Techwright

Let's look at it in reverse for a moment. Even though one cannot go back out, where did your friend stand when they arrived? For blue side, there are 4 corridors and a manhole: Atlas Park, Founders Falls, Kings Row, Talos Island, and the manhole to Peregrine Island Faultline (corrected). Each of these corridors has an interactive NPC as guide, a door, and is clearly marked with a distinctive graffiti (the manhole being unique enough it wasn't given graffiti). The implication being that any passage would possibly have some sort of distinctive feature. Did you friend appear at some specific spot in the corridor system, or did they end up somewhere else in Pocket D? While I tend to think the PDP is what would be encountered, I'm willing to keep an open mind, and details like this help build a case. EDIT: Just realized there's another way in without using supergroup bases: The T.U.N.N.E.L. System, though this takes you through a long back way through the Winter Forest, which in turn empties to the Pocket D chalet, though I'm not sure the T.U.N.N.E.L. System runs the Winter Forest access year around, and last I knew IP didn't connect to the T-System. Just running process of elimination.

Hi, McCormack! Your post count suggests your new. If so, welcome Home! If I may suggest, there's a costume suggestion thread under Home/City of Heroes/Art & Multimedia that might be a great place for this idea. Here's a link to the first page.

Oh, that's easy: I'd be all of them. I'd be playing my game when some speedster from the future sets off a collider that creates a dark matter effect that merges my game account into me turning me into Game Changer, the hero that can assume any character he had built by the time of the "accident". My kryptonite would be my mortal self that has to appear briefly as I log out and in to assume the mantle of a different character. Alright, alright, just one...Illusion/Storm controller. A walking/floating 1-man army with the elements themselves as backup. And I can drop a group of opponents, without killing them, with but a well-placed thought.

From the S.T.A.R.T. vendors, two resurrection abilities to acquire, both similar in that they rez you with roughly half your hit points and endurance as well as providing temporary immunity and about 20 seconds of XP debt protection. Both are on a 1 hour recharge timer. They differ in that: Renewal of Light blasts nearby opponents, knocking them down, giving you a chance to get away or regain control of the battle. Return to Battle activates a bunch of level 3 inspirations on your character for accuracy, damage, defense, damage reduction, and effects resistance. I'm curious if any have come to the conclusion that one is the better choice over the other, and the reason(s) why? is that conclusion based on "scientific" testing, or gut feeling? if one is inferior to the other, what might you suggest for a better balance?

And here I thought I was a chatterbox. By comparison to these I might as well be...

Had a crazy thought the other day. I've a stack of old game CDs in storage dating all the way back to Windows 95 days. Some of them still play, and some of them are unfortunately in need of purging because they do not function with modern operating systems. Those are local computer games though, and this is an online MMO. Does this situation potentially apply to CoH and its engine? At some point we'd possibly get an operation system or systems that are completely incompatible with it? What then? I know the companies that own other games occasionally upgrade their software to remain compatible, but those are the owners. It's their buck and their decision. Homecoming is the licensee, and I'm curious what that might mean.

Can Fitness powers be turned off? Dude, at my age, I've been trying to turn fitness powers on for the last 1/4 century. I don't know why you'd want to turn them off.

Dancing hamsters, however, were completely acceptable. 😉

NOPE

The event you name in the hidden element actually happens in the sequel book, Dune: Messiah, though I get what you're saying.

I...did not know titles could be so long. I now expect to see an outbreak of excessively long titles, especially Snarky reports on PUG events.

This (in the spoiler box) was adapted to a large arc across season 3 of the animated Avengers Assemble!, although the roster was probably different. While I consider that animated show to be inferior to Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, I did think the arc was reasonably good.

Finally got the chance to watch Dune, Part II and though I liked what I saw, it would be in context of if it was an original work. Pardon me if I'm mistaken, it' has, after all, been 40 years this year that I read Dune, but did Part II change significant portions of the book? Overall, it did move the story, the framework, to where it needed to go, but I felt like there were major changes at least in these areas: That aside, the worm-riding inauguration was spectacular, they did a far better job showing how the Fremen undermined spice production than previous interpretations did, and showing the brutality of the Harkkonen, though I believe much of it was creative license, and not in the books. The final fight was sufficient, if a tad underwhelming (considering what was exploding, you'd expect there to be a much greater distance between the Wall and the central base and equipment), though the sheer number of forces portrayed on both sides was great. The music was fantastic, as usual with Zimmer. Overall, I found it a fine work, though I still look for a day when a big budget film can get the book right in all details. Meantime, onward to Dune 3, which I presume will be Dune: Messiah.

