MTeague

I admit, from the title, I assumed it was the Destroyed Galaxy City intro, with the dude screaming about Blue Spectrum.

I am occasionally a sadist. 😀

I definitely enjoy the Scirocco arc. I do wish there was an option to actually choose to try to help him, even if that choice had to end in a railroaded "failure". When I do patron arcs, I inevitably choose Scirocco or Ghost Widow, because they seem the most civilized of the four. Mako is just a brute, and Black Scorp, nope, have no desire to work with anyone who cybernetic'd that much of his body by choice. It'd be one thing if he was more like a Clockwork King scenario, but my understanding is he chose that.

I solo'd "Oldschool" Positron on my Controller. The combined 1+2 from before it was split up, via Ouroborus. No AV at the end, just an EB. It was nice being able to actually read the darn plot as I was going, though, to be fair, I can read the plot to any TF anytime I want on the HCWiki or other such sites.

What about: a) prevent all mission teleports / team teleports b) suppress all travel powers, including jetpacks, and kheldian novas, in order to force people to learn the geysers c) and -- *** is clubbed into submission by the forums ***

Space Squid doesn't do it for me. Never will. I hate the look of it. For this reason, my Khelds are always humanform only. What's "most effective" can go take a hike. Now, lots of people like, or at least don't *mind*, the squid, and that's cool. I may wonder why, but that's a "me issue". If something like this became available, I would use it. If it never becomes available, well, I have my own solution to it. I just don't pick the shapeshift powers. Ever. I really do like @Lazarillo's idea of a costume slot you designate as your "squid costume". I suspect that would take signficantly more programming effort, but I like the payoff in customization. It might also be a solution for people who hate the look of Granite armor, etc. Absolutely not holding my breath. But I think, if implemented, it could be the kind of code usable in more places than we might think at first glance.

This thread is going downhill fast. Zomg Look!! A Distraction!!

Do you not play in third person view, or something? I mean, yes, often your view is behind your character, but plenty of moves have them spin around, or get ragdolled, etc. It's not like you never see your own characters face in gameplay.

If you start red or blue, you lose the Double-Cross / Undercover options when doing goldside missions. Maybe you care. Maybe you don't. But those choices vanish if you don't begin gold.

Unless they added something such that your SELF buffs and SELF-bonuses could not take you past 40%, but outisde sources could. Which, a) would probably be vastly more difficult to implement than to write out as a sentance. b) would be a first step down a slope that may not be desireable. c) still might not help out Support characters, just make it more popular to have the currently-favoried AT's use Leadership powers. I can't say I've never called for Nerfs. Because I have. But over time, I've grown to understand the futility of trying to make someone else enjoy playstyles that they just don't enjoy. My main is a Mind Controller. There are very few situations where he feels even remotely useful to a team except by flashbacking to midgame, and not always there. I'm not talking necessary, No one should ever be necessary. I'm talking useful. So I solo, a lot. I sometimes wish it weren't the way the game was. But the only way I see to change that would be to do away with or cap set bonuses, and frankly, most people don't want to play under those conditions. Not even me, on some characters. I like being able to patch the Psi hole on my Invulnerability Tanker, for instance. So I keep an ear the ground re: the optinal difficulty settings being added, and teams that are interested in using them. Do I think those will ever go mainstream? No. Do I care? No. As long as they're being added and available for those who want them, I'm good.

