MTeague

Gonna say up front, I am not a serious author of any kind. I'm a programmer by trade, and gamer by hobby. But I've done some novelization-style "Journal Entries" for my characters in various single-player sandbox games and.... it's pretty addictive once you get past the first few. I start creating 17 chapter backstories for how my character even came to be where the game is set, and flesh out motivations / things they care about / non-existent NPC's of family members and friends they think about along their journeys, etc. But that style of doing "one journal entry" at the end of each play session has really helped me both a) get in some writing, a little bit at a time, and b) peridocally read through each one, realized I've created discrepancies, and go back and figure out how to resolve them, keep their timelines straight, etc. It's kind of wierd and to some people it will sound like a self-inflicted second full time job, but it's really been kinda fun.

Well, I do think Cole and Recluse would have been doing the "My Dear Good Friend" (spoken in Londo Mollari voice, if you've ever seen B5), fully intending to dispose of the other one once they were no longer necessary / too likely to become a rival for supremacy, and both of them probably knew that from first contact. Or at least, would have suspected the other of that. Arguable. Maybe you can find something that temporarily de-powers Cole, just like Darrin Wade de-powered States in order to kill him. That doesn't necessarily mean that exact same trick would have worked against the Hamidon itself. Or maybe a sufficiently strong Psi attack against Cole might revert him to a toddler playing with his crayons. But which bounces against Hamidon. If you don't know for sure that your Anti-Cole weapon WILL work against PraeHami, then congrats, you still just damned the planetary population of praetorian earth. Soo.... my order of operations would be Kill Hami first, THEN get Moose and Squirrel Cole and Keyes.

I suspect there's also a sizeable chunk of people in the power structure who think Cole is in fact a brutal and overbearing Tyrant, fully deserving that name.... but who, from the history of Praetorian Earth, understand that He Stopped Hamidon, when no one else could. Ie, maybe the guys a jerk and tyrant.... but without him, we'd all be DEAD, consumed by Tellurian Plague, etc. Maybe he's not the ruler we'd like to have, but if it's Cole or be consumed by the Devouring Earth, then "OK Mister Cole, What can we do for you on this fine morning?". Because that was always one thing that bothered me with the Resistance. Sure. Say you bring down Cole. Either kill him and all his praetors, or send them packing. Then what? Next time Hamidon makes a strong push forward.... you're screwed. I mean, yes, Freedom of THOUGHT should at least be allowed even if Freedom of Expression isn't.... but in context of the Lore, I can see a number of people choosing Cole, not because they like him, not because they WANT to be ruled by him, but because of what lives beyond the Sonic Fences. The Carnival of Light and Eltontown are out there, sure, but they have thier own sonic fences too, and the center of First Ward is testament to the fact that those sonic fences will only hold Hamidon at bay for just so long. Now, we as players who have read the lore and already done the Underground Trial know that Cole never really "Beat" Hamidon as such. But the NPC's who live in this world? They don't know that. From their point of view, literally nothing mankind has really stopped Hamidon cold except for Cole himself.

Largely agreed. I have to assume Vanessa DeVore would have been capable of helping him.... if she could get him to trust her enough to really let her inside his head..... which he was probably too paranoid to EVER agree to. So I think DeVore and Vetrano made the pragmatic decision to use him as he is. Scott and Cole aren't the only ones to write people off as "acceptable losses" or "regrettable but necessary", and there's some symmetry in the idea that his own lieutenants might have seen him that way.

Sappers are very much one-trick-ponies. Drain you dry and detoggle you. Regen will do pretty well against them because of the amount of passive regen you have going on, particularly if you're IO'd out. They basically won't be able to kill you alone. That said, even as a one-trick-pony? It's a pretty GOOD trick while they have a squad of their buddies handy. Backed up by a bunch of Tactical Operatives who Taze you, and Gunslingers who hold you with Ice Bullets, they'll do the Dominator thing and just chain CC you holding you helpless as they wear you down. But yea. Electric Armor, Energy Aura, Fiery Aura (don't forget Consume! So many forget Consume!), will all wreck sappers day's. Regen and Willpower can also do nicely because Quick Recovery will give you a chance to come back and get just enough blue to act that much sooner.

Well. Apparently not. I haven't used Energy Manip in... a long time. (obi wan voice) a long time. Not sure I agree with that design either, but.... presumably that was during live? So if the ship has long since sailed.... OK. Objection withdrawn.

Highlight is mine. Not a fan of providing any kind of Status Protection to Blasters under any circumstances. A break free on a sufficient cooldown, like /Martial Kombat's "Inner Will" I can see. But this looks like perma-able Stun Protection for a blaster. I can't get behind that.

