Steampunkette

That could work, sure. The increase to cost. Or we could do it my way and you're not getting 2 powers when you take 1 power, complete with pop-up action bar.

Been thinking about this... I have a couple other thoughts With this arrangement we get a slightly different design that backloads the AoE a bit, but loads it pretty hard. I also feel like we gave them too much AoE overall, so I removed Inferno and kept both Rain of Fire and Bonfire, set up to change the battle itself with Fire and Fear Effects rather than the instantaneous explosion. I think that might work better, over all.

My solution was an implementation method for GM Sijn's proffered idea. And Pax? Your solution increases the value of the Teleport Pool -substantially-. Specifically because it allows Hovertanking to be paired with recall friend and teleport without dipping into two power pools. That's a bit too much, I feel, when there's other, less extreme, options like Sijin's suggestion and my implementation of it. No additional power added to teleport, but increased hovertime post-teleport without hovertar. We could set the hovertime to 20 seconds. Or a minute. Just have that little floating hover-granting pseudopet hang out in the sky while you go on your merry way.

You know what I'd like as regards access? Make the game as it is, now, Free to Play. All the way up through Market Crash and Sentinels. Add new content that's also Free. Including new archetypes and zones. But also make some 'Pay to Play' stuff. Make it a Subscription option at $14.99/month and use the entirety of gathered cash to pay the people working on it and for server maintenance with no profits going anywhere. No CoH2 funds. No money going to Missing Worlds Media or NCSoft or anywhere else. If only 3,000 people signed up for Subscription status that would be about $45,000 a month. Go ahead and knock off $5,000 for Server Costs each month and bring it out to 12 months that's $480,000 to pay the employees working on the game's new content. Heck. Frame it as "Monthly Donations" of $15 to keep adding content to the game. I would put at least 2 accounts on my Debit Card and they would remain there until you stopped allowing me to pay.

Thank you, @Zepp!

I dislike pineapple on pizza. But I understand it, from a chemical and flavor standpoint. Pineapple, like tomato, is acidic. That's what gives it the sweetness. Combine the two for a stronger acidic, stronger sweet, flavor. Sweet against Savory or Salty is typically nice, that's the whole basis of pizza, after all, with cheese (Salty), bread (savory), and tomato (sweet). I just feel like it gets -too- sweet in relation to my preferred savory/salty levels.

That's what happens when someone logs out in an SG Base. This suggestion is to forcibly remove people from an SG Base who are still online and being a nuisance.

That's a way to implement the UI stuff and kicking logic. But the actual kicking mechanic isn't in your post. So the way Maps work is that you're attached to them until you leave or the map stops. When you go into a timed mish and the timer reaches 0 you don't get kicked out of a map that is still there: The map itself closes and ceases to exist. You get kicked out because the Mapserver knows you have to be -somewhere- and takes you back to the entrance of the map. (Or, at least, the last place you were before entering the map when it comes to Bases with the SG Teleporter) There are functions to move people from map to map. But those all require player opt-in. I.E. you have to click the door/portal/crystal. This would need to be an involuntary function initiated by someone else on the target. GMs have that power, I -believe-. To force people to change maps. But I don't think they can force people 'out' of a map. So if something like this were implemented I think it would need to tap into that power and default to Pocket D. That way the person kicked cannot be kicked into a high level zone as a trolling method.

All of life is political. *shrugs!* The choices we make are based on out experiences and the society we are brought up in. We could make female MM pets, but need to be aware of the impact doing so is going to have when someone does something terrible with that very simple power. Doesn't even have to be many people, really. Just a few. Each of those people has to be reported when their offensive actions have already occurred, rippling out to everyone who sees them/interacts with them. But will it even get reported? Our society is very lax when it comes to the mistreatment of women, and most people would rather personally look away than step forward to enact positive change (Otherwise most of society's social ills would have been dealt with generations ago). Like... I get why people think it's not a big deal? Even 'if' something bad happens it's not like someone got shot. It's just a drop in a bucket of frustration and annoyance for women. The problem is that it's -always- just a drop in a bucket. That's how buckets get filled. Thankfully, I've outlined the more impressive and immediate problem a few times, now, as to why this shouldn't happen. So even with people who want it bad enough to keep filling buckets it's probably not going to happen for at least a very long while. *cue immediate announcement in the Beta forum of updated Patchnotes for 9/14 adding new Female MM Pet Set*

That sounds reasonable, sure. Thank you for working with me on it a bit, Zepp!

