_NOPE_

Hehe sorry @RubyRed , a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do. I *DID* put it in spoilers!

Aw, yeah, THAT is what I'm talking about: PURPLE CAVESSSSSSSSS.....

Since this is the Random Babble thread, I'd like to share with you my favorite short story of all time, that unfortunately has been out of print for over a decade, but I got it transcribed for myself a while ago: Mortal Gods Orson Scott Card The first contact was peaceful, almost uneventful: sudden landings near government buildings all over the world, brief discussions in the native languages, followed by treaties allowing the aliens to build certain buildings in certain places in exchange for certain favors-- nothing spectacular. The technological improvements that the aliens brought helped make life better for everyone, but they were improvements that were already well within the reach of human engineers within the next decade or two. And the greatest gift of all was found to be a disappointment-- space travel. The aliens did not have faster-than-light travel. Instead, they had conclusive proof that faster-than-light travel was utterly impossible. They had infinite patience and incredibly long lives to sustain them in their snail's-pace crawl among the stars, but humans would be dead before even the shortest space flight was fairly begun. And after only a little while, the presence of aliens was regarded as quite the normal thing. They insisted that they had no further gifts to bring, and simply exercised their treaty rights to build and visit the buildings they had made. The buildings were all different from each other, but had one thing in common: by the standards of the local populace, the new alien buildings were all clearly recognizable as churches. Mosques. Cathedrals. Shrines. Synagogues. Temples. All unmistakably churches. But no congregation was invited, though any person who came to such a place was welcomed by whatever aliens happened to be there at the time, who engaged in charming discussion totally related to the person's own interests. Farmers conversed about farming, engineers about engineering, housewives about motherhood, dreamers about dreams, travelers about travels, astronomers about the stars. Those who came and talked went away feeling good. Feeling that someone did, indeed, attach importance to their lives-- had come trillions of kilometers through incredible boredom (five hundred years in space, they said! ) just to see them. And gradually life settled into a peaceful routine. Scientists, it is true, kept on discovering, and engineers kept on building according to those discoveries, and so changes did come. But knowing now that there was no great scientific revolution just around the corner, no tremendous discovery that would open up the stars, men and women settled down, by and large, to the business of being happy. It wasn't as hard as people had supposed. Willard Crane was an old man, but a content one. His wife was dead, but he did not resent the brief interregnum in his life in which he was solitary again, a thing he had not been since he came home from the Vietnam War with half a foot missing and found his girl waiting for him anyway, foot or no foot. They had lived all their married lives in a house in the Avenues of Salt Lake City, which, when they moved there, had been a shabby, dilapidated relic of a previous century, but which now was a splendid preservation of a noble era in architecture. Willard was in that comfortable area between heavy wealth and heavier poverty; enough money to satisfy normal aspirations, but not enough money to tempt him to extravagance. Every day he walked from 7th Avenue and L Street to the cemetery, not far away, where practically everyone had been buried. It was there, in the middle of the cemetery, that the alien building stood-- an obvious mimic of old Mormon temple architecture, meaning it was a monstrosity of conflicting periods that somehow, perhaps through intense sincerity, managed to be beautiful anyway. And there he sat among the gravestones, watching as occasional people wandered into and out of the sanctuary where the aliens came, visited, left. Happiness is boring as hell, he decided one day. And so, to provoke a little delightful variety, he decided to pick a fight with somebody. Unfortunately, everyone he knew at all well was too nice to fight. And so he decided that he had a bone to pick with the aliens. When you're old, you can get away with anything. He went to the alien temple and walked inside. On the walls were murals, paintings, maps; on the floor, pedestals with statues; it seemed more a museum than anything else. There were few places to sit, and he saw no sign of aliens. Which wouldn't be a disaster; just deciding on a good argument had been variety enough, noting with pride the fine quality of the work the aliens had chosen to display. But there was an alien there, after all. "Good morning, Mr. Crane, " said the alien. "How the hell you know my name? " "You perch on a tombstone every morning and watch as people come in and go out. We found you fascinating. We asked around. " The alien's voicebox was very well programmed-- a warm, friendly, interested voice. And Willard was too old and jaded with novelty to get much excited about the