Pattern Ghost

I was reading a thread about the (extreme) height of the NPCs in CO, and one of the game's artists posted this pic showing the heights of various NPCs: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2147/5704258452_27088133c7_o.jpg I thought Sapphire was just a tad on the tall side! (How tall is she in 6e Champs? Did she put on a growth spurt? )

Re: Picking a Free to Play Archetype If it's 400 per character through the beginner zone, that's cool. I was under impression it was only for the first one. I'll test that out when I can sit through the beginner zone again. =)

Re: Picking a Free to Play Archetype Thanks! That's some good info. I've already converted my one character who was basically going to be a flying brick to a Behemoth. I think I'll just try a few of the other choices for my other character slot(s). Is the Specialist worth buying? I have one character I like the costume on that I wanted to convert, but want the two guns. Provided it doesn't suck too badly. I'd have to buy at least a small bundle of points to get it though. I only have the 400 they give you for doing the tutorial or whatever. (You still can't get points in game, right?)

Re: Reality Storm/SAS

Re: Reality Storm/SAS The origin story states that she found a mystic weapon, embedded in the Iron Duke's chest. The future Green Ronin popped up just after she first touched it. They wrestled for control of the weapon, then it melted away into a silvery liquid metal. Red Phoenix got most of the power, Green Ronin the next biggest slice, and Iron Duke absorbed enough to recover and get a strength boost. The part Rachel is described as getting gives her partial armor and an energy sword. Later in the origin, it states that she can summon the mystic armament and transform into her amazonian bod with just a thought. The following powers are bought through an Item of Power: Armor, Enhanced Stat (Body), Flight, Force Field, Immovable, Special Attack (Phoenix Blade). I'm guessing these are what was intended by the IIF. Maybe they figured the armor was removable? I dunno. I'd go with OIHID for these personally. Her powers outside the Item of Power are: Alternate Form: Red Phoenix (boosts physical stats and combat abilities), Dynamic Power: Magic, Reincarnation (Not for Rachel apparently, but for a new manifestation of Red Phoenix, in the form of the next "heir"), Special Defense (age, disease, poison, hunger, pain, sleep). Since the text explicitly states that she transforms AND summons the sword/armor, and doesn't mention her being able to do either independently (though her write up seems to indicate such), I'm inclined to go with OIHID. I don't think given the background (no physical object mentioned after being covered by the silvery metal stuff), that she should have gotten the Item of Power for the sword and armor. It's pretty vague. She's covered in silvery metal stuff, a big flash happens, she's now in armor with an energy sword, and later she can transform into her hero body with the armor and sword on. That strongly implies the weaponry goes away when not in use. It could also mean she has a Witchblade type arm band or whatever, but none such is mentioned. Generally, the SAS book and rules are pretty fast and loose, so you could interpret it either way. I remember in the beta test trying to get a firm answer on just what the Powerlifting skill does in game mechanics terms, and the authors refusing to give a real answer. So, you can lift stuff with a minimal chance of injury. So, what are the rules for injuring yourself by performing feats of strength? Oh, there are none. Why buy the skill? Flavor? I can just write down "good at feats of strength" in my bio and save the six pts per level on the skill. . . and the six point level is "This is appropriate for Skills that define a particular campaign setting and will be vital in nearly all aspects of a story." So vital, they lack supporting game mechanics? Not that the game's terrible, but that's an insight into their design philosophy, so feel free to improvise to whatever actually makes sense to you.

I haven't really sat down and tried to learn to play CO since it's gone FTP, but figured I may start a new character today. I've only got access to the 8 free to play archetypes: Inferno, Mind, Grimoire, Marksman, Glacier, Blade, Behemoth, Soldier. Are any of these better designed overall than the others? Are any of these so badly designed that they should be avoided? Are any of these early bloomers or late bloomers? I prefer early, since I'll probably level fairly slowly. Are any particularly suited to or unsuited to solo play? I prefer solo capability, since I play for very short sessions a lot of the time due to the medical stuff.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game My god man, put on some pants! Looks like they're having a publish to the live servers on Tuesday. I wonder if that means they're opening it up for free to play?

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game That's what I like about Exalted. I was able to get back a few names that I'd lost to the first round of making names available if the character was inactive and under level 35. (Done at a time when it was actually a bit of work to get into the 20s.)

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Ok, I just changed my global handle to @Pattern Ghost That should make it easier to remember who I am if I send anyone a random friend request. For some reason, when I restarted in 07, it wouldn't let me use it. I think someone else had it at the time, and it had assigned me Marama, the first character I'd logged in as, so I just left it. Looks like it's free now, so there ya go. I'm now me again.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game It seems like blue side gets more play, so it's a nice perk.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Good luck! One advantage of working in Vegas is plenty of places to get cheap lunch!

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game True. Lower levels, corruptors don't seem to need the defense too much, so I've been taking fly for early travel speed. Probably pick up hover around teens or early 20s.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I'll probably just make a second costume sans cape when I hit 20. Problem solved. =)

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game It used to waaaaay back when I played. Had to hover blast, using Hover, b/c the penalty sucked. Good to know it's gone now, though, as I can skip Hover for those who don't need it for some other purpose.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Ok, now that last bit is odd. Is that a bug or working as intended? I know the LKT-1700 Rocket Pack doesn't turn off toggles. It does, however, clash with the cape. (Images of The Incredibles flash through my mind using that thing with a cape.) Slotting-wise, I guess it doesn't matter. Does Flight still give a to hit penalty?

