Arctique

Just a small possible oversight I caught while checking out the power customization options for Marine Affinity. The Water Only options for both the Tide Pool and Barrier Reef powers don't appear to be any different from the regular Bright/Dark customization options, and still have visible fish effects to them. The other powers that have Water Only customization options seem to be working as intended at least. Fish still visible on Tide Pool with Bright Water Only customization: Fish still visible on Barrier Reef with Bright Water Only customization:

Yep. Any game could potentially be the first game a person has ever played, so you've always got to explain the nitty gritty basics just in case. I remember the first time I ever played a game with WASD movement controls, which while second nature to me now, it was the last set of keys I'd have thought to try using for moving a character around in a game. Some things we consider the most basic part of any game, could be pretty unintuitive at first to somebody that's just encountering those basic functions for the first time.

I'll never forget my very first character I made way back on Live when I just did not understand the game's combat mechanics yet at all. My first toon was a Katana/SR scrapper, but somehow I had convinced myself (likely from just not reading power descriptions properly) that BRAWL was my only method of attack at that early level and that my one initial katana attack power was just the button to get my sword out. So I started the game street sweeping random mobs around Galaxy, clicking my Katana attack first while I was out of range to make my character pull out their sword, before then running in and fighting them only using repeated Brawl smacks. I think I actually ended up doing this for a couple levels before realizing what I was doing wrong and holy crap was I glad I had only been soloing and street sweeping at the time so that nobody else saw what a doofus I was. To my credit at the time, the only other MMO I'd played before CoH was Runescape, so back then I think I had a bit more patience for slow combat and long grinds in an MMO than I ever would have now. So I think back then, I just kinda assumed it was supposed to be that slow with only one wimpy attack at the start.

Personally I feel like adding an "unofficial RP server" tag to the server select screen might undervalue the other servers in a small, subtle way. Sure we could give similar tags to the unofficial PvP server and EU server(s), but then what about other servers that don't currently have that sort of "unofficial ___ server" identity? To me at least having half the servers list some defining part of their community (RP, PvP, etc) while others don't kind of gives the impression that those other servers have nothing that defines their community and makes them worth choosing over any other server. But then if you decide to figure out some defining trait for every server to be listed as the "unofficial ___ server" for something, then even though they all say unofficial it still might seem like every server's too focused on a particular thing. Maybe rather than a singular identifier for a server like "unofficial RP server" or "unofficial PvP server" the devs could do some sort of player survey for each server to determine what say, the top 3 most popular activities among those server's players are, and list those with each server? Something like that might do a better job of communicating to a new player the different communities each server has, while also showing that for instance Everlasting isn't just an RP server. And with it being decided through some sort of poll/survey given to players, it also avoids the potential of a label just getting slapped onto a server that its players might not agree with ("My server is now the 'unofficial raiding server?' I don't want to be part of that.") Then again plenty of other MMOs out there have no problem labeling their servers as specifically meant for RP/PvP/etc both officially and unofficially, so maybe I'm just talking out of my ass and theory-crafting a solution to an problem that never existed.