way the alien slithered along the floor and slopped on the bench next to him like a large, self-moving piece of seaweed. "We wished you would come in. " "And why? " Now that the question was put, his reason seemed trivial to him; but he decided to play the game all the way through. Why not, after all? "I have a bone to pick with you. " "Heavens, " said the alien, with mock horror. "I have some questions that have never been answered to my satisfaction. " "Then I trust we'll have some answers. " "All right then. " But what were his questions? "You'll have to forgive me if my mind gets screwed around. The brain dies first, as you know. " "We know. " "Why'd you build a temple here? How come you build churches? " "Why, Mr. Crane, we've answered that a thousand times. We like churches. We find them the most graceful and beautiful of all human architecture. " "I don't believe you, " Willard said. "You're dodging my question. So let me put it another way. How come you have the time to sit around and talk to half-assed imbeciles like me? Haven't you got anything better to do? " "Human beings are unusually good company. It's a most pleasant way to pass the time which does, after many years, weigh rather heavily on our, um, hands. " And the alien tried to gesture with his pseudopodia, which was amusing, and Willard laughed. "Slippery bastards, aren't you? " he inquired, and the alien chuckled. "So let me put it this way, and no dodging, or I'll know you have something to hide. You're pretty much like us, right? You have the same gadgets, but you can travel in space because you don't croak after a hundred years like we do; whatever, you do pretty much the same kinds of things we do. And yet-yet--" "There's always an 'and yet, '" the alien sighed. "And yet. You come all the way out here, which ain't exactly Main Street, Milky Way, and all you do is build these churches all over the place and sit around and jaw with whoever the hell comes in. Makes no sense, sir, none at all. " The alien oozed gently toward him. "Can you keep a secret? " "My old lady thought she was the only woman I ever slept with in my life. Some secrets I can keep. " "Then here is one to keep. We come, Mr. Crane, to worship. " "Worship who? " "Worship, among others, you. " Willard laughed long and loud, but the alien looked (as only aliens can) terribly earnest and sincere. "Listen, you mean to tell me that you worship people? " "Oh, yes. It is the dream of everyone who dares to dream on my home planet to come here and meet a human being or two and then live on the memory forever. " And suddenly it wasn't funny to Willard anymore. He looked around-- human art in prominent display, the whole format, the choice of churches. "You aren't joking. " "No, Mr. Crane. We've wandered the galaxy for several million years, all told, meeting new races and renewing acquaintance with old. Evolution is a tedious old highway-- carbon-based life always leads to certain patterns and certain forms, despite the fact that we seem hideously different to you--" "Not too bad, Mister, a little ugly, but not too bad--" "All the-- people like us that you've seen-- well, we don't come from the same planet, though it has been assumed so by your scientists. Actually, we come from thousands of planets. Separate, independent evolution, leading inexorably to us. Absolutely, or nearly absolutely, uniform throughout the galaxy. We are the natural end product of evolution. " "So we're the oddballs. " "You might say so. Because somewhere along the line, Mr. Crane, deep in your past, your planet's evolution went astray from the normal. It created something utterly new. " "Sex?" "We all have sex, Mr. Crane. Without it, how in the world could the race improve? No, what was new on your planet, Mr. Crane, was death. " The word was not an easy one for Willard to hear. His wife had, after all, meant a great deal to him. And he meant even more to himself. Death already loomed in dizzy spells and shortened breath and weariness that refused to turn into sleep. "We don't die, Mr. Crane. We reproduce by splitting off whole sections of ourselves with identical DNA-- you know about DNA? " "I went to college. " "And with us, of course, as with all other life in the universe, intelligence is carried on the DNA, not in the brain. One of the byproducts of death, the brain is. We don't have it. We split, and the individual, complete with all memories, lives on in the children, who are made up of the actual flesh of my flesh, you see? I will never die. " "Well, bully for you, " Willard said, feeling strangely cheated, and wondering why he hadn't guessed. "And so we came here and found people whose life had a finish; who began as unformed creatures without memory and, after an incredibly brief span, died. " "And for that you worship us? I might as well go worshiping bugs that die a few minutes after they're born. " The alien chuckled, and Willard resented it. "Is that why you come here? To gloat? " "What else would we worship, Mr. Crane? While we don't discount the possibility of invisible gods, we really never have invented any. We never died, so why dream of immortality? Here we found a people who knew how to worship, and for the first time we found awakened in us a desire to do homage to superior