I'm aware of two thing in Praetoria that can screw up your contacts. Both are discussed on this post: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/1797-loyalist-resistance-switching-alignments-every-time-for-praetorians/ Doctor Steffard will be removed from the game world if you complete (not start, complete) the third mission for Interrogator Kang (which is the search 10 dumpsters for the Limbo Device mission), so be sure to do ALL of Doctor Steffard's missions before doing ANY missions for Interrogator Kang. Fortunately, the breadcrumb introduction mission from Provost Marchand to Interrogator Kang can be completed without removing Doctor Steffard. It is also possible that completing missions for Interrogator Kang may remove Seer 1381 from the world also (not confirmed). Aaron Walker will be removed from the game world by missions given by Calvin Scott, so be sure to do ALL of Aaron Walker's missions before doing ANY missions for Calvin Scott. For the Aaron Walker one, I'm not even sure you can ACCEPT a mission from Calvin's Scott's arc, never mind complete it. I just never Calvin about missions until I'm done with everything else. But it's very doable to stay Praetorian. They may never formally introduce you to Doorman, but you can find him in the Underground, or via Contacts list, and go straight from Neutropolis to First Ward at lvl 20+, without ever having gone through the normal portal mission, without ever having chosen Red or Blue. I have two characters doing this now, one still in First Ward, one on the final set of story arcs for Night Ward. Getting them to 50 without ever choosing Red or Blue may be a bit of a pain, but it can be done. Using AE via Studio 55 / Pocket D, if everything else taps out first. Should you find some of the Ward missions.... difficult.... there's always the difficulty adjustment buttons. Also, most (all?) servers have some Praetoria-philes who would be glad to help out, even on the "oh you gotta be kidding me" missions.

One of my favorite XKCD's:

I can completely respect this. And yet... Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Agent Sitwell: Is this little display meant to insinuate that you're gonna throw me off the roof? Because it's really not your style, Rogers. Steve Rogers: You're right. It's not. It's hers. (Natasha kicks him off the roof) ..... although, Falcon DID catch him before he splatted. Darn it.

TNG was great. I loved it. But Babylon 5 had me forever after S1E13. I still await the reboot with a mix of giddy anticipation (JMS is in charge) and complete dread (HOW can you reboot? How in the world could you ever cast anyone else for well over 60% of the roles? They were too perfect as-was!).

I took an 8 month break from the game. This was my first week back in a long time. The itch did come back full force, and I very much enjoy all my old characters again. But I did have to put the game aside for a time. I focused some on just generally taking better care of myself. What gaming I did do was on single player games I could do for a few hours here and there and put down again. Skyrim. Darkest Dungeon. Civilizaiton IV. I spent some time looking over misc retirement plans and going over numbers to see how doable it is (plenty) in the time frame I want (not so much). I took a pair of two-week trips to visit with family and unplug. I even tried my hand at a bit of writing. But I didn't even log on Homecoming again, until I *wanted* to play the game again. No testing the waters after a month, etc. No half-hearted "Well maybe." When I actually MISSED beating things up on my scrapper, or flying into piles of mobs with Hurricane on my Stormy, or having my Controller set enemies against each ohter from the shadows, THEN, I logged on.

The long and short of it is, Eye of the Beholder. If you want to feel your heroes are noble and upright, and when they're teleported to jail, the teleportation process heals life-threatening wounds, nothing I see in game lore contradicts that. Can even keep conservation of matter intact by just reshaping some of the existing matter (body fat), harvesting those protons,electrons, and neutrons to make new matter in a different configuration to patch the grievous wounds. I mean, yea, that's Magic Tech, but we're dealing with a world where Magic is REAL, so honestly, we don't even HAVE to concern ourselves with conservation of energy and matter. It just comes down to what flavor of handwaving you prefer. If you want to believe that YOUR PERSONAL "hero" is in fact a ruthless killer who does leave bodies on the floor, with the coroner says "he's dead, jim", nothing I see in game lore contradicts that either. Even if most OTHER heroes are linked into a teleportation system somehow to protect their targets, you can handwave something about your own characters powers that negate that and prevent it from working on your OWN targets. And no one can ever "Disprove" you on that, either. So let's all join hands, and remember to stab Crey in the face. Lethally or not, dealer's choice.

Wait you mean the move labeled "Beheader", isn't just whacking them with the flat of the axeblade? Who knew!? But yea. Blueside main is Mind/Kin for this reason. He can defeat foes by giving them repeated Migraines until they collapse still clutching the side of their head. My Claws/SR scrapper? Definite Vigilante. Kills foes, no bones about it, no shame about it, considers herself flatly not answerable to any law except her own sense of what's right. Tanker? Invuln/SS. Not hard to imagine easing up on some of the punches as foes are almost out of it. Or going all Hulk Smash if it's Crey. He don't like Crey. Storm/Sonic Def? Sonic could plausibly disable / render you unconscious. The lightning storm..... not so much. Assault Rifle / Martial Kombat .... um, yea, she kills. No way around that. Headshot sniper. 1-2-3 SEE YA!!