It's annoying and disruptive to spam buffs/heals when people are just trying to RP or even just chat, but generally I just see spamming buffs as completely pointless anyway. If people aren't actively in combat, they don't need buffs or heals. With an exception for maybe something like Speed Boost for people that are actively going places, why would somebody think I need more def or res while I'm just standing next to a trainer making tweaks to a build or costume? There's just no point to it. As for the actual topic... I never understood the thought process behind any sort of anti-RP mindset. Somebody RPing on a team that was never advertised as being RP-oriented can be awkward, and shouldn't be forced on people that have no interest in the activity, but that's about the only situation I can see complaining about it being warranted. Like, getting annoyed and complaining that people are roleplaying is essentially just getting mad that people are having a conversation in earshot of you that does not involve you in the slightest. Using /ignore or temporarily removing Local from your chat tab are options if people roleplaying in your earshot for some reason bothers somebody that much. Honestly, Everlasting being the "unofficial RP server" is irrelevant, if there's people that decide to RP on any server, they aren't exactly hurting anybody by doing so (aside from the obvious exception of if their RP's content is NSFW in which case, RP server or not that needs to be taken into private), so let them have their fun. I don't enjoy PvP in this game, but I'm not going to make a stink if I see people making arena matches on the server I decided to play on. I don't watch any sports IRL, but I'm not going to complain if I hear somebody talking to each other about their favourite sportsball teams in the same room as me. Other people's interests and ideas of fun don't relate to me in any way, so what is there to complain about? What I understand even less is people that go out of their way to harass people that are RPing. It's silly enough to just feel the need to complain about somebody else's way of having fun, but then taking it upon yourself to try and ruin that fun for them is a level of pettiness that I just don't comprehend. I had a recent experience in another game where a group of friends and I were just trying to roleplay in a totally out of the way location on what was recognised as that game's own unofficial RP server, not "bothering" anyone as we'd settled ourselves in a spot far off the beaten path that wouldn't be in any other players' way. Then came several players who decided it was acceptable behavior to start following us around intentionally disrupting our play with rude remarks and commentary on the conversations our characters were trying to have. When we tried to pack up and take our RP to another location, they followed close behind us to just keep trying to annoy our group. Several members of our friend group ended up just logging off completely to avoid the harassment, leading to our chill fun time with an activity we all enjoyed being completely ruined by a small handful of people that decided that activity was "cringe" and worth taking time out of their day to bully people for engaging in it. That's only the most recent example for me as well, there have been plenty of times I've seen people on CoH that aren't RPers go out of their way to go into Pocket D and be intentionally disruptive to people that are just trying to relax and have simple IC conversations there. I'm not expecting everyone to "get" RP or why people enjoy it, I can absolutely understand people finding it to be weird and having no interest in it, but the simple fact is there are people that do get it and find it enjoyable, so just be respectful of that and let them have their fun. If you want to snicker to your friend in private messages about how weird you think RP is, then whatever. But when it gets to public complaining about others enjoying a thing you find weird, or intentionally disrupting and harassing them over it... Well, just stop and ask yourself why you seem to despise such an inoffensive hobby that doesn't effect you, so much. okay rant over, tl;dr don't be jerks to people that are just trying to enjoy the game in a different way.

My guess, to be taken with a grain of salt because it is just a guess based on limited knowledge of the game's code, is that it would be a pretty big undertaking because: A) As far as I know, the raw custom enemy group files used by AE are only used by AE, so it wouldn't likely be as easy as plucking a custom mob from AE and just adding it to an enemy group spawn list for radio missions. Either they'd need to have some way to convert a custom AE mob into something the game will recognise as a regular enemy group, or rework how radio missions work so that they can create some sort of framework with which they can just stick AE mob files into them, or recreate those custom mobs entirely from scratch as a new group entirely just based on what was made in AE. B) There is the question of how they'd have to decide which custom mobs make the cut for showing up in radio missions. Like I mentioned above, developer time would need to inevitably be spent not just integrating a new enemy group into the list of which ones can show up for radio missions, but also thoroughly testing any potential groups to make sure they'd be well balanced against the existing vanilla enemy groups. They'd need to be see how they function against different sized teams and solo players, different ATs and powersets, unslotted builds vs. SO slotted builds vs. fully IO'd, builds with and without Incarnates unlocked, etc. Imagine if you were running radios solo on a SO-slotted Scrapper and get a custom mob, only to find they absolutely curb stomp you because they were only tested for 10 minutes using a fully IO'd Incarnate slotted Brute. Testing and balancing would likely take far more time than the actual coding to add the groups. C) Which enemies appear in radio missions also varies depending on the zone and level ranges remember, so would these custom made enemy groups just appear at all level ranges in every zone? Or would the devs have to spend time considering where specifically each new mob should appear and within what range of levels? Which will require more testing to make sure that an enemy group that's perfectly fine as level 50 mobs isn't going to be overpowered if fought at level 20 instead. D) Any new feature or update is inevitably going to have its bugs, so that's more development hours to account for as well. You accepted a radio mission with a custom enemy group, only to find that group wasn't added in properly and didn't actually spawn when you loaded into the mission map? Well that's going to be more time the dev team's going to have to take away from other tasks to now figure out what triggers that bug and how they can fix it. How much they'd be willing to invest the hours into such a feature is something only the dev team themselves can answer, maybe they'll see it as a worthwhile enough addition that it is worth putting the work and the hours in... But game development can be a very lengthy and complex process, especially when your developers are mostly volunteers and hobbyists that have to work with somebody else's decades old spaghetti code.