MAYBE drop Gates of Hell's power from Superior down to High. Sort of a High end of High low end of Superior... It is, after all, not the Tier 9 for the set. But yeah. That seems great!

Yes. I want to make the length of the melee attacks long and the ranged attacks short. And even with a 20ft cone, Hell on Earth should still have a melee-sized target cap. What I wanna do with Hell on Earth is make it into a hold that is SUPER POWERFUL so that the target remains in the animation the full time even if it's an Arachnos Boss (But not an AV). Unenhanceable, though I didn't mention it. It's entirely for the visual effect to work. Then apply a small AoE of damage during that hold (Probably minor Toxic damage), and summon the pets. It's a pet-summoning power you can't use in anticipation of a fight. You can't have them out before the fight starts for buffing purposes or alpha-increase. So adding a short and almost unavoidable hold to it, and a small AoE of damage, makes up for it. It also keeps you locked into the casting animation for several seconds, since you're holding the whip wrapped around the target. The Hellfire Flares and Fire Blast do Toxic/Fire (Or Fire/Toxic) so that helps differentiate them. Plus the altered visuals. That said, Rain of Fire -would- be a nifty power to give to the set, possibly instead of Fireball.

1) Cool Beans! I'd love that! But we're not there, yet. We're nowhere -near- that point. There's all kinds of Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and shit codified into our society. You mentioned Jim Crow Laws. Let's bounce on that. Jim Crow Laws were put into place to enslave Black People. See, the 13th Amendment freed the slaves except those who are incarcerated. So white folks passed a -bunch- of new laws to affect primarily Black Folks so they could enslave them, again. So no. I don't think they brought people together. I think they were laws specifically designed to maintain economic and social superiority of white people over black people. But a Voter ID Law is an 'Equal' law, in that it applies to everyone equally, that affects black people more than 3 times as much as white people: https://nationalequityatlas.org/indicators/Car_access See, Generational Wealth for black folks is kind of fucked and has been for a LONG time because of stuff like Jim Crow Laws, so a large number of black people can't afford a car for themselves to drive over to the DMV to renew their Voter ID. Equal Law, inequal impact. 2) But that would require Rules and Laws that explicitly benefit Gay and Trans people but -NOT- Straight or Cisgender people. Which is what you're railing against, here. These rules would 'Widen the Divide', wouldn't they? Or is it just that you agree with them and thus don't find them objectionable as a result? 3) Discriminate in what way? That's where the problem is. Did you know that there are federal laws against housing discrimination on the basis of Gender and Race... but not on Sexuality or Gender Identity, so Gay People and Trans People can be denied housing legally in many places. There's laws against Discrimination in Schooling... but not for Sexuality or Gender Identity. And laws against Discrimination in the workplace... but not for Sexuality or Gender Identity. And there's some places, like Wisconsin, that are 'Right to Work' states. They allow Employers to fire people with -NO- reason given. So even if you are fired for being Black or a Woman you're shit out of luck. And, I mean, you'd think 'Gender Identity' would fall under Sex and Sexuality wouldn't even be something someone should -consider- when it comes to housing or employment... But the anti-discrimination laws have to be expanded every once in a while because people find new ways to marginalize people. The first law is designed to be dumb. It ostensibly gives LGBTQ+ people license to be criminals because the cops can't stop them. "FREEZE! Drop the gun!" "Oh, officer! I'm Gaaaaay!" "Right. Well. On your way, Ma'am, sorry for disturbing you." The second law is great! But here's a question for you: Do you earnestly think White People get stopped by cops -because- they're White? Or are you just favoring an 'All Encompassing Description' of a law that will only actually protect minorities? I think that's what the big thrust is, here... You seem to not like the idea of EXPLICITLY protecting minorities, but IMPLICITLY doing it is okay, so long as it doesn't smell like it's going to protect minorities. If you wanna continue this discussion, please send me a PM. This is my last post in this thread on the matter.