/agree with @Razor Cure. I don't think a single one of my characters uses less than seven powers from their primary tree. Not ONE of them. So, 3 pets, 2 buffs, 1 utility? Par for the course. I don't see this as a problem. I mean, when you choose the class, it's pretty up front and unavoidable. Sure, you CAN build a petless MM. Just like you CAN build a tank who doesn't take their status protection power, or like you CAN build a blaster who uses only Brawl, Jump Kick, Boxing, and Air Superiority to attack with. It doesn't mean it's a good idea. I mean, knock yourself out for whatever you choose to for character concept. But if you're trying to ignore one of the fundamental principles of the AT, you do so at your own peril. I mean if you want your primary damage to come direct attacks plus providing decent support, there's the corruptor or defender. Choosing the King of the Pet Classes and then not wanting to use pets... I just don't get it. Maybe at some point the HC devs will choose to adjust MM's the way you want, and provide X buffs to you based on the number of pet powers you have that you DON'T summon? Maybe that would be a way to handle T1 pets being whomped dead fast at max level content. I haven't seen any indication that's the direction they want to go in. If anything, then recent changes have been about letting you get your pets back into the fray sooner vs later.

I see I'm not the only one who sees an alt combo that gets ragged upon, and decides to make a GOTM (Garbage of the Month) alt, just to show that yep, you can make this work just fine.

Is it though? That question may circle back to the whole "Are things balanced around tricked out IO builds, or around SO usage?". If balanced around SO's, then I think a case can be made that Sentinels are in a very nice niche. Quite durable, constant status protection, modest range and ability to hoverblast, etc. Not even close to the damage output of a blaster, true, but, IF ONLY CONSIDERING SO's, that blaster is going to eat pavement a LOT. The Sent? Won't. My personal sense is that it's probably time to balance things around IO builds, but, that is far from a universal opinion, and I do not know if the Dev's share it. (or for that matter, if they agree with my impressions of the relative strengths at SO usage.)

Don't you understand!!!?!? They're ENJOYING IT WRONG!!!111!!!oneone!!!11 (/sarc)

Definitely times i wonder if I'm even playing the same game as other people. I pop Rage on cooldown on my Invuln/SS and have never had a problem with the crashes. I don't find myself running out of end. I don't find myself freaked when my damage bonuses numbers drop to deep negatives for a very short window of time. I haven't suddenly felt extremely squishy on him when it fades. I'm also not doing non-stop farming. Perhaps that matters? I tend to do just regular story arcs at like +2/x5 on him.

See, I never looked at this as "dissing mental health". The parallel I drew was to Babylon 5, where That's not really insanity as such. That's a man who's a victim of serious Mind-Crimes done to him by high level telepaths.

The Razor Viper I have is still serviceable enough. But I admit, when it's time comes, I'm not married to the brand. If they'd had more LEFT HANDED mice <grumble grumble grumble> I might have more brand loyalty built up. the 12-side-button mice are probably more than my brain could handle. The original 6-side-button Naga I could have made work.... if it worked for us southpaws.

That's not all that far fetched. We never SEE complete rampant DE destruction on a planetary scale all humans turned into nachos and munched upon. We're TOLD about it, by NPC's who could be working off of inaccurate / incomplete information, who mght just be wrong. It could easily be spun to "there was, in fact, a giant multi-continent push. Approximately 2/3 of Praetorian Earth's population died. Not 100%, but 66% is still enough to scare the bejeeesus out of people, and if there's a dimensional portal over there to Primal Earth, I could still see a mass stampede of refugees saying "Nope, I don't care if maybe Hamidon stopped, NOT taking that kind of chance EVER again. I'm getting the HELL out of Dodge." That could leave varied pockets of humanity struggling to recover and reconnect civilization in other places around Prae Earth that we *could* do things with later.

Goldside is what taught me: I joined a team! Menu -> Options -> MIscellaneous -> NO XP. immediately on joining a team. Does mean I might lag behind some of the teams level, but even if I know I *could* go back and do some missions via Ouroborous, I vastly prefer doing them legitly at level content.

Yea. If someone is brand new to goldside, their first-ever (and probably second) goldside character is practically guaranteed to screw up and overlevel too much before they understand where the breakpoints are. Unfortuantely that does kind of require use of the "No Xp" option at points along the way.

+200% recovery for 30s is kind of a lot. I don't remember Hibernate's current cooldown / if that could be perma-able (flash of Hiberate the immediate detoggle to keep the +Recharge going) but the devs would want to factor in whether or not they'd want that to be possible. So much like @arcane. I like the idea. Not willing to commit to precise numbers. Very good brainstormy idea though.

I'd be perfectly fine with this idea. I'd like to see what other cities were like in Praetoria. Old Orlando? Tokyo? etc. An alternate 20-40 stretch that was maybe more Science/Tech focused and a bit less Magic themed than First/Night ward would be lovely.