Sorry..."Red Guardian as Goliath"? Is that something from the comics (which I've not read)? Last I knew, Bill Foster was Goliath. Did the comics take a super soldier and make him a size-shifter as well? That would be, well, interesting. I'm all for having Zemo in an action sequence. MCU Zemo is supposed to be ex-Sokovian special forces, but most of what we've seen has been his mental skills, his tactics, but not his fighting prowess. "Ten" was a miscount on my part. It should have been "nine" since I was taking the Contessa into account, admittedly in a strategy role rather than physical (possibly). But I also wasn't considering Zemo, as current lists haven't mentioned him. Considering how important he is in the comics, this may be a silence tied to some special appearance or role in the movie. Perhaps he's third-party viewpoint/interference? Likewise, after re-reading some news, Melina, Yelena's surrogate mother, is also surprisingly absent, so there may be some surprise with her in store as well. USAgent, Red Guardian, Black Widow II, Bucky (they really need to ditch his villainous name and either make White Wolf stick or give him another name), Ghost, Taskmaster, Ross (and presumably in alter-ego form), Sentry, and Contessa de Fontaine were the nine I was thinking of.

Sooo...Norberta, then? 😁 The team actually already has two gender-flipped characters: Ghost and Taskmaster. While I'm mostly not opposed to this tactic when considering its a multiverse of infinite possibilities, and the MCUniverse is a different one than the comics. three on a team of ten is going to appear excessive, or at least raise charges of such. Now if you make the third a species swap to, say, a talking raccoon or tree, now we're talking.

I was reminded yesterday of a favorite of mine in the 1990s. I thought I'd posted it around here somewhere, but the key word search came up blank after several different keywords were attempted. I'm referring to the comedy, Renaissance Man. Danny Devito headlines it, but it has a recognizable cast: Gregory Hines, James Remar, Mark Walberg, Ed Begley, Jr., and Cliff Roberson to name several. Directed by Penny Marshall, it came out 30 years ago (ugh, has it been so long?) Basic premise: a down-on-his-luck ad man takes a job teaching down-on-their-luck military recruits. It's not deep, but I found it funny and it has a surprising amount of heart to it. I'm not a big fan of Devito, but I loved him in this role.

Posted to the Star Wars YouTube channel a few hours ago. About 11 minutes of demonstrated gameplay with commentary from the game's director:

2) Ah, I seem to have forgotten. I thought her "mother" was destroyed in the events of the Black Widow movie, but then, I only saw the movie once. I may be mixing it up with "What If...?"

I'm game for this. Like @biostem my first thought was a CoH version of Marvel's "What If...?" series, and you have some nifty ideas there. I'd add one extra thought: how are we in the Prime Universe (and by extension Praetoria and Rikti which both seemed to have benefited from Prime tech) the only ones in a multi-verse to have an active portal program running? What happens when we encounter others who have a fully functional program? We've already seen how it enabled the Rikti to do great harm, and Praetoria to save its remaining people. So what happens when your Nuclear Nemesis, or a dominant Arachnos, or an overzealous Longbow (theirs, not our overzealous bunch) begins a full portal program? I'm 100% on board with this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original idea to make half of KW red-side to begin with? I'm definitely down for getting the zone fully functional. The spot by the west side of IP might also serve as cause to improve the west side of IP, and bring more activity to that area. Much as I hate to abandon "Galaxy City" (which itself was a rename of the former Paragon Heights), this does seem par for the course for CoH. In addition to what you wrote, Overbrook became Faultline, Eastgate became The Hollows, and Woodvale became Eden. It seems the city names its changed areas after the destruction that caused the change. Therefore, an alternate name I'd pitch might be "Starfall" or "Firefall" as the destruction came with a meteoric attack.

