Techwright

Well, I just went over to Steam to view SoH, and it's saying it unlocks in 1 hour. The game looks reasonably good, more like a Champions Online minus the claw hands, but I went back to re-read my opinion of the demo from 22 months ago, and was reminded that there were a great many problems to address. I didn't really find it playable back then. That and I ended on a note that suggested the game was heavily angled towards magic origin, even to creating cybernetic opponents that were magic based. This, as I said, doesn't hold much appeal to me, as I feel the market is oversaturated with magic MMOs as is. If I want such, there's pages of magic MMOs on Steam that I could pick from. Still, they may have been more aggressive at fixing issue than I suspected. I'll keep a wait-and-see attitude rather than outright rejection.

A developer I cannot speak to. I don't keep close tabs on a lot of them. I'd definitely want an open-world approach. Sure, keep the war walls in place if you must. They're part of the lore now, but give us a larger view, those areas beyond the war walls, the views from the tram, etc. I'd want the ability to enter buildings without necessarily entering an instance. I'd want the city more fleshed out: corner diners, ethnic neighborhoods, bodegas, variations in architecture, neon, parking meters, trash trucks, etc. I'd want breakables. If I hurl an opponent into a wall, the wall should show damage. I'd want the city to be a starting point, not an end-all. No major city functions without outside interaction, and criminals won't be content to stay in the walls. At some point, I'm going to be called upon to leave the city to hunt clues or antagonists. That's not just to other parts of the state, but to any part of the globe. Imagine a mission where you're sent to Europe to aid Hero One or Asia to track a Tsoo supply line. I'd want opponents to be mobile and alert, not grouped, stagnant, and ignorant of the visible fight at the other end of the hall.

Still, it will be a faster full release than Star Citizen. 🙄

Stamp was also the butler Ramsley in the first Haunted Mansion film playing opposite Eddie Murphy. Admittedly, not the greatest of his films, and a role oddly handled by writers and director, but Stamp was still memorable. I'd forgotten it, but looking down the IMDB list for Stamp, I was reminded that he played Chancellor Valorum in the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. Valorum was the character who was forced out of the Republic chancellor's post by the secret galactic manipulations of Palpatine/Sidious. I first encountered Terrence Stamp onscreen in the Superman movies. I remember thinking it odd (still do) that he was playing this over-the-top comic book villain, when it was so clear from his bearing, despite having to deliver several campy lines, that he should be filming Shakespeare. I assume Stamp was classically trained, though I've not read it. He certainly had that bearing that actors like Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, and Derek Jacobi all bring to the screen. And yet I can't find any filmed works of the classical playwrights in his list. It's a shame really. He would have made an excellent Prospero or King Lear.

What is, then?

I don't know, Tyger, Pink Monster's powersets are Water & Marine. She may indeed have "pours". 😁

I can't recall the last time, if ever, that I saw the two giant monsters of the War of Croatoa actually clash. Normally, a league of heroes dispels them long before they meet, but this morning, a confused league fell apart and the clash of titans actually happened.

Ah, so if I remain indefinitely in the alignment, say Hero, it will keep on working?

Yowsers! 😱 Probably depends on the character's resistance, but in that vid that Ulysses Dare posted, some of them got hit for -255788! I don't know if that was just a number after player resistence, or if the game threw up its hands and said "Why waste my effort counting higher? You dead, dog." Right, but as stated in the OP, there are often times when others cannot be bothered to participate. On those occasions it becomes solo. I thank all for the feedback so far. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it sounds like some of the comments are not taking into account that Hellions reinvigorate fires that you've started to put out. Even a single Hellion can completely undo your efforts with a single toss of the flaming cocktail. So focusing on a fire and ignoring the Hellions around can often be a futile time waster.