I guess I care a little bit less about what "Current" timeline is for Primal Earth, because my main character started at issue 0 in live. Long before anyone knew about Praetorian Hamidon. Several others started in the Hollows era. Their own personal timeline starts a fair bit in the past. So who's to say my newer characters didn't start back then too? It all comes down to what you choose to suspend disbelief on, where you choose to mentally peg your character's story to "Okay they began HERE". Sure Twinshot may show up and inflict herself upon me (verbage quite intentional) as a forced contact at lvl 5, but nothing says I have to acknowledge her existence or allow her to in any way be part of my character's journey except via Ouroborous.... if then.

I don't want to tear up the existing Goldside Lore. But there are things that could be done to use the content more. We know from the Goldside 1-20 arcs that Primal Earth was already aware of Praetoria, and Longbow and Arachnos both sent people over. So I see no reason why a low lvl hero couldn't be recruited by Dark Watcher and sent to Praetoria for those same 1-20 arcs. Rather than have Undercover options for Calvin Scott or Provost Marchand, why not have Undercover options for Dark Watcher (Blue) or Arbiter Sands (Red)? Same missions, same vanilla objectives, just a sprinkling that shows you Dark Watcher and Arachnos pulling some strings along the way. a PEAT ... not sure about. I know I've heard people talk about a "Greenside" where you join the Devouring Earth, but .... nah, I can't really see that happening AND still have your character retain agency and choice as independant player. You'd pretty much be consumed if the DE get thier hooks in you. I would love 40-50 content geared to let a Praetorian stay goldside for the distance. It's still *possible* now, but it ain't easy, you really have to work for it.

How data is stored can always be changed. But there is that whole Jurassic Park "... you didn't stop to think if you should!" angle, too. I'm torn on the main idea. Part of me hates opening the floodgates wide to all possible combinations, because of how much garbage could be produced of just genuinely bad looking combos. OTOH, there's probably a large number of combinations that would look awesome, and with so many combinations it's probably unrealistic to expect too much to be curated in advance. Maybe just "let people get creative, and if it sometimes looks like fingerpaints, oh well" is really the best path forward.

I won't turn down more hairstyles in general. But I reallllllly want to be able to choose a variety of hairstyles for each hat / Helmet I want a Low Ponytail to go with my Fedora! Or a Saxon Helm with a crew cut! Or a baseball cap with Divine hair! Or... well you get the idea. I mean, OK, the giant exposed brain? Probably doesn't play nice with hats. Road Warrior style big spikey mohawk probably doesn't either. But Shirly, several more combinations are plausible.

I definitely attune PvP's to be able to slot them early. But, upon dinging 50, I could see the idea of mass-unslotting them during a lvl 50 respec to adjust power selections and reallocate slots-per-power.... and then auctioning the attuned PvP's, buying unattuned 50 PvP's with the proceeds, and then boosting them.

Support/Melee OR Melee/Support, is a thing that I would love to have on Homecoming. NOT. Repeat. NOT a straight port of what Thunderspy has. But something the HC devs spent time looking at, fiddling around with different Inherent ideas, and finding something that they believe strikes a playable if highly challenging balance. Do I expect to see that anytime soon? Oh hell no. Maybe not ever. I can dream, and that's likely all it will be. But there's a lot of people who would be interested to play around with that pairing of powersets. MM Henchmen Customization is a Siren Song in it's own right. But while the idea sounds quick and easy, getting it to work and play nice and have visible costume differences for the Pet Buffs powers, is not small task. And it wouldn't shock me if the porting of it into HC's code caused major headaches with Pet AI and took several iterations. I do get why the Cost/Benefit has not (yet) been something that HC has wanted to publicly commit to. Most of the rest of what Thunderspy has? I've very glad we DON'T have. Having every mob scale to lvl 50 and every mission scale to lvl 50? Good GOD NO. probably wouldn't really be done right, becuase it's probably not giving lvl 50 Hellions access to a wide variety of powers. When they can pop powers that make players scream in frustration? Minions spamming Flashfire and chain stunning anyone without status protection, and using Rise of the Phoenix to come back to life, etc, Maybe I'd be willing to talk turikey. But same old same old powers and more bullet spongy? No. That's not scaling them up, that's a joke. My ulterior motive / what I'd really hate: Probably be the death knell of me ever finding 1-44 (ie, NON-Incarnate) teams ever again. And incarnate teams, to me, are Boring. The game would very rapidly become a single player game with a chat window for me. Still. If at some point, the HC devs decide "All Incarnates All The Time" is really what they want, well, they win, I lose. Devs have the right to do anything they damn well please.