beings. " And Willard noticed his heartbeat, realized that it would stop while the alien had no heart, had nothing that would ever end. "Superior, hell. " "We, " said the alien, "remember everything, from the first stirrings of intellect to the present. When we are 'born, ' so to speak, we have no need of teachers. We have never learned to write-- merely to exchange RNA. We have never learned to create beauty to outlast our lives because nothing outlasts our lives. We live to see all our works crumble. Here, Mr. Crane, we have found a race that builds for the sheer joy of building, that creates beauty, that writes books, that invents the lives of never-known people to delight others who know they are being lied to, a race that devises immortal gods to worship and celebrates its own mortality with immense pomp and glory. Death is the foundation of all that is great about humanity, Mr. Crane. " "Like hell it is, " said Willard. "I'm about to die, and there's nothing great about it. " "You don't really believe that, Mr. Crane, " the alien said. "None of you do. Your lives are built around death, glorifying it. Postponing it as long as possible, to be sure, but glorifying it. In the earliest literature, the death of the hero is the moment of greatest climax. The most potent myth. " "Those poems weren't written by old men with flabby bodies and hearts that only beat when they feel like it. " "Nonsense. Everything you do smacks of death. Your poems have beginnings and endings, and structures that limit the work. Your paintings have edges, marking off where the beauty begins and ends. Your sculptures isolate a moment in time. Your music starts and finishes. All that you do is mortal-- it is all born. It all dies. And yet you struggle against mortality and have overcome it, building up tremendous stores of shared knowledge through your finite books and your finite words. You put frames on everything. " "Mass insanity, then. But it explains nothing about why you worship. You must come here to mock us. " "Not to mock you. To envy you. " "Then die. I assume that your protoplasm or whatever is vulnerable. " "You don't understand. A human being can die-- after he has reproduced-- and all that he knew and all that he has will live on after him. But if I die, I cannot reproduce. My knowledge dies with me. An awesome responsibility. We cannot assume it. I am all the paintings and writings and songs of a million generations. To die would be the death of a civilization. You have cast yourselves free of life and achieved greatness. "And that's why you come here. " "If ever there were gods. If ever there was power in the universe. You are those gods. You have that power. " "We have no power. " "Mr. Crane, you are beautiful. " And the old man shook his head, stood with difficulty, and doddered out of the temple and walked away slowly among the graves. "You tell them the truth, " said the alien to no one in particular (to future generations of himself who would need the memory of the words having been spoken), "and it only makes it worse. " It was only seven months later, and the weather was no longer spring, but now blustered with the icy wind of late autumn. The trees in the cemetery were no longer colorful; they were stripped of all but the last few brown leaves. And into the cemetery walked Willard Crane again, his arms half enclosed by the metal crutches that gave him, in his old age, four points of balance instead of the precarious two that had served him for more than ninety years. A few snowflakes were drifting lazily down, except when the wind snatched them and spun them in crazy dances that had neither rhythm nor direction. Willard laboriously climbed the steps of the temple. Inside, an alien was waiting. "I'm Willard Crane, " the old man said. "And I'm an alien. You spoke to me-- or my parent, however you wish to phrase it-- several months ago. " "We knew you'd come back. " "Did you? I vowed I never would. " "But we know you. You are well known to us all, Mr. Crane. There are billions of gods on Earth for us to worship, but you are the noblest of them all. " "Because only you have thought to do us the kindest gift. Only you are willing to let us watch your death. " And a tear leaped from the old man's eye as he blinked heavily. "Is that why I came? " "Isn't it? " "I thought I came to damn your souls to hell, that's why I came, you bastards, coming to taunt me in the final hours of my life. " "You came to us. " "I wanted to show you how ugly death is. " "Please. Do. " And, seemingly eager to oblige them, Willard's heart stopped and he, in brief agony, slumped to the floor in the temple. The aliens all slithered in, all gathered around closely, watching him rattle for breath. "I will not die! " he savagely whispered, each breath an agony, his face fierce with the heroism of struggle. And then his body shuddered and he was still. The aliens knelt there for hours in silent worship as the body became cold. And then, at last, because they had learned this from their gods-- that words must be said to be remembered-- one of them spoke: "Beautiful, " he said tenderly. "Oh Lord my God, " he said worshipfully. And they were gnawed within by the grief of knowing that this greatest gift of all gifts was forever out of their reach.