KB a dirty word? Well, the question got me to rethink my wording. I've previously stated a detest for it, and this viewpoint from one who considers their main to be their energy/energy blaster (inherent KB). Better phrased, KB, the function, is not the problem. A lack of control from a player using KB is the problem. When I first started my character, I was tossing opponents everywhere, then learned how it was upsetting teammates, as well as how it was disrupting a herding concept. So I "learned to play" as the outraged catchphrase stated back in the early days. I began to angle my shots so a wall, pillar, or other obstruction was behind the target, basically creating a poor-man's Knock Down, with just a bit of distance involved. Later someone finally clued me in to the crafted KB-to-KD enhancements. Still later, I learned of the secondary build option I can swap to at the trainer, which means I can now have a team-centric build and a cut-loose solo-play build. My frustration comes from players who do NOT consider the team: who could care less if the melee lead just herded a group for the specific purpose of a controlled rapid kill by the team; who only live to see their "phenomenal cosmic power" splatter that herded group across the large, open room, most likely reduced in health, but not dead, necessitating the team going in all directions to finish them off. It is the grossly inconsiderate player that makes KB a dirty word. I should add that I'm greatly patient with new players who've not learned all this yet. I'm also forgiving of players who grab a single power that they didn't realize had a KB effect, and are not in an immediate position to correct it. It is the choices after their discovery that make or break it. Also, KB has another problem in that it is inherent design to certain powers, and the player cannot remove that design, only sacrifice a valuable enhancement slot to alter it. That is on the heads of the original developers. It's why I've long wished it be the one inherent that has a toggle to turn off or to turn to KD, without sacrificing that valuable slot in my team build. But good luck with that.

Glad you mentioned that. It's exactly what caused me some problems with my contest base this past spring. I'd looked it over repeatedly and didn't see anything. I finally rotated the angle just enough that an object was visible , but apparently only in a narrow angle for the viewpoint. I removed the items and things were great again.

Descriptions associated with Alignment Powers, such as Call to Justice, refer to them as "temporary" powers, but I'm not seeing a defining of that term in this context. I've looked on the wiki, the power's own description, and into archival forum posts. Does "temporary" refer to a number of charges (like Day Job powers), a limited amount of in-game time to use the power, or, as I suspect, something else?

Love the combat views that occur when the camera angle briefly erases the building structure.

Steel Canyon fires: a few questions 1.) What, if anything, can externally affect the performance of the extinguisher backpack? For example, can yellow inspirations reduce the number of misses, or can Hasten speed the interval between spray actions? Anything else that might affect it? 2.) What's probably the best way to solo a fire site, start to finish? Rotate between gangs and fires, or try to eliminate all gangs (to prevent re-ignition of fires) then hopefully have enough time for all the fires? Perhaps another tactic? I ask this because it appears that at some fires I've been able to eliminate all the gangs, and at others, they appear to keep on coming until the end. 3.) What speeds up/slows down the timer until the fatal blast? Does elimination of all the gangs effect this? Do the number of fires do this? I've notice the warning blast goes off at different times, and there seems to be different lengths between it and the final blast, which leads me to believe there are effects on the timer.

First thing I thought of when I read that: the stylish, power-move helmet remove and toss from the movie Free Guy.

Bumping this. I never had the problem myself, due to the choices I made, but I think it was @Easter Bunny that mentioned to me that things get squirrely when dealing with the joints and spaces between rooms. I gather some have chosen to fill in everything and build on top of the "normal" base, which I can tell you from hard experience can solve some other issues as well. I mentioned the City of Base Builders Discord group on another thread. You'll likely find the best help you need there.

The vids you've been watching may have already explained it, but the lights don't have to be hung on something visible like a ceiling or wall. The brighter ones can be embedded, hidden just under the surface of the terrain to provide an ambient light. Stealthnight is right, though. You'll probably get your best responses over at Discord's City of Base Builders.

