MTeague

To be fair, it's very possible to simply skip these accolades. I've only got half of them on my main. "Having" to do them on your alts, again and again and again, is a choice. That said, I don't object to the idea of alternate methods to acquire the badges.

not that often I'm surrounded by mobs while airborne. oh it can happen sure, Sky Raiders, GoldBrickers, etc. But most of the time I'm airborn I'm zipping from place to place not fighting.

Also a general rule of thumb is any set that people talk about as being a "Bad Set" can still perform just fine and 95% of your PUG groups won't care or even notice. Many will tell you Electric Blast is a "Bad" blast set. You can still wreck face with it. Maybe it takes you 25% longer to clear a map. Anyone care? I don't. An empath is good solid team reinforcement that protects me if I decide to do dumb things in the name of fun. And maybe I don't need the buffs for Peregrine Radios, but they're mighty nice to have on hand during Night Ward / Number Six arcs.

I will never enjoy AE farming, and I will never do an AE farm. I see no challenge and no point in fighting mobs perfectly custom tailored to be weak to my strengths. That said, it's a valid part of the game. And has been. Both during LIVE and here on HC, the devs are very well aware of it's capacties and have obviously not decided to remove the ability to create such missions. If has such a tacit stamp of developer approval, then I'm not going to rag on it any more than my first two sentences. I try to see it like "Okay, I loathe mushrooms on pizza, and see no idea why you'd want to ruin a pizza by putting fungus on it"...... but probably more than half the forums would say the same to me about the awesome wonderfulness that is Hawaiian Pizza. Different tastes for all. My only real regret with AE is that Homecoming did not and probably could not keep the vast library of Story-Focused Missions that AE had had in LIVE. The Moonbase Laser villian mission where you ransomed Paragon for One Meeeeeelion Influence was just fantastic. There was a rogue-to-hero themed AE mission I loved too, "Tangled Vines" where you had to get everybody's favorite WSPDR reporter out of the isles to the safety of Paragon City. And a very Matrix-y / TRON-y story arc I remmeber from Live where there was an NPC who had been a hero and had been.... trapped within the AE system.... and forces within wanted to try to get out to the "real" Paragon City. So many other really good ones I remember thoroughly enjoying that... we couldn't get a copy of. Those are the breaks. But AE in principle CAN be used for great storytelling as well as mass farming.

Ah yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

I do not recognize this as being a problem. Look, I prefer redside over blueside. Heck, I prefer goldside over redside, but that's a separate animal. But other players are under absolutely no obligation to like what I like. The devs are under absolutely no obligation to try to make everyone like all content equally, or to play in a nice distributed manner across factions. Yes, humans often make what I consider sub-optimal choices for reasons that I think are bad reasons. That doesn't mean I get to redo their choices for them to what they "should have" chosen. And it doesn't mean that a referee needs to put their thumb on the scales in a lopsided enough fashion until players change their minds. The devs may choose to do so, of course. But I don't recognize it as a problem, or a need. If redside isn't as populated as you might prefer, lure some fresh meat new blood over. Or mentally start treating it as a more exclusive area for those willing to make the leap.

It's not clear to me the devs WANT to allow for Henchpets that are visually indistinguisshable from a player. Maybe they're fine with it? Illusion Control / Phantom Army / Mirror gives me hope. But I've not heard anything from them saying that they WANT to allow fully customizeable MM pets (though nothing writing it off as a bad idea, either....) Pet Buffs, typically make very slight alterations to the costume. There are slight differences between a completely unbuffed henchpet, a henchpet with the first buff not the second, a henchpet wtih the second buff but not the first, and a henchpet with both buffs. Does that HAVE to stay true for all future MM pets? Not necessarily. But I;m sure they'd LIKE that to remain true, and I'm sure it's a big obstacle. If players can put in absolutely anything, what visible effects can your petbuffs reliably give? Then there's the pet attacks themselves, and making sure the animations of the pet attacks FIT the pets. The Grave Knights attacks look so badass because it FITS the Grave Knight. It's not going to be so easy to assign an attack to something that might be female, male, or hugemale, might be 4 feet tall or 10 feet tall, might be thin and graceful and might look like a linebacker. Might be humanoid, weretiger, or robotic. Might have a head? Might not. etc.

If you're cybernetic, you're still a living being, still have a mind, and are still vulnerable to psionics. And if you're fully robotic form, but a living soul inhabiting it, well, psi attacks could still reach you. I think you'd need to be truly mechanical, no ghost in the machine, just truly a machine to deserve any kind of inherent boost to psionics. That said, it would be an interesting idea. Balancing it would be... all kinds of fun. And it's not something I forsee happening, but.... they've surprised me before. Recently, even. Who knows?