I think that's one of two big issues for the Shadow Shard: transportation. If you're telling all your non-flyer characters that they're going to need jetpacks to get around (or some silly geyser jump techniques that don't auto-land a character on the next island), then you've basically just admitted to a design flaw. The second big issue is the content. Sure, the SS has some of the craziest, most-creative NPC opponents of the game, but so much of it has a homogeneous look, and is basically street fighting, that one or two islands can bore a player clearing them. Retconning is a classic tactic in comic storytelling, so why not retcon the Shadow Shard with elements that fix these two problems? Lore-wise, a modification of the medical teleportation system might be a good start for island hopping. Each fort has a teleportation power tower for hopping islands (at least the dominant ones) in its proximity. Functionally, this could be an extension of the Long Range Zone TP. Currently that will take us to a single location in each Shadow Shard zone. But if we could name the islands, or at least some military designation, players could make an initial tag of a designated spot on an island and use the LRZ TP to get around later. Jetpacks would only be needed once, then. Story-wise, that seems more of a creative challenge to improve beyond the whole Rularuu stuff, but we've had other zones go through dynamic changes before (Faultline comes to mind), so why must the Shards remain stagnant? Just the incursion of red zone into the Shard should be enough to set up a whole new parcel of stories for both sides.

You're probably not alone. While you were typing this out, I was reading the comments by the actor who plays The Leader stating they were in the middle of reshoots. Further reading revealed that the first attempt at the film had low test-audience scores, resulting in the rewriting/reshooting of 3 or 4 critical spots in the Captain America movie. As to the toys spoiler: sad, just sad. I mean about Ross, not the spoiler. 😉 Though, I'd have thought by now that there would be contractual obligations in place to not reveal any details of the film until a production company-specified date. That could be a major liability for a film.

A bit more info coming to us, spoiler free. It does reference the storylines of a few previously-released Marvel projects, however, and I'll discuss that since enough time has passed, so be forewarned if you want spoiler-free everything. Summary and Thoughts: 1. Practical more than CGI. 2. A "human story" and "going back to their (that is, the MCU's) roots". If that means they're going back to what made the first Ironman film a success, I'm all for it. There's been too much flash and not enough substance of late. As to a "human story", IMHO Marvel, both comic and screen, has always done better at the individual level rather than the "phenominal cosmic power" level. It's what makes the different Spider-men a success, a "one of us" gets the mantle viewpoint. It is interesting, as I read the character roster, that at least 4 of the team are characters for whom we've already seen a very human story with both successes and failures: Bucky Barnes, John Walker, Yelena Belova, and Ava Starr. We've not seen much of that with Red Guardian, and absolutely nothing of that from Thunderbolt Ross. We're aware of a lot of suffering for Taskmaster, but they've not laid down enough story for us to emotionally connect strongly with the character, so far. If The Sentry has been in a previous MCU work, I've missed that work. 3. Thunderbolts* (as a reminder, the asterisks is part of the title) will be Marvel's version of Suicide Squad. Got it. Guessing now fatalities might be Taskmaster, Ghost, and/or Red Guardian, the last being especially significant as he is the last living "family" member for Yelena. Guessing Bucky will survive this as he's integral to the current Captain America storyline. of course, that depends on timing of film releases, too. One can only hope Thunderbolt Ross doesn't survive this. He's been a major pain-in-the-tights for a lot of MCU folk to this point, and possibly my least favorite character of the franchise, due to his manipulations and power trip in the supposed name of the greater good. (As a side note, I remain very surprised at the casting of Harrison Ford in the role. Yes, he's one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, but he's 81. There's not much room for 3-year-apart sequels before he's either physically unable to play the role, or worse. Which leads me to believe the days are numbered for character Ross as well.) 4. I saw Black Panther: Waukanda Forever, and don't recall Fontaine's step up to CIA director. Interesting. I'm trying to figure out how a person maintains both their European "contessa" title, and be a ranking officer in the USA structure. Did MCU Fontaine marry into European aristocracy?

Hope you're wearing gloves when milking that cactus. Cacti hate cold hands.

Sounds similar to what they used to call "twinking" back in 2006 in WoW PvP. Use one or more PvE characters to fund an obsession for a tricked-out PvP character. (Maybe they still use that term, I dunno. I've not done PvP for quite a while.) I built a couple of "twinks" back then and had a ball in Warsong Gulch. I'd no problem with putting in the work to enhance the characters. But if someone is pushing for free enhancements, too, that sounds more like WoW arena PvP, which I never got into, but the concept might not be amiss for CoH. I stated sometime back that if I were to get into PvP in this game, I'd prefer there'd be a "locker room" screen in which characters donned a dev-created, standardized set of enhancement gear for the archetype/powerset combo. Maybe a pick between 3 sets to add a bit of strategy, but the idea was to eliminate the build from the victory, and focus entirely on skill.