General Idiot

Widows being able to use other claws, and soldiers being able to use more rifles would both be awesome. Also more maces for bane spiders. And on a related note in the other direction - shared redraw between War Mace and Mace Mastery if you pick the same mace for both, so alternating powers between the two doesn't make you draw the same weapon you already had out. I think Beam Rifle already has something similar with Munitions Mastery on blasters.

Yeah, but it'd be nice to have something for levelling past when you stop getting things for it. Even if it's something not directly rewarding, like the level up inspirations lasting longer or it firing team inspirations instead of just normal ones. Personally I think something like that could work, maybe not that specifically but something that isn't getting actual stuff, just a bigger bonus on levelup than you get while you're still also getting stuff for it.

Regarding ST and AoE being on different enhancement schedules and players not standing for nerfing every AoE in the game, you could always do it the other way around and put ST damage enhancement on Schedule C or even D, so it's a buff to single target powers rather than a nerf to AoEs. Of course, that'd just make the problem of damage enhancement being so much more valuable than anything else even worse, without also buffing enemies at the same time and then it'd be hard to really call it a buff if the net result is still AoEs being less useful.

I have a texture mod I made of this exact thing myself, that I replaced one of the normal shorts pieces with. I'd love it to be made into an actual thing though. And speaking of Disco while we're on the topic of new costume pieces, I'd love a sleeveless version of the Disco top. Tried to make that one too but my rudimentary editing skills weren't good enough.

Mechanically it could be implemented the same way dual pistols is, by giving the pets' powers several conditional effects and then having the ammo swap powers you have just grant the pets the relevant ammo type the same way the existing upgrade powers work. Theoretically it should be that simple, but the standard code rant always applies to that.

Conceptually the only problem with that is that Teleport is targetable in midair. And rocks crumbling into midair and then appearing out of thin air makes very little sense. If you restricted it to ground targets only and used the Bedrock's death animation of crumbling into rocks and then the animation some Red Caps use of jumping out of the ground, that'd work. But adding such a restriction only on a specific customisation strikes me as something the game probably can't do, it'd have to be a seperate power. Perhaps call it Tunneling, add a few similar themed abilities and make it a new pool.

Personally the one that always irritates me a little is people RPing powers their character doesn't and couldn't actually have. I don't mind stuff you might have in a few more levels or creative interpretations of powersets but there's a limit to how far artistic license can go before it becomes stupid. Stuff that's straight up impossible for a character of your chosen powersets to do at all ever annoys the hell out of me. Sure, not everyone has time or motivation to level to 50 and IO themselves out before RPing or make variations of a character with different archetypes (A couple of people I know actually do that, have several versions of the same character with different ATs but the same general theme) but keep things within reason. A stone brute is a stone brute, not an energy blaster - something I saw someone actually RPing back on live once.

In my chat window I don't think so, no. But there's no message in the chat log from the day I was testing it either and that saves all channels as far as I know.

Something I just noticed on my stalker - When I hit something with Spring Attack it does much less damage than the detailed info says it does. With the enhancements I have in it, against an even level enemy with no smashing resistance (The possessed scientists in the Portal Corp parking lot, specifically), it does 60 damage in a wide area and 30 damage in a smaller area. But according to the detailed info on the power, for a level 50 Stalker it should do 98.73 damage in the wider area and 49.37 in the smaller area. Base damage on Spring Attack according to the enhancement screen is 82,43 - I assume this is both hits combined. Adding the character in question having 8% global damage bonus from IOs would put it at 90.09 total damage, which lines up with the damage I've observed it actually doing. Additionally, when activating Build Up beforehand for an additional 80% damage bonus it does a total of 157 damage, while the base number plus 88% bonus gives 156.82, close enough for the difference to be merely due to rounding. Thus, I suspect Spring Attack may be ignoring damage enhancements - at a guess I would say enhancements aren't being transferred through to the damage patch the power creates, as I've also noticed a distinct lack of damage procs going off while testing it despite having two slotted in the power. I'm unsure if this is unique to Stalkers or not as I lack another character of a different archetype with which to test on short notice. Additionally, while testing this I've discovered Spring Attack doesn't report its damage to the combat tab like other powers do.