Jesus Christ, really? Did you just honestly "I have a black friend who disagrees" with Morgan Goddamned Freeman? Allow me to direct you towards the massive fucking swaths of black people who disagree with him. Everyone from Black Lives Matter through the NAACP. But the fact is I'm not trying to champion black rights as a white woman. I'm trying to draw parallels to how the majority treats the minority by using a Parable from my own life experiences. From when I was an unintentionally racist little shit who didn't know she was racist. That's not to say I was a little 'Junior KKK' Member or some shit. I never ascribed to White Supremacist ideals (Though my brother did and my sister drops N-Bombs to this day). Just that I grew up in a racist fucking society and it's taken me decades to unlearn what I've managed to unlearn. Still got a ways to go, though.

What -are- the actual points you made? Please put them in a numbered chart because if I'm not hitting them I'm not understanding them. Here's what -I- got from your post: 1) Codifying laws and/or rules to protect minorities increases the divide between them and everyone else. -Right Wing Catchphrase meant to shift the onus of the divide onto the people who are trying to protect the marginalized group. 2) Our justice system is adversarial. -Completely irrelevant to the discussion, unless you're trying to say that the Gay/Trans Panic defense SHOULD be allowed in which case this conversation is over. 3) Same as number 1, stated differently. -Tried to explain the difference between Equality and Equity, 'cause you still don't seem to understand that 'treating everyone fairly' only works after the systemic barriers have been removed.

I kind of like the idea of an "Asteroid Test" Just create a mess of minions, lieutenants, and bosses with minimal attack options (Experience and Rewards aren't the point) and no defensive options, equip 5-6 different powerset combos with Titan Weapons being one of them and all of them using /Invuln (No damage or effectiveness buffs to the primary from the secondary) and make sure they're all using nothing more than SOs of even level. Then run the map 5 times on each, average the runs, and see where the standings are?

That's the best explanation I think can exist. Until the basic inequities are addressed we need to treat groups differently when it comes to the inequities those groups face. And it doesn't 'Create Further Divide', Biostem. That's just a right wing catchphrase to vilify any attempt to accommodate the differences that exist in our society. Any attempt to protect people from mistreatment based on the things that make them different. It's just another way to place the onus of responsibility for the mistreatment of minority groups on those minority groups. It's just like saying "Racism wouldn't be a thing, anymore, if black people just stopped talking about it!" Which, by the way, as a white child in Georgia in the 80s I heard soooo often that I even believed it at one point and recited it more than twice. I was taught that racism only existed 'cause Black People didn't want to be treated in a racist manner. Can you imagine being that goddamned stupid? That somehow the world would be without racism if people just stopped talking about it, or protesting about it, or trying to address it with hate speech laws. It would just be gone. After all, the Civil Rights Act had passed 20 years before!