Plus there's the whole question of "what do we top the Battalion with once we finish them off?" I'm much more into may slow stages leading up to Battalion over a long-game viewpoint. We've got stage one now: the scout force roaming around the ruins of Galaxy City. Once we're fully in control of that, the next wave hits: not the best and brightest of the enemy, but the disposables they can afford to lose. This tests our defenses, our ability to adapt and improve, and begins a wear-down process as we suffer attrition. Even if the volunteer dev team were to release a stage every other year (probably not), that could be 5 stages over a decade, equivalent to the length of the original game. And as I understand it, the game as it stands can continue in perpetuity, so long as NCSoft remains satisfied, and future computers do not advance beyond working with the game engine. Remind me: When Mendor Ramiel sends us to the distant-future, destroyed Oroboros, are we not seeing the destruction immediately after the Battalion has left the area? If that's correct, we should not even be facing the ultimate Battalion force for another 5,000 years, unless something in the time meddling has backfired and shorted the timeframe. I may be forgetting, or unaware of a story where that happens.

Learning the 4 kidnapped victims you have to escort to door in a blue cave mission are a new BFF group comprised of Fusionette, Flambeaux, Amy Jonsson, and Dr. Todd.

Beat me to it by 2 hours. Montague Castanella's arc: I don't know that it is forcing the character to be an idiot, but it is forcing the character, potentially breaking a character's concept. After rescuing Percy, you're asked if you have considered joining the Midnighters. At the end of the arc, you're made a Midnighter without your say so. Roleplay-wise, not every character embraces magic. I'd much have preferred a dialog where the player character is given a choice: become a full Midnighter, or become a member of a non-magic Midnighters' Auxiliary Corp that supports the Midnighters, and therefore has access rights. I realize the "no thank you" option cannot be utilized as that cuts the player off from all related stories, including the Labyrinth and Chimerora, but maybe a third dialog option is that Montague understands your choice, continues to hold you in high regard, and slips you a back door key "just in case".

Or if that fails to deliver an answer, check your ISP. We've had some oddball problems over the years in this house that were fixed when our ISP sent an advanced tech to investigate. He discovered a sloppy wiring job by one of his predecessors was at fault.

I played WoW off and on for 10 years. Loved the game, but felt it had two problems: 1. Your ability in the game is based on the armor and weaponry, and not nearly so much as on your skill. (I've got stories, but this is not the thread focus.) 2. The race to level cap to have the game "begin" (as you pointed out). I only did a couple of raids with my first guild. Mostly I hated them due to the pressures and demands put on someone who was there for the fun and distraction. I knew several people, including a coworker who was the raid off-tank for one of the (supposedly) best guilds in the game, whose whole lives were upturned by the game and the guild scheduling demands, not counting any training or crafting necessary to meet those demands. I reached level cap on multiple characters, but I found so much that was interesting in exploring and questing, that I couldn't believe people would skip it all to get into repeated raiding. For me, the joy was in the journey, not the destination.

That's a great point. I focused the OP on Lovell's Apollo 13 experience, but he was also on Apollo 8, and previous to that, because he was part of Astronaunt Group 2 he was on both Gemini 7 and Gemini 12. Additionally, he'd been a finalist for the Mercury 7 (Astronaut Group 1), but was cut due to a temporary medical issue. Previous to that he'd been trained to be a test pilot like Chuck Yeager, and graduated top of his class, only to have an earth-bound department head pull rank and assign him to electronics and radar testing. By 1960, that role had morphed into "the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager." (quoting Wikipedia). So yeah, legend.

https://www.nasa.gov/former-astronaut-james-a-lovell/ The term "legend" tends to be overused, but it definitely applies to astronaut Jim Lovell, lead on the near-tragic Apollo 13, arguably the most important Apollo mission after Apollo 11, though unintentionally so. I was just old enough to understand some of the nail-biting fear that was going on as my parents closely followed the news on TV and in print. Twenty-five years later I sat in the best theater in my region as an all-star cast reenacted those terrifying events. ( Come to think about it, that was shown 30 years ago this summer. Interesting timing. ) I went on to listen to an audio book version of Lovell's Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, which covered far more detail than the movie. (The audio version appears to be out-of-print now.) I'm still astonished to this day that they survived. It had been my sincere hope that Lovell would have lived long enough to know that a new generation had returned to the moon to continue what he and his team started, but sadly that was not to be. I still have hope that Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 will have that honor, but the clock is ticking. Here's Lovell at Tom Hank's AFI honors ceremony.

"Enemy": singular or group?