I think you're wanting the thread where the Cottage Rule is NOT in effect.

You've inspired me to make a new image macro:

I ALWAYS take Assault. Always. And I pretty much never add any slots to it, I just add an endurance reduction to it. I usually take Maneuvers and three slot it for defense and endurance reduction (maximize with the least number of slots). The others I only bother taking if there's nothing else that I want at that level.

Yes, and that's the proliferation that I was talking about. The harder proliferations come when it wasn't just the numbers that needed to be adjusted, but the actual powers themselves, like when they proliferated Scrapper and Tanker powers over to Stalkers and had to take out TWO powers and replace them with Placates and Assassin's Strikes. Here's one example. With the other proliferations, it was just a matter of adding a few references in the categories files, powersets files, and powers files, and LITERALLY copying and pasting the data that already existed into duplicate files, as you can see below with Cold Domination going to Defenders from Dominators, for one example: So much of it could just be copied and pasted, then tweaked, it's ridiculous how easy that type of proliferation is. However, notice in that last image, the area I have highlighted? That's the visual effects for that power (and some of the practical effects of the way the power works, which is a little beyond my understanding yet, TBH). For making new powers, you have to either use existing resources, recompile them, put them in the right folder and rename them the right reference name, or make entirely NEW effects if it's an entirely new power that's never existed before. All of these references to other files that are like a spiderweb become INFINITELY more work for a small team to manage, if you're LITERALLY duplicating EVERYTHING for ALL ATs. It could end up being THOUSANDS of files to manage, instead of hundreds. I don't think we want that... and unless NC Soft is going to allow it to become truly open source (I doubt it), asking a tiny tiny Dev team to try to manage all of those differentiations between different versions of the "same" powerset, that are functionally completely different powersets with the same name, is kind of asking a bit much, I think.

Because the code is spaghetti, and splitting them out is a NIGHTMARE. You might be surprised at how much work it would be to make a "separate version" of the same set for different ATs to allow them to have different powers and numbers.... I shudder thinking about it. It is, of course, POSSIBLE. But it's a lot of freaking work. That's why powerset proliferation was so much easier, because they essentially just added "references" in the game files that pointed to the already existing powersets, and used the modifiers of the ATs to make the difference.

I played ONE villain to date on the live servers (called "Able Abel") up to level 50 just to do it once. He wasn't really a "villain" per se, but just kind of a rough guy that wanted to prove himself as "Able". My version of Kuwabara from Yuyu Hakusho. It was hard for me to stomach when the game's stories were setup in such a way that some of them don't really mince words about what exactly you're doing. And sometimes, you don't have a choice. I just don't have it in my heart to play a "bad guy", so any villain that I play can't really see themselves as a "bad guy". If I recall correctly, there was NO way to avoid a few certain storylines where you had to kill. And I'm just so against that, I just had to stop reading the text at one point. At least, with hero side they almost always said "arrest" or "defeat". That's why I don't play red side.

I don't care about total customization, because I realize that could be a while to do it right. If HC does to it, I'd rather they do it "right" than to try to hack it in via the minimal code path possible. That being said, there's just one MM set that I've been wanting for a long time....

Nerfs and buffs are both tools to use to correct issues. The issue is some powers/powersets being "out of balance" of others. Everyone should feel "useful", and every powerset should have an equal chance to shine in a team. This should be solvable with hard numbers. The developers should be able to mine the data that players generate with their actions. If the devs AREN'T currently doing that, they should start, is my opinion. We should be able to know the average fire brute's DPS, and be able to compare it to the average FF Defender's DPS, and in my opinion, the Devs should be able to EXPLICITLY state what their "expectations" are for these sets. Just like what the "Brawl Index" used to be, the Devs should be able to come up with a spreadsheet of overall general numbers, trends, and performance analytics, and tell us where the powers and powersets ARE, and where they WANT them to be. Now, whether or not that vision matches the vision of the playerbase, is another story, and another discussion to have. But, before you start talking about trying to SOLVE a problem, you have to DEFINE the problem first. The game has many, many different powersets and powerset/archetype combinations, and some are obviously performing well over others. But, until we know what those numbers actually are, we can't begin to think about how to resolve those discrepancies, because we need to know first what level of discrepancy is acceptable, and what level is not.