This is about the only way I could see something like this working, via something like forum contests where players can submit their custom enemy groups for a chance to have it added to radio/safeguard/mayhem mission spawns, or something similar to the Dev's Choice for story arcs in AE itself. BUT that would still require a dev to spend hours they might not really have on testing the balance of these player made enemy groups (Which in the context of a contest, could be hours of testing for each submission to be sure things will be balanced properly, you can't just fight a mob with one character one time and go "yep it's good") and of course it could be a substantial amount of work to actually then code any chosen groups into radio missions. It might sound like a simple task to just say "take custom AE mobs and put them in radio missions!" but I really doubt the game's code makes that so simple. So they'd need to ask themselves if the effort required to implement them would be worth their time over other development projects like actual new story arcs. It's a nice idea, but there's a lot of problems with figuring out how to implement it and if that would be a worthwhile use of the development team's limited manpower. An alternative idea I could see maybe working better (though would still require some VERY hefty development time still and would by no means be easy to implement either) would be a system added to AE where maybe players can just make singular missions and set them to randomly pick a certain door type out in your zone of choice? Something like, a special terminal added to AE buildings where you can make or play single one-off missions that don't use a contact and can be set by the creator to spawn in a specific zone and/or randomly on their choice of office door, cave entrance, sewer entrance, etc. Basically a new expansion of AE's system that provides a variety of bite-sized bits of content like radio missions, but actually does send the players out into the world instead of staying huddled in the AE building start to finish. I couldn't see it being as abused as the regular AE is, because the regular AE arcs that require zero travel would always be more efficient for farming than something that's going to make you go looking for a random door across the zone that will take longer to get to than the glowing pillar of light five feet away from you. That would still take a lot of effort to implement and still might not be worth the development time compared to other content and features, but I feel like just expanding on AE functionality to allow for more kinds of custom content, would be a more elegant solution and require less time on the developers' end having to test and curate what custom mobs make the cut for radio missions. Instead creating a unique alternative for that style of generic repeatable content, with its own pros and cons when compared to basic radio missions. For instance regular radio missions would remain more convenient with being able to accept them from anywhere via your contacts list compared to the AE radios needing you to go to the AE building to select a mission first, as well as regular radios counting towards safeguard missions that can yield more unique rewards like temp powers and special badges. The AE radios however would be able to offer far more variety in maps, enemy groups, objectives, and story content, along with some more diverse difficulty in how hard or easy the creator may have designed their mission/mobs to be. Probably more than a few glaring flaws in that idea too of course, I'm no dev myself, just somebody who sometimes likes to think "hey this might be a cool thing maybe", and then ramble on about said maybe neat idea to try and make what's in my head make sense to anyone other than myself.