NO SHIT. But until All Cops crack down on each other for harassing trans women it's gonna keep happening. Until every state bans "Trans and Gay Panic" as a legal defense it's gonna keep happening. Until we no longer need special protections, it's gonna keep happening. But holding hands with you and singing "Kumbayah" at the top of our lungs isn't going to stop this shit from happening. Pretending that there's no differences in how society treats us isn't going to protect anyone. Repealing the protections that exist and not instituting further protections won't make the world sunshine and happiness. You don't need to tell me 'Treat everyone equally' you need to tell that to Cisgender people who don't treat people equally and accept that until people -do- treat each other equally, we're gonna need laws to make them treat people equally. As the world stands, right now, Equality is a pipe dream. A Fantasy of a distant future. Until then the best we can hope for is Equity. Making things as equal as possible by fixing the problems that do exist whether we like them or not with whatever means we have on hand. This is not a world where everyone's 'Good at Heart' and it's a 'Few Bad Apples' spoiling the bunch. In this world the vast majority just don't care about problems that aren't their own. They'll walk past cruelty and turn a blind eye to hatred 'cause it doesn't affect them. Martin Luther King Jr. in one of his prison letters in Alabama is famously quoted: We like to imagine it's the KKK or the White Supremacists who screamed bloody murder when the first black students were admitted to white schools. But it was just people. And now, 60 years later, you look around and you'll never find them. I lived in Georgia for the first 17 years of my life and I never met a parent or a grandparent who stood in front of the schools screaming about letting black kids in... Only I did. Because of COURSE I did. They just didn't admit to it, anymore. They learned they were wrong, but it took the Federal Government forcing them to accept black kids in white schools before they realized it, and were too damned ashamed of it, 20 years later, to admit it to a kid asking questions for a Book Report. So maybe 30 years from now we won't need laws to protect people from Trans Panic. Maybe 20 years from now we won't have cops harassing trans women for carrying condoms and arresting them for prostitution. Maybe 15 years from now racial profiling in Stop and Frisk situations won't be a problem, anymore. But until then? We have that problem. And 'good' people trying real hard to treat everyone equally won't fix anything until all the people who don't care have been shown they -need- to care and the 'bad' people have been silenced.

The dangers I face in the day to day as a trans woman aren't all the same as the dangers you face. You're never gonna get arrested for walking in the bad part of town with a condom in your pocket. Trans women get picked up on prostitution charges for that. You're never going to get harassed for using the Bathroom. Trans women get that shit allll the time, to the point where I was -terrified- to use the ladies room after my transition. You're not going to face the danger of being raped, murdered, dismembered, and set on fire for being who you are or advocating for the fair treatment of a group of people. But that shit just keeps happening to trans women activists. And sometimes just trans women who get murdered by a dude who was attracted to her and then found out she was trans and got himself in a tizzy over it. So far the "Gay/Trans Panic" defense has been banned in California in 2014, Illinois in 2017, Rhode Island in 2018, and Nevada, Connecticut, Maine, Hawaii, and New York in 2019. But it's still a valid defense in the state -I- live in. A Man could think I'm hot, murder me, and literally GET AWAY WITH MURDER because he claims he was so distressed about being sexually attracted to a trans woman that killing her was the only logical response. Ahmed Dabarran, for example, was beaten to death in his -sleep- by Roderiqus Reshad Reed in 2001. The jury acquitted him -despite- his full confession. Did I mention that Dabarran was an Assistant DA in Atlanta Georgia? Did I mention that the JURY, a collection of radom people and not some murderous fucknuckle, decided to set the dude free because he was scared of 'The Gay'? So long as you don't face those dangers, and countless others, rules and laws that protect 'all of us' will not always protect me. Rules and laws that protect your rights won't always protect others. Until we get to a society where we don't need special protections, a society I fucking -LONG- for, we're not going to have true equality. But until then I'll take special protections to try and mitigate the damage between now and then.

Are you -seriously- going to play that canard? There were no protections for women, racial minorities, or sexual minorities for the first hundred years this country was around and those groups were treated like absolute shit. And then -SOME- protections were put in place. And though people were still treated like shit at least they had some protections. Go ahead another 60 years and some more protections were put in place. And another 40 years some more. And just recently some more protections, in the form of gay marriage rights. Are you suggesting that if we never had those protections in the first place things would be -better-? That people would be 'Truly Equal' without them? Look at the history of the US to see how "Truly Equal" society treated people before those protections were put into place. It wasn't until the 1980s that Raping your Wife became a crime. Allow me to repeat that: Spousal Rape was not something you could get arrested for. It wasn't even grounds for fucking DIVORCE. If a woman went before a judge and said "I want a divorce because my husband held me down and raped me" the judge would go "So what? You married him. You owe him. Got a better reason?" 'True equality is no one gets protections!' my ass. True equality is no one NEEDS protections. But until we get to that fucking point you can stuff that pig ignorant opinion back where it belongs.