Honestly, given some of the horror stories I've heard about this game's code I would not be at all surprised if all of that power customisation info is there in the database for every single costume slot. Nor would I be surprised to learn the way it's stored in the database is somehow even more verbose than that and takes up vastly more space than either of us would expect. That said, having gone and actually looked at the specs posted in the June donations thread for the servers Homecoming uses, they have three physical machines each with 1920 Gb of storage. So depending on what else is stored on said machines - all the server software, the existing database at however large it already is, plus forums and such as well - an extra couple hundred Gb for extra costume slots may indeed not be an issue. What's more likely, but still not really hugely likely, to affect performance in any meaningful way, is each of those servers having 256 Gb of memory available. I don't think they're pushing the limits of that as is or at least I would hope they're not given this is the new setup they're just switching to, but every bit used for loading costume data into memory to be served to clients is that much less available to run mission scripts and mapserver instances. But that's ultimately a discussion for the dev team to have amongst themselves, whether whatever tradeoff may or may not exist there is worth it or not. Really you're probably right that the UI work is the bigger hurdle.

Take that 1 Mb and multiply it by the 1,207,409 characters that existed as of the last time they posted statistics though and that's over a terabyte of storage space for costumes alone. Now obviously not all characters will use every one of those slots, but even if you don't use them explicitly merely having them unlocked puts a costume in them and that gets stored even if the player never touches it. That could be solved by making them take missions to unlock much like the original four extra slots did and still do. And sure there might be some compression in places, but even if you assume a probably entirely unrealistic 90% compression that's still over a hundred gigabytes. I don't remember offhand what the specs are on the servers Homecoming uses but I doubt they have so much free space that they can just add an extra hundred gigabytes or likely more to the database without any concern. That's my point. It's not impossible, but concerns like that are probably more of an issue than a technical limitation in the code that may not even exist. And then of course there's the question of where to stop. If they added ten more slots it'd be about five minutes at most once the servers came back up before there'd be a thread on these forums asking for ten more past that. Personally I don't think I'd have much use for more than 20 on one character but I knew someone over in Champions at one point that had over two hundred costumes on one character.

It does nothing only because slot 10 or above don't exist. For a while back on live it was possible for Arachnos Soldiers and Widows to get an 11th costume slot if they did all the regular missions plus their unique one, and you could swap to it just fine as slot 10. You could just never edit it once earned because the UI doesn't give you the option. From that I can fairly reasonably assume the limitation is not a technical one, it's more that the UI would need to be changed to display more slots for editing and swapping purposes and then possibly concerns over storage space on the server - if every character suddenly has twice as many costume slots, that potentially inflates the size of the character database by a not insignificant amount.

Personally I would rather see Super Strength as a set get the rebalancing the devs have hinted it's due to get before it's ported to Scrappers. That said, I don't want to see Rage become just another Build Up power cause I think the set would lose some of its identity if that happened. That and the backlash from players if that was done specifically for the Scrapper version only would be pretty severe. So rebalance the set into something that works for all ATs, and then port it once that's done.

If not, can we please get that put on the todo list somewhere? Cause they were such a cool feature, but they were broken even on live and here they've been outright disabled. But for those of us who love playing paired characters they were so useful simply for not having to worry about one person pulling far ahead in levels. The last official comment I could find was from last November saying 'not Soon', but that was six months ago so here I am being a squeaky wheel. If there's no upcoming plan to fix them I can understand that, they're a niche feature at best as much as I personally love them and as I understand it they're pretty deeply broken. But in that case, perhaps removing the invite option from the UI might be a good idea so people like me don't see it and get their hopes up.

There's even room for the traditional two signature wizard spells as the mastermind's personal attacks, in such a set. Lightning Bolt as the second attack and Fireball as the AoE. Maybe rename Power Bolt from Energy Blast and have the first attack be Magic Missile, too. More on topic of the original suggestion, Black Swan's shadow minions have three tiers and could theoretically be used as pets more or less as is. But the minion and lieutenant shadows use the same recoloured fire imp model, which isn't really fitting with how mastermind pets usually have unique looks. And the boss shadow is just a renamed Dark Servant, which is already available to masterminds with the right secondary. You could possibly use the Haunt and Umbra Beast pets from Dark Control as the T2 and T3 pets with the minor shadows as the T1 and then they'd at least all be unique, though they still have no variant costumes as you upgrade them without additional work.