Wouldn't taking only powers from your primary be less dedication to your archetype? An archetype is defined by its primary and secondary. What separates a Controller from a Dominator? A Blaster from a Corruptor? Archetypes are kinda defined by how their primary and secondary sets synergize with each other to form their playstyles. Sure you can make an effective build by focusing on purely your primary, which is the beauty of how CoH handles builds so that really anything can be viable with smart slotting. But that's not being dedicated to your archetype, that's being dedicated to that powerset. If you play a shield tank and skip all of your secondary powers, you aren't a dedicated tanker, you're a dedicated Shield Defense character. Being dedicated to your archetype should mean using all the tools provided to that archetype to fill its role in a team. A "dedicated tank" should be one that does take the attacks from their secondary, because a tank's role isn't just to not die, but to control a mob's aggro and make themselves a bigger target than less survivable team members. A Tanker that just turns on every toggle and sits in the middle of a mob spamming their tier 1 attack power and little else isn't going to have an easy time with that part of their role. Alternatively a Brute's role is typically more for sustained DPS, but if you're skipping most of your secondary powers on a Brute... Well, good luck trying to maintain your fury bar and churn out big damage when you're face down on the floor under the feet of that tank that's sitting in the middle of the mob and not holding the enemies' aggro. Similar things can be said about pretty much every other archetype and their intended roles. A defender supports the team and keeps them alive through buffs, debuffs, and healing. Their secondaries often provide another avenue to debuff enemies as most of their attacks do have additional effects to them like -res, -def, -tohit, etc. As well as the most effective debuff: Raw damage, because the easiest enemy to survive a fight against is one that's already dead. How about Masterminds? Their secondary sets are support, which is great for an archetype that is focused around relying on their pets to do damage and control aggro, because your pets can't do that effectively when they're dying every encounter. So you take your secondary support powers to keep them (and by extension the rest of your team) alive to do what they're intended to to. So if you really want to be dedicated to an archetype's intended role and purpose? Take your secondary powers. They're there for a reason. They aren't just fun little extras, they are a vital part of how your archetype plays and how it fulfills its role in a team. They aren't a waste of space that take up slots from your primary, they are valuable tools to accomplish your archetype's goals. Tanks and Defenders need their attacks. Masterminds and Controllers need their support powers. Brutes and Scrappers need their defensive powers. So on and so forth. tl;dr: Secondary powers are there for a reason, an AT is not defined by its primary. It's defined by how its primary and secondary compliment each other. Skipping your secondary is not truly dedicating yourself to your archetype's role and intended design. Play how you want to play, by all means, but do so with an understanding of how the game really works and the intentions of it design.

There's nothing really wrong with dark/edgy/angsty characters and concepts themselves, with the right player they can be fantastic. A lot of the stigma of "Edgelord" characters comes less from the character themselves, but the how and why their player presents them. I always saw it as primarily being a craving for attention, and lack of self awareness that separates an Edgelord from somebody that just wants to RP a darker character theme. An edgelord is typically just following what they feel is "really cool and badass" and think it will get others to look at them and go "wow, they're really cool and badass!" But to be honest, I don't think there's anything really wrong with that either, as a lot of the time these more edgelord-y characters are just young and/or less experienced roleplayers. Not all the time, all generalizations are false after all, but I've found that to be the most common, especially when myself and just about everyone I know behaved the same sort of way when they were young and new to the idea of roleplaying. I almost see it as a rite of passage at this point, for roleplayers to go through that attention seeking edgelord phase when they first start out. With that in mind, when I see an "edgelord" character I try not to think "Ugh how annoying, /ignore" or go out of my way to avoid them. Nobody improves at roleplaying by getting ignored and excluded. If we're talking the other definitions of "edgelord" that aren't exclusive to roleplayers however, like people that try to be intentionally offensive and controversial? That kind can go far, FAR away and not come back.

There's usually a pretty clear difference between what's just a simple compliment on a costume, and a more "creepy" comment I feel. It's like somebody on the street just saying "Hey, nice shirt!" vs. "Hey, nice shirt, it makes your boobs look good!" one of those will get a response of "oh thanks!" while the other gets a slap in the face and I'm sure it needs no saying which one gets which response.