Purple caves. ESPECIALLY the one with the "pancake stack" room, where there's that "attic" area WAY up high where one of your objectives are usually at - because it's FUN to play hide and seek with my objectives, especially when they are captives rather than glowies, and don't make that "womb-womb" sound... 😄

Well, let's look at the sets that have come before, and see if there's any sort of pattern: Cold Domination Dark Miasma Empathy Force Field Kinetics Nature Affinity Radiation Emission Sonic Resonance Storm Summoning Thermal Radiation Time Manipulation Traps Trick Arrow Errr... umm.... nope. So, I think whatever the devs want, with some advice from the playerbase - perhaps a poll, and the Devs pick from the top three vote-getters?

Or in other words...

As others have said, enjoy Sands of Mu as a "temp power". I take it on ALL of my characters. After about level 12/14, other powers that are enhance-able start to outshine it. So, rotate it out, and change up your attack chain. Really, you should be changing your attack chain through the whole life of your character, as you figure out what works best for your theme and performance.

I feel the need to quote myself here from another thread: @MunkiLord just did pretty much the same thing in the CoH world, in this very thread. The point, my friends, with all of this "concern" and "worry" about "cancers" is this. There are NO cancers in this game. This is a game. There is no cancer. Cancer is a real world thing with horrible real world implications. If anyone doesn't want to read that whole "Internet Drama and You" page, here's my executive summary of "Wade Wilson"'s brilliant dissertation, a copypasta just for you: Have Perspective You do not live in Darfur. Your genitals are not ritually mutilated for religious or cultural reasons. You have access to food. Don't Be Passive Aggressive Try to be honest, rather than disingenuous. Realize that if multiple people are all telling you the same thing - it's not likely that THEY are all "wrong", and YOU are the ONLY one that's "right". When you are wrong, ADMIT that you are wrong, without being "cute" about it. Pretendy Fun Time Games Pretendy Fun Time Games Pretendy Fun Time Games If you're not having fun, or something is bothering you enough about the game or any aspect of it to write a negative dissertation about it, then you're the problem. Because it's a GAME. Where you PRETEND, and theoretically HAVE FUN. The point of a game is to have fun, so if you're not having fun, then you're missing the point of playing a game. Not having fun is the only REAL way to "lose" a game. Pretendy Fun Time Games PRETENDY F@#<ING FUN TIME GAMES. THAT MEANS YOU SHOULD NOT BE SERIOUS. The brilliance of that page was how it took these points one by one and broke them down even further, using some great examples ("Farnokk The Thrusting" comes to mind). And that's why I link to it all the time. But the whole point of the thing isn't JUST to dismiss people's concerns (though it does that, to a degree). It's to put them into perspective. This is not life or death, this is a game. Report issues that slightly bother you, sure, to make the game better and more fun for all, but then... STOP. Let it go, and move on with your life. If it's a real problem, it will be looked into. If it's not, then it's just a minor annoyance that, due to some idiosyncrasy within yourself, bothers you WAY more than it bothers the main bulk of the playerbase. For my own personal example, it bugs me whenever people ask for "teh healz0rz", or gripe against Knockback. But, you have to take a deep breath, let it go, and move on with your life. Don't let your past-time ruin your life, or cause you to turn into an unpleasant person that tries to ruin others' lives. It's just not worth it. The moment that your past-time is starting to interfere with the rest of your life, or the lives of others - it's time to get a new past-time.

You can try these tags: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission_Architect_Tags

There are limitations Munki, but those limitations are so high, that they might as well not be there. For what we're really talking about here isn't bread, or Pythons, or Polly Pockets. What were talking is Star Trek replicators. Our dear friends the Farmers produce so much product, that they are essentially the ship's warp drive. The converters are the replicators, letting us take that energy from the warp drive and converting it into whatever we want. And we, my friends, are Picard, asking the replicators to make his Earl Grey Tea for him.

I'll just drop this here on my way out: https://wadewilson.livejournal.com/11285.html

Alrighty folks, you have fun going around and around with this... Person. I'm out.

Your price is too low then. HC has seeded the uncommon salvage at 100k. Thus, that's the "fair market price" as determined by this server's developers. Any price that the salvage may exist at below that level is a net benefit to the playerbase due to a larger number of farmers, but should not be expected.