I do think it would be interesting if when it chose to vary from the "standard" heroes/villains, if it always chose one of your OWN alts to make that work. a) would need to be some filtering by alignment, hero won't be robbing a bank, villain won't be protecting it. b) I also think your alt should also have access to every single one of their set bonuses, and if the encounter is 45+, should have access to any incarnate powers that character has. It shouldn't be a kittenized / nerfed version of your alt.

If you give the AT their own armor toggles... well then it's not Pets/Assault, it's Pets/Grab-Bag-of-Armor-And-Attacks. Not at thing that I would use. That said, I don't have to want to use everything the devs add.

a) that's some serious horizontal scrollbar on your post. It may be worth looking at your browser, or whatever method you're using to post, that's causing that. The less effort it takes people to read your post, the more likely people are to read it, and consider your ideas. b) to the content. Assault Rifle literally has a move called "Sniper Shot", so personally, I kind of put that as "closest to a sniper". also, if beam rifle is too "pew pew pew" for you, again, there's good ol' Assault Rifle, right there. It's a fully functional set. Still. I'm not opposed to alternate animations that do not adjust the performance of powers.

Honestly the biggest challenges in the game always felt to me like First Ward Night Ward, done at level. Where your character REALLY IS lvl 25-40. (ie, not exemplared down, when you don't have full winter sets slotted, etc)

Barely a speedbump, UNLESS, I do something so stupid as to cause teammates to die. Then, only then, do I feel any remorse.

I use Boxing/Kick/CrossPunch on my Mind/Kin controller. (only CrossPunch is on his bar of the three, but he HAS all three for synergy.) He does not have actual status protection. But if I'm soloing, it never matters, Mass Hypnosis as an opener. Hop into the middle of them. Fulcrum Shift for mass stacks. Siphon Speed to keep the +Recharge insane. A couple well placed Holds or Confuses for particularly troubling mobs Terrify for +damages and more lockdown wreck face with Crosspunch.

This is why I took an 8 month break from the game. Exclesior was definitely the most populated, but my controller (Mind/Kin) consistently felt useless after the mid-30's. I'm fine with Control not being necessary, but it wasn't even remotely helpful to any team I joined. And I didn't want to only be useful for my secondary. So I solo'd him. From 34, all the way to 50, with only the occasional group. Then I did a ton of flashbacking on him. It was lonely. But it made the maps far more challenging, and made me use every power wisely, going up against a wide variety of enemies. I really enjoy IO's and set bonuses. I deliberately level slowly, and have been known to disable XP first thing on joining a group, if it's a character I dont' WANT to level yet. I use a ton of Attuned IO's as I level, because it can take me 5 months to ding 50. I level sllllllllooooooowwwwly. I enjoy doing a great deal of content "at level". Not all of it, there's always lots more to flashback later, but i like experiencing my characters at different levels of power as they mature. To an extent the IO usage makes me complicit in my own problem, because yea, I do build my characters to be pretty durable through those bonuses. I do not enjoy incarnates, and I wish they weren't activated in all content 45+, but I also wish I'd win powerball one of these days. And it's about as likely. I have no illusions there. I can't say people are wrong to use incarnates. I just.... rarely team after lvl 44 because of them, except on Goldside. I hate speedruns. Always have. I hate when a "team" is 5 soloists racing around a team while a controller and a defender are trying to figure out how to catch up without dying. I actually enjoy travelling around the city oldschool style. I don't care if it takes me 6 minutes to get to the next door. The bottom line is, how I want to play, isn't how most people play. And I'm reluctant to join a "regular team" because I can't guarantee I'll want to team "every wednesday and thursday" or something like that. So, to some degree, it's a single-player game with some chat windows for me. So, every once in awhile I take a long break. Fiddle with Darkest Dungeon, or Skyrim, or Civilization. I don't have a better answer.

I came across a shantytown under the main strip in St Martial with an explore badge from a tour guide tip. Since there's a badge there I figure probably several people did know about it, but it was new to me.