Vanden

So one of the few changes to the game that I personally outright hate is the revamp the Family got in issue 24. There are a couple of reasons for this; first, the Family were intentionally designed from the get-go to be an anachronism. They're a group of 50s-style gangsters operating in a 21st-century setting. Their dress, their style of speech, and their weaponry is intentionally out of place in the setting. By giving them high-tech gear like laser weapons, this core concept of the group is entirely ruined. Even giving them updated costumes undermined that, since the mid-2000s art assets they used to have were only enhancing the impression that these were guys in the wrong time period. The second reason I hate their revamp is that I feel like its goals were misguided from the get-go. The idea was to give them powers that would enable them to actually challenge players at higher levels. But in my opinion, the Family actually have no business being a challenge to heroes in the 40+ level range. Their concept just isn't that interesting; just a group of crooks trying to make money by selling illegal stuff. You know, like the kind of thing you can see in thousands of other pieces of media. They're a low-to-mid-stakes threat that's perfectly appropriate to allow to vanish into obscurity in the highest levels of the game. Other enemy groups at 40+ are cyborgs, super-soldier fascists, aliens, dimensional invaders. Guys who want to get rich by selling contraband have no business standing alongside that kind of company in a punch-up with superpowered heroes and villains. What's more, you hardly even fight these guys 40+. There's a mission in Unai Kemen's arc where you visit a world populated by Family. There's a mission for Television where you go inside an old gangster movie (where, again, giving them future guns goes entirely against the premise). And there's a mission for Mr. G. on primal Earth where the goal is to humiliate the Family on the international stage (where the enemies being weak and unthreatening to the average player character would actually serve the narrative better). There may be other missions, but those are the only ones I know about. But now let's talk about the Sky Raiders. High-tech is their whole thing. They've got jetpacks, teleporters, flying force field generators, robots, personal jet crafts. On top of that, they're the main antagonists for a high-level TF, where they are laughably incapable of challenging the typical team of level 50 characters. This combination of appropriate theme and prominent content spotlight means they are a much more appropriate group than the Family to receive a Beam Rifle-centric upgrade to make them more threatening.

It will be added as part of the Narrative Affinity support set.

Does Plant Control not count? I'm assuming that by "Nature types" you mean Nature Affinity.

Well, different strokes. I personally love the convenience of putting an attuned Adjusted Targeting Recharge in Build Up/Aim at 18 and then never worrying about it again until 47, and wish it were possible to do something similar on, like, literally any other kind of power. Doesn't bother me if I clear missions 2.5% slower or something.

You wouldn't even get an attuned end cost or recharge IO to slot at early levels and then not have to worry about until 50?

Why not? Go ahead and make a proposal. Live a little! I will point out that Range enhancements are Schedule B, so your chart there is giving them higher values than they actually have at level 50. (They're actually 15.94% for a dual-aspect IO.)

Dear BackAlleyBrawler, What a delightful surprise to hear from you! It has been so long since our last correspondence. I hope this letter finds you well, and hope to hear from you more in the future. Love, Vanden

A buff? Not so much. Super Strength's performance is balanced just fine as-is with a single-stack of Rage. Numerous tests and maths have shown this. It's capable of some big spikes of damage when double-stacking Rage, but doing so actually hurts your overall long-term DPS because you spend more time in the crash. If you remove Rage and buff the powers to compensate, you've at best left the set exactly where it was, but by homogenizing it with the other set. Can't be surprised that people wouldn't be willing to give up something that makes the set unique, in order to end up exactly where they already were, performance-wise.

Reduce the recharge on Accelerate Metabolism, too.

Well, there are reasons to play sets besides performance.

A quirky thing called lies

Believe me, the current state of the Eden trial has been the topic of some conversation

I have a hard time believing people would get that mad if Super Strength gets ported to Stalkers and Scrappers without Rage, but doesn't get touched on Tankers and Brutes. It's actually the best, most realistic option available; you want Rage, player a Tanker or Brute. You want no Rage, play Scrapper or Stalker. Obviously they can't make everyone happy, but that would be the next best thing.

You're almost certainly overthinking it. Super Strength has built up almost a mythology around it thanks to Rage, but it's still just math, and our devs are good at math. The fact is, Rage will not be included in any ports of the set. It's that simple. Then you buff the first three powers of the set somewhat; they're the only powers in the set that are actually intentionally weaker. I wrote out a proposed treatment for Super Strength ports a few years ago using this logic:

I can't really see this working. We have, what, 6 customizable windows that chat channels can appear on? And each window could be further divided into any number of custom tabs. A slash command would need to take parameters for what window and tab to add the channel to, and you'd have no way to ensure that every player gets the channel added to the right window for them. If it only took the one parameter like "/addchannel request", it would probably only get added to whatever chat tab is currently active for the player's client, another thing you'd have no way of predicting. In short, there's no way to idiot-proof this.

Titan Weapons? The set with the worst, sloppiest animations in the game?

Build Up is better anyway

The characteristic yellow glow of Super Strength is the result of light particles of a certain wavelength escaping the event horizon of the muscular singularity formed in muscle fibers and has been observed in real life in instances of real super strength, so it would not be accurate to depict Super Strength without any glow or particle effects.

I'm trying to understand what the issue is. You need to be able to see what the default binds are? Is that what you're saying?

Why can't they export them? Does that mean something different than using the bindsave commands?

The profile code is just a line in the bind file that says KeyProfile (Classic/Default/whatever), and saving binds to an existing file would already overwrite that file if it existed. The only thing that's changed is that it won't write binds that are default on the chosen profile. And since those binds haven't been changed, why save them? Could you describe a common, step-by-step bind customization procedure you'd normally do that worked with the old patches that doesn't work with the current?

You're gonna have to explain how the game not saving default keybinds makes the save feature so dangerous. Why would I need those binds saved if they're default? Do you have actual documented instances of the game not recognizing custom keybinds as custom?

Yes, obviously I'm completely aware of everything you've done in the game, that's why I said rerun

Someone needs to rerun SSA1 part 3!