We have a great player base here. I think better, in most ways; helpfulness, tolerance, respect; better than on live.

Imagine the campaigns people would wage to try to get their way. There would be in game spam, people trying to get bots to the forums for voting, all of it. Ugh.

I feel they've been doing a good job of asking for feedback and eliciting ideas and suggestions.

I would overhaul influence and monetary currencies. I really like "influence/infamy" as concepts, but I don't think they work well as monies. Make money into monies, and have an influence/infamy system that makes sense. And include being gifted, begging for, or demanding money from contacts we have influence or infamy with.

I'd like origin to give you visual options for how your powers animate or appear. Or scrap origin, but give me a handful of variations on each power that look more natural, more mutant, more magical, more sciency, more technological, etc., and I'll pick and choose.

I'm pretty sure it still worked this way when I first started playing in spring 2008.

It would not be unreasonable or even unprecedented for new incarnate powers to have their main, most potent effect in actual incarnate content. I'm happy with things as they are however. And if an incarnate power just gave me a bonus seventh slot in any one of my existing primary of secondary set powers, I'd take that too.

When I'm on my tank, I like to see if I can drag four or more groups together on top of my team. Sometimes they really like that! ... and sometimes we discover quantity has a quality all its own.

People running council radios in PI want simple basic fun, with decent leveling and drops. They aren't hard, the maps are never caves, and even a sucky team can usually get by okay. It's for people who would farm, but don't have the build for it or don't feel right door sitting. While the incarnates are wrecking the map, there's usually some straggler in a council uniform even your crappy level 1 can slug in the face!

There are enough tools in CoH, even a poor build can be made viable in some way. You can do crazy for slotting, or use the right temp powers, or use the incarnate boosts to shore up a weakness. In worst case, you buddy up with someone whose poor build complements your won, and together you slap faces and kick butts. Does this mean it's balanced? I don't know, but it does leave room for creativity without being crippled. Are some build way over the top? Yes, and in more than one way. Over the top survivable? Over the top dps? Over the top support? Over the top tactical coolness? Sure, and even in more than one category. It's fun and leaves room for creativity unlike other games, since there's not one obvious best build each for a handful of narrow roles.

I would presume that the Etoille Islands itself would be a conventional nuclear power, and at that level, there is a sort of mutual deterrence with the rest of the world. Of course, nukes would no longer be the "The Last Argument of Kings" in the game world, that being the role of each nations loyal and on-call super powered people, but surely they would still be pretty dang important.

These sorts of things, such as difficulty in public speaking or leading teams in games, are certainly ones people can learn to overcome, but even in those circumstances, they will often remain unpleasant experiences. I am a research scientist, and I do occasionally present before large audiences, and it something I would not do except for it being a professional responsibility. In games, I feel no such responsibility to lead teams despite it being unpleasant, so I don't.

Blunt, but accurate. It reminds me of pubic speaking to an extent. There are somewhat shy and quiet people who can stand up in front of a crowd of a thousand and do just fine. And there's people who can talk your ear off one on one, but who'd literally pass out trying to stand in front of a crowd.

I don't lead teams either. I doubt I ever will. I have the ability, and even the desire at times. But the moment I have the star, the game is no longer fun and I want to log out. Almost desperately, at times. I don't want to be in a position of having to ask people to join me, even my friends. I don't enjoy deciding what we're doing next, even if it's just the next mission of a linear task force. I don't want to have to babysit people who should supposedly be well-behaved adults. These are things I would have to be paid to do, and I don't consider them to be elements of a game I am willing to play for enjoyment. And most importantly, if the gaming mood strikes me, or leaves me, I want to be able to just drop out. When you are a follower, that's a low cost to the team. It sucks when the leader needs to drop, and if I'm fairly likely to be that dropper, I'm not going to do that to my team. I even get this feeling on task forces and trials; but fortunately I pick and choose when I join them so that I'm prepared to stay no matter what. Finally, when, as a person, I refuse to lead, I take on the responsibility of being a good follower. I'm not going to cause trouble. I'm going to be patient. I'm not going to complain about or sass at my teammates. I'm going to follow instructions as best I can. And I'm either going to support the team leader's decisions, or politely drop myself off the team.

Another big radical overhaul would be the city environment. I don't mean graphically, but graphical improvements would have to follow I suppose, but with my GigaDollar lottery win, I'd develop a city simulator (like cities:skylines) engine and put it behind the city. It would generate and snarl traffic, produce pedestrians on actual trips, crowds of commuting/rioting/fleeing citizens, street crime, gang wars, building construction, fires, robberies, mass transit, traffic accidents, police chases, various local disasters, and so on. It would produce and have post-reactions to zone events, and generally make the city feel consistently alive.

I would make all cutscenes skippable.

I doubt there are many fence-sitters who might be persuaded to try pvp in this game. I know I never will. I am continually surprised there are any people in this game who really care about pvp. And especially since there's a group trying to stir up interest in a tournament on my server right now. I think they'd have better luck on the pvp server. In fact, my preference would be to totally disable it -- in my experience it brings out the worst in people.

Whip and/or lasso and variants of a rapier, for making swashbuckling pirate/Zorro style heroes and villains.

I am against Whip Mastery being an EPP.... it should be a full-fledged primary/secondary powerset for corruptors, defenders, dominators, and controllers. (And ofc, you'll have to ban most of the people who take it. )

I'd leave the game alone too. But if I had to pick one thing, it would be the attack to-hit/accuracy/defense mechanics. Nothing should ever be an automatic hit or miss, and we should not ever need hard caps or soft caps. I can imagine the resulting Forums Fury already! If I had to pick a second thing, I'd use my Giga-Lottery win to fund a costumes modernization effort. I'd have my team of amazing artists and developers go through and make variants of all the old costume pieces to give them subtle textures and details. My team would always leave an original costume piece in as an option, of course.

I made a new SR/SJ tanker, and really like it. Without too much expense, I was able to get a few points over the incarnate soft cap, and get S/L resistances to 74%, which makes the character feel very survivable. It does leave holes, but most are at least covered by the high positional defenses. The character also has 145% global recharge (not enough to perma Hasten, but still imo, very good) and excellent mobility -- i's easy to jump around to manage the battlespace. A draw back is that when thing go bad, they can go bad pretty fast. Anything that can drop my health bar down noticeably can probably kill me if I'm not careful. It does run end-heavy, especially when using melee powers in rapid succession. I have macros set up to use any available end insp, or even a Recovery Serum if out of insps, and similar for health to use insps or a Med Kit. Med Kits and Recovery Serums are cheap, and I always top them off when I can. A big advantage, is that I skipped Elude, and thus have no powers with crashes. Much as I love my Inv/SS tanker, I detest Rage crashes with passion. The SR/SJ tanker feels equivalently tough, overall, but a bit differently so in the details.

I would rework the scaling resist formula generally across the game, and have the scaling integrate as the damage was applied. I'm sure either a closed form algebraic solution could be derived, or a fast approximate algorithm be put together. Imagine that your health is at 100%, and then a hit come in that should take you down to 10%, but you have scaling resistances. Instead of applying the scaling resistance from the start point at 100 to the entire block of damage, you integrate it down point by point (or in the limit, as differentials). The first point is not resisted. The second point is resisted a tiny bit. The third point is resisted a little more, and so on, until all the damage is applied -- the 90th percentile of damage would be almost maximally resisted.