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I just changed my BS scrapper to Mace/Shield and it's been pretty fun so far. Bummer on the rocket boards. I'd have used that as my primary travel power on Astro Girl. Then again, I'm not in much of a hurry, so may pick it up anyway.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Hey, does anyone know if you can add enhancement slots to the rocket board power? I'm thinking that it'd go good with my new beam rifle character.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Got Blue Comet up to 12 and slotted some DOs before maintenance. Feeling a little squishy lately, so those should help.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Well, the event was fun. Lots of hamidon seeds arrived, Emperor Cole sent over some "help" and fun was had by all. As well as repeated hospital trips. I missed the costume contest, so Abraham Stinkin' will be retired.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Logged in to see when the costume contest was going to start and ... yikes! Invasion!

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Finally got Blue Comet up to 10 last night, and made my alt for today's costume contest. I'll post his name and pic after. It was a pretty obvious pun, so I don't think I'll win. Had to sit and wait for a brake job and oil change all afternoon yesterday, and work on my chiropractor's website today, so didn't get much play time. I want to level up alllll of my alts now. Given my limited playtime, here are my impressions so far: The graphics overhaul looks nice. Going Rogue looked nice, so that's no surprise. The tons of little quality of life changes that have been put in since the old days are really nice. Leveling is no longer a brutal grind. Soloing with tankers or support archetypes is no longer quite so painful, either, since everyone can do at least some damage. The new storylines in Atlas are pretty decent. I ran through the storylines from Matthew Habashy and Twinshot, and then started on King's Row. The overall storyline for the zone is solid, and uses our old friends the Skulls and the Hellions to good effect. The Twinshot storyline seems to be the training storyline that was mentioned on the website. It's kind of fun, but I don't know that it'd be really useful to a new player. There's not much real information on how to play the game in the storyline, and what there is, is mostly buried in annoying dialogue, so might be overlooked. I picked up the Beam Rifle power, and played around with it a little bit, but deleted the character to use the slot for the costume contest. I'll make another after the contest is over. Initial impressions are that it seems pretty decent, but that all of the rifle designs are fairly ugly. Wish they had something more sleek and futuristic. I may just go steam punk next time. I like being able to go directly hero side now, because I'm really liking the villain archetypes. I'm not sure if I like Brute or Scrapper better, so have some of each. I'm developing a preference Dominators and Corrupters for ranged types. Having the control and support options while still being able to do decent damage is more to my liking than having a ranged damage character that's fragile with a melee damage secondary. I still plan on finishing my old blasters, though. Masterminds are fun, but none on the new server. Still have my Robots/FF MM on Liberty. The store and the general model that they're using for the free to play system seems to be drawing heavily on the Turbine model, which is a good thing IMO. I've spent all but 80 of my initial allotment of 800 Paragon Points (Beam Rifle and the student backpack). I like the updates to the costume creator (including pre Issue 21). It makes it easier to make a coordinated costume. They still have room for a lot of pieces, and with the new business model a good incentive to start cranking them out. I used to see three main types of costumes back in 2004: clones of existing comics characters, people who tried to figure out the skimpiest (including nude, they had to update to change some of the skin color options as a result) outfit possible, and people hitting the "random" button a time or two and just taking what they got. Folks seem better dressed nowadays. The first type has gone the way of the dodo, probably due to general awareness of the Marvel (facetious) lawsuit, and aging of the community. The second type doesn't seem to be around quite as much (well, everyone probably has at least one character with the Witch chest piece, rawr!). The third type can now pull down a complete outfit and then modify it (or not) a little and be on their way. The I21 costume creator menus seem a bit better organized, too. The overall play experience is improved a little. Just driving around the character, and building it are pretty much the same, except for now requiring some planning for IO slotting. The maps seem to be a lot more diverse nowadays. There used to be a huge monotony to the maps and overall environments, and mission maps. At least now there is some variety to them, though I'm sure even more would be welcome. The leveling speed is MUCH better, and that's playing normally, not using the MA to grind up a brute to max level in 10 or so hours. The leveling curve used to be just plain brutal, even if you didn't have debt (which my blasters usually did), but it's not so bad at all now. I put a couple of levels on all of my old characters, and even on the 41 AR/Dev blaster doing missions full of annoying mobs, it took almost no time. And now with an end game and crafting, as well as the mission architect, there seems to be plenty to do. Overall, I'll have to say I have the warm fuzzies.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I think he's talking about stuff like this: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showpost.php?p=3877599&postcount=68

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game You know, when I came back after CoV launched and complained about losing names of characters well into their 20's*, I got a long list of trolls on the forums telling me how unimportant names were and I how I should just suck it up and think up new names. I didn't get a single sympathetic response. So, it's not going to affect my decision to play on any server. Names aren't important, after all. *When they were taking names from characters under 35.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I'm kind of favoring Corruptors over blasters nowadays anyway. The ramp up aspect seems like it'd mesh well with Scourge for tougher targets, too.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Thanks. I think I'll grab it then, as much as I hate to use a store system so soon after it being rolled out. Edit: Speaking of the store system. They don't seem to have a feature that the Turbine stores do. Specifically, you can see things that you already have on your account, and they don't disable the 'buy' button on them. I didn't want to risk the points to test whether it'll actually stop you from buying something you already have at some point, but it's something to be aware of. In the Turbine stores, you simply don't see items you already own or can't buy (b/c of restrictions on level for the character you're on, for example), but there's a button to let it show you anyway. They do look like they're following the Turbine model pretty closely, so that may be something they add in later.