It'd be cool to have but from a technical perspective I don't imagine it's terribly feasible for the simple reason that base maps aren't persistent. They're technically mission maps with extra stuff added, so putting a contact into one might cause the spaghetti code to unravel in all sorts of fascinating ways. Or it might work fine, I honestly have no idea. Just depends on how deep the distinction between zone map and mission map goes.

I made a post in the suggestions forum for this a few days ago, but: Fix the animation on the Sentinel version of Midnight Grasp in the Soul Mastery patron pool. Currently it's copied straight over from Dark Melee and as such uses the solid black tentacles that one uses. But other Soul Mastery powers have transparent glowy tentacles instead. It should theoretically be possible to copy those FX over to Midnight Grasp to make it fit in with the rest of the pool, as suggested here:

Have taken this one. Thanks again to you and everyone else who posts these lists of available names, it makes life so much easier for me and others who always have trouble coming up with names.

So I'd never actually taken the Sentinel version of Midnight Grasp until now, and I found upon taking it that it uses the same solid dark tentacle FX as the regular Dark Melee version of the same power. Which is fine, it was probably just copied directly over when they made patron pools for Sentinels - seems likely given it also has the Soul Noir theme available. However, both Soul Tentacles and Soul Storm in the same pool for Sentinels use the transparent glowing tentacles that all Soul Mastery powers have, with Midnight Grasp standing out as far as I know as the sole exception. Is it possible to adjust the FX used by this power to match the rest of the pool? Borrow the tentacle FX from Soul Tentacles - as far as I know making them affect a single target shouldn't require adjusting the actual FX, just how many targets they're applied to. And for the character animation, use the same FX that Soul Mastery's version of Gloom uses for Brutes as that uses the same animation on the character model, but unlike regular Gloom in Dark Blast there's extra FX of small glowing tendrils swirling around the arm. There's also a short lived projectile that fires from the character's hand to the target's feet that might be more problematic - it could be possible to use the projectile FX of Soul Tentacles and just adjust the source and target points on them but that might look odd or be harder to do than that sounds. Just the other two changes would already make the power fit in vastly better with the rest of the pool. Just seems odd to me that this one power looks completely different from the rest of the pool, especially when there's assets that already exist that could be repurposed with a bit of effort.

Ok I realise this is the absolute epitome of pie in the sky suggestions, but. We have asymmetrical costumes now, and people have done some amazing things with them. But I was looking at a friend's energy manipulation blaster with one blue glove and one red glove... but two red pompoms. And I thought to myself, imagine if the glowing pompoms could match the gloves. So I thought it might be worth asking, is there any way in the nightmarish jigsaw of horrifying spaghetti that is the CoH codebase that power customisation could be extended to allow such a thing? I was thinking an option to make the primary colour one hand and the secondary the other hand, with the combined effects on the attacks remaining as they are now mixing both colours. It'd work for energy melee certainly, assuming it could be made to work at all.

The Aegis unique is the only way to get both in one IO though. It's also worth noting that if you're chasing psi resist nothing stops you slotting Aegis and Impervium Armor in the same power.

Personally if I were going to rework the Teleport pool I'd do three things: Combine Recall Friend and Teleport Foe into one Teleport Other power, that activates as either depending on friend or foe targeted. There's nothing really wrong with either of those as they currently are, but combining them would be a relatively easy way to free up space in the pool so it doesn't have to be the only pool in the game with six powers. Add a Combat Teleport power in that now vacant space, mechanically a straight up clone of Jaunt but with different visual FX matching the rest of the pool. So people who want the in combat teleport with quick animation and no hover can take that, and people who want the no cooldown teleport with hover for travelling can take that. And people who'd like both can take both. Add all zones plus options for base and current mission to Long Range Teleport. Because a power that you're dedicating three slots in your build to get should not be outclassed by P2W powers everyone can have. The only problems there are that Teleport Other would have range issues since as I understand it a power that redirects like that would have to can't have it's range varied based on which it's going to redirect to (Likely because the range check to activate the power at all happens before the redirect is decided), and I'm not sure you can have normal zones and dynamic options for bases and missions on the same menu for Long Range Teleport - though the same code that pulls current team missions for 'Board Transit' missions could possibly be reused since I think the LRT menu is the same one the normal trains pull up, just activated differently. That doesn't solve the issue of bases though. The alternative is to make Long Range Teleport grant several powers in the style of Dual Pistols or Staff Fighting, one for each function.