To make a Mastermind Powerset you need to follow the following steps: 1: Workshop the idea. This is the theming/planning stage where you choose what kind of pets it will get. 2: Determine the powers you want the pet to have. Are they gonna be Melee or Ranged? Here's where you pick and build their powers. 3: Develop the NPC AI which prioritizes power use based on their activity. Generally this means they hit the most recently recharged power or the highest damage/power/effect power that is available. IT also needs to include the 'Mastermind Deferences' within the AI. 4: Design the Model for the Mastermind Pet. If there's going to be differences in the same power(Like Thugs have with skin tones and hair colors) you need to design a different model for each one. 5: Combine the powerset, the AI, and the Model into a single NPC. 6: Repeat steps 2 through 5 for every variation. Gonna have 3 Necromancer ghosts? Do it three more times. Gonna have Gang War Thugs? Do it 10 more times. Gonna have a single NPC at the first tier that acts differently and uses a different, unique, model? Do it again. Well. Okay. SOME of it can use the same AI, so if you're gonna use the same weapons/attacks, skip to step 4 and 5. 7: Create Call Pools for each tier and specialty. The Arsonist thugs all exist in the Arsonist Thug 'Villaingroup' so that when you use the baseline Call Thugs power it calls 2 thugs from one group and the third thug from the other. 8: Determine which powers they get when they get Upgraded the first time. Create a 'Block' for those powers in the NPC AI that the upgrade removes. 9: Determine which powers they get when they get Upgraded the second time. Create a 'Block' for those powers in the NPC AI that the upgrade removes. 10: Now that that's finished, select what other powers the Mastermind will get (Dual Pistols, Dark Blast, Etc) 11: Check the balance of the powers against all normal metrics. 12: Begin Alpha Testing. The above is a big part of why Ninja, Robotics, Necromancy, Beast Mastery, and Demon Summoning have 1 model per tier, instead of a wide variety like Thugs. Or even a small variety like Mercenaries. Because it's too much damned work to create a variety! And even with only 1 model per tier you still have to go through this massive pile of effort. Heck, at Steps 2 and 4 I skipped over Animations, Powers Design, number crunching, and a hell of a lot more work... Meanwhile making a separate powerset that doesn't involve pets it's: Step 1: Workshop the idea. Decide what kind of powerset it is, what makes it different, etc. Step 2: Create the powers. Step 3: Create animations for the powers. Step 4: Check the balance of the powers against all metrics. Step 5: Begin Alpha Testing.

That's not a bad idea. Throw together an AV with Katana and Dual Pistols then take away all the attacks you can (AE Enemies are locked into at least 1 attack). Give it maximum Morale and put it in a mission all by itself. Maybe the Asteroid Map or something small. Then just wail on it 'til it's dead or 1 minute is up, and take the damage dealt in that minute (Or however long it takes the thing to die) from the logs and go from there.

Oh, I wouldn't mind seeing them turned into an end-cost-free toggle (Aside from Dimension Shift, obviously). I'm just saying they're not as rarely taken, even at level 50, as a whooole lot of other powers. Most of which come down to 'Confront', granted. But even Black Hole sees 10-15% utilization at 50. The numbers are to refute the specific point exaggeration, not the core idea. I should've been more clear in that.

Oh, no doubt. I even suggested a way to do that which would affect other teleporters -less-. See, the current way the hover works is that you have 0 fly speed when it hits. So if you're 10ft away from a door you can either wait for the hover to fall off or teleport the last ten feet and click the door. It's SO ANNOYING! With my suggestion, it catches you on the back-side of the teleport, gives you a 6 second window to line up your next teleport, and it frees the rest of us from the 'Hover Tar' that keeps us from just walking that 10ft distance to click the door. Elegant solution, no?

And each of those powers have their own pitfalls. For Superspeed it is -literal- pitfalls. Wanna know what should be essentially standard with Teleport? A line in the description of the power when you take it that tells you to use /bind LShift+LButton powxec_name Teleport Then hold shift and left click to go where you wanna go. Fastest Teleport there is and unless you're lagging so hard you're about to Mapserver you'll never fall. So much faster than the 'click in tray, drag to where to go" method. Though I suppose you could just put it on your hotbar in slot 0 and press-click to be about as fast... My way's just less awkward.