The way I look at it is, the "creepiness" comes less from what specifically is being said, and more just the other factors around it being said. Like for instance, somebody you've never interacted with at all sending sexually suggestive messages completely unprompted. Or continuing to make advances after you've asked them not to or otherwise clearly expressed you are not interested. Or even in cases where maybe you have expressed interest in ERP with them, and then they start making sexual advances OOC as well that you didn't consent to (just because you said yes to one thing, does not mean you said yes to everything). In situations like those, it's not the exact words being said that's the problem, but that the person is saying them to begin with. If the person receiving it hasn't shown that they're open to it, and/or has specifically said they are not open to it, then going against that to make those sexual advances anyway is uncomfortable and creepy.

I feel like something a lot of people are overlooking with the OP's post is how rude the person sending tells quickly became when they didn't get a response or invite. It shouldn't matter if sending tells or broadcasting for invites to GMs/MSRs/etc is the norm or a better way of doing things, if a leader specifically requests one over the other, it is not okay to harass them over that choice. That does go both ways as well, if you're leading and saying "no tells" and somebody sends you a tell anyway, don't get rude or snippy with them over it. The matter of broadcasts or tells is completely irrelevant the moment one side responds rudely to the other. What the exchange should have looked like is this: Leader: [lfg] "Forming X team in Y zone, broadcast in zone for invite, no tells please" Player: [tell] "Room on X team?" Leader: [tell] "There is still room, please come to Y zone and broadcast for an invite" Then from there either the player can decide if they're still interested, and come to the zone and broadcast, or not. What doesn't matter is how people prefer to form their leagues via broadcasts or tells, what does matter is people being respectful towards each other, and that goes both way. If you sent a tell to a team leader who requested not to be sent tells, don't lash out and berate them for not inviting you. If you're a team leader who requested not to be sent tells and somebody sent one anyway, don't lash out and call them an idiot for not following your instructions. It's something that can be very easily handled in a polite and civil way, so whoever makes the conscious effort to approach it in a rude way is in the wrong.

This really is a simple, but great and underappreciated bit of advice. One of my personal pet peeves in roleplaying in any environment are the people that act like they're "above it all" and not impressed by anything. It can be discouraging to have a character that's for instance supposed to be built up as some imposing, intimidating big bad to act as the major antagonist of a story, that is meant to be taken as a genuine threat, only to have That One Guy that goes "okay so what? you're not scary to me." There's nothing wrong with a character that's cocky and confident of course, but I feel like you can kind of tell the difference between a character that's intentionally written to be over-confident, and a player that just feels like they need to always be the most interesting person in the room at all times. On the flip side, one of my favourite experiences roleplaying has been playing my character Lord Dreadnaut, who is supposed to be the main villain from a fictional corny 80s saturday morning cartoon brought to life. The most fun times playing him are when people just play along with the concept and, even though they're only OOCly hearing about this made up cartoon series for the first time, will have their characters react like they'd known about the show for years or grew up watching it. Having people react to a concept like that instead of looking at you and going "literally who?" goes a long way to feeling like your character is a tangible part of the world you're roleplaying in, and less like you're just reading your fanfiction to somebody.

Here's a few more one-off costumes that I'm still pretty proud of as well! Buddha of Boomtown Queen Comet Dinogirl Laughterhouse Shepherd of the Lost War Crime Hero King Just Chill Duckling PPD Descended Raveyard Currently nameless concept design for an oni that works for the Yakuza Aaaand last but not least... Villainous

Been awhile since I posted anything here, so time for another costume dump! First up, Throwing Hands, Energy/Elec Scrapper. Former competitor in some underground fighting leagues, now turned hero with some fancy cybernetics! Next is Outstanding Otter, Martial Arts/Shield Scrapper, an aquatic heroine that disrupts smuggling routes of illegal goods to Paragon from the Rogue Isles. Beelzboss, Sonic/Dark Blaster, a powerful demonic beast that has been sealed inside a mechanical monstrosity. Rinad, Stone/Bio Brute, a member of an ancient subterranean race of amazons bent on the destruction of the Human race. Megavolcano, Fire/Stone Dominator, a young girl from Hawaii that became the Incarnate of a volcano god, allowing her to hulk out into a massive beast of pure molten destruction.