The problem there is that any enhancement to a resistance buff or debuff would also enhance the power's damage as well, due to the slightly wonky way those two stats are coded in relation to each other. This is why no resistance debuff in the game is enhanceable. Damage buffs are unenhanceable for the same reason. If sonic blast is underperforming, then buff sonic blast. IOs will not solve a problem specific to one power set. Also since when does fire blast have problems? Unless something's changed a lot since the last time I saw someone run the numbers on it, fire has the best aoe of all blaster primaries and isn't too shabby at single target either. I'd really like to see your math as to why it's underpowered.

Ice hockey stick for staff, and the smaller field hockey stick for war mace?

This might be terrible or it might not but it's been floating around my head demanding to be posted for a week so here we are. First off, a quick history lesson for those of you who didn't play on live. Back in Issue 15, Dominators got a massive revamp. Before that, their inherent power of Domination used to additionally give a damage buff. Their base damage was much lower than it is today, to account for that buff. In Issue 15 this was changed so Domination gives only the control buff it currently does, and the base damage of the whole archetype was increased by the same 80% the Domination buff used to apply. What's any of that got to do with Sentinels? Well, part of the stated reasoning at the time for the changes to Domination was that the damage buff created a very 'Jeckyll and Hyde' feel for the AT as a whole. When Domination was active you felt powerful and awesome, but when it wasn't you felt weak and underpowered, because the AT was balanced around the power it had with the buff active. Which brings us back to Sentinels. Currently as it stands, the Sentinel AT has much the same on or off feeling. To a lesser degree than Dominators used to, plus without the additional factor of IOs severely affecting the AT's balance since Opportunity has a fixed uptime that can't really be improved. But they do. With Offensive Opportunity active, their damage feels as powerful as an AT with slightly worse than scrapper defenses should. With Defensive Opportunity active they're much harder to kill, plus have a smaller damage increase from the debuff both opportunities place. But without, they're ultimately a scrapper with no criticals, less damage and worse defenses. The range advantage, while always given such a valued place in balancing ATs, doesn't really make up the difference. So, here's my idea. Remove the triggered Opportunities outright. Instead, give the sentinel AT two inherent toggle powers, labelled Offensive Focus and Defensive Focus. With neither toggle active, you're considered to be in a support focus. All offensive powers will place a small non-stacking resistance debuff on the enemy as they currently do, plus trigger a heal similar to the current Defensive Opportunity. But rather than just healing yourself, single target powers instead heal the lowest health nearby ally, using the same smart heal logic the recently added Electric Affinity set uses. AoE powers heal in a PBAoE, for lower numbers but hitting everyone nearby. So as you're blasting fools you're also healing and debuffing, perhaps living up to the AT's name a little more than either Opportunity does currently. With Offensive Focus active, you lose the debuff and the heal on every attack and instead gain bonus damage, the same as the current Offensive Opportunity though possibly less of a bonus to remain balanced since this you can have active all the time if you so wish instead of being limited duration. However you wouldn't get the resistance debuffs the current Opportunity has, so it may balance out even if the bonus damage is left the same. With Defensive Focus active, you lose the debuff and heals, instead gaining increased effects from your secondary powers - numbers becoming somewhere between scrappers and tanks. Plus, you gain an inherent taunt on all your attacks with the same mechanics as Brute punchvoke - anything that takes accuracy will taunt. You'll note I haven't specified numbers on any of that. All of those would of course be subject to balancing by the devs making the changes, though I would argue that the current Sentinel should really only be used as a baseline if considering the numbers it puts out with Opportunity active. Thus, you have an AT with three distinct modes - kind of like how Kheldians do, but without the specific aesthetic alongside it. You have the option, retaining the idea of the choice that the current Opportunity uses, of being either damage with team support, damage with more damage or damage with aggro. You won't be as effective as a dedicated AT at any of those roles, but you'd have the option to provide more support or tanking if the team needs it or just keep blasting. And you wouldn't have the 10-15 seconds of being so much weaker between Opportunities.