That is an unfortunate truth. The missions in Mercy, Port Oakes, and Cap Au Diable, are very much "City of Lackeys", where you're a useful tool to someone else. It doesn't stay that way. But a lot of players do not make it past that pont. They get disgusted and walk away. They never get to Sharkhead Isle, where you start coming more into your own, and into Nerva and St Martial where you're treated with more respect and even deference by some contacts. Tip Missions are a good way to feel like your own villain once they start dropping at lvl 20. And some of the newer arcs like Mr G are just wonderful. That said, it is definitely true some mission arcs are more about helping someone ELSE's evil scheme. Vernon Von Grun acknowledges your power and treats you with respect, and has a few amusing arcs with some great temp powers. But ultimately, if you're "Well what is MY characters motivation? Why would I help this mad scientist?" It's largely on you to headcanon you'll make his work fail, but walk away with his secrets. And then you get to Weston Phipps, the Kicker of Puppies Himself, and there's just NO reason to help Phipps unless your character is also a Twirler of Moustaches and Kicker of Puppies. Some characters, I simply don't talk to certain contacts.

I'd be on board with that if it had more costume options. As it is, it's quite likely my Stone armor dude will be Graniteless.... just because of the costume issue. I don't work on costumes for as long as I do to become a faceless granite slab indistinguishable from everyone else wtih teh same powerset. ... That's why he's still at lvl 1 in Breakout.

I mean, to some degree so does poison? you're definitely going to want the primary debuffs to land on bosses first (though catching them with splash effects for additional debuffing never hurts...) The "I want to be able to solo everything and all my characters will be maxed IO builds across the board" tendancies on the forums (and I'm no exception here), has produced a definite slant to favoring Debuff heavy sets, with Buffing sets being viewed as "better for Masterminds" because even solo, an MM has pets to buff. I'm not sure how much the actual average player (vs the average forumite) goes nuts with IO's but that divide has become my rule of thumb. I would put in a good word for Controllers using the Sorcery pool though. Containment + Helpless Mobs + Enflame is kinda fun, and Spirit Ward is a nice thing to toss onto your buddies or pets. It would give you some options to do your own thing if you happen to be on some night your friends aren't, etc.

I'd ignore them and zone into my next mission. I know, I know, I'm a cheater like that.

I have no objection to such a feature being added as long as I can set it to auto decline any duel offer without ever causing a popup or notifications at all. And rather than spitting out some kind of auto-deline message to the challenger, having it set to refuse all duels should just GRAY OUT the challenge to duel option for any prospective challengers while they have me targetted. That way they know right up front I ain't interested and would never accept, without any need for tells or other pestering me with repeated challenge offers.

One of these weekends I'll need to dust off my Elec/Stone Broot. He's still sitting at lvl 1 in Breakout. The recent revamp HAS cleared him for actual play. I just keep hoping for any version of Granite where I can actually see shreds of my costume instead of a DE mob.

If I could press the History Eraser Button and redo some of the early CoV design.... Arachnos would be nothing special. I've had had one of the Isles ruled by the Family, one ruled by the Tsoo, one ruled by the Sky Raiders, one ruled by the Carnies, one that's just an anarchists wasteland of Freakshow, and other unorganized gangs, and off to the side, on a minor island, there would be Arachnos. They wouldn;t be anything special at the start. As you progressed through the game, a redside player would have the OPTION to pick one group (Arachnos if you wish, or the Tsoo if you preferred, etc) and favor them as they went, gradually shifting balances of power and having them control more and more territory. Or they'd have the OPTION to play every side against each other, and keep them all weakened from infighting. Epic level you'd have the OPTION of a personal power grab, or the option of just grabbing a ton of money and living large in St. Martial, because why rule the world when you can just enjoy the good life? Probably would require some serious phasing, because if player A has favored the Carnies and brought them to power, but I favored the Family and brought them to power, then when we're teamed up, the team would have to experience the world of the lead player. But at this point, it's much too late, that ship has sailed, and there's no guarantee it would have been more popular than what we have now.

I think both CoH and CoV offer as much player agency as could reasonably be expected for a 2004 era MMO game engine using a Quest-Driven format. Which is to say, not much. Tips are better. Instead of one mission you get typically get two related missions, and you choose which one of them to complete. The Preatorian 1-20 missions with the undercover options giving you some choices to subvert the mission givers intent, plus the Moral choices at the end of a Zone-Faction-Arc to hope factions, is a significant step up. But as with most games, you really only have just so much freedom to go around. Want to beat up a civilian? Or toss a warning shot at that truck that drove straight at you? Too bad. For the most part... you can't. You can go ground effects that are pretty much ignored. On a Mayhem mission you can kill civilians, but not out in regular rogue isles. Want to try to eliminate street crime for good? Too bad. You can't. With very focused effort from a large group of players you MIGHT clear several streets around Atlas Park well.... and because so many players killed so many mobs fast, enough, you'll accelerate their repop rate something fierce. Want to have the Heros go Gun-Blazing against the heart of Arachnos? You basically can't on your own. You can say "mother may I" to Miss Liberty and do a MLTF to fight them in a certain approved manner within an instance. You can't just go in and clean up Grandville or St. Martial on your own. Same is true on the flip side. I'm not saying this in a disparaging manner. I'm not saying "this is a massive failure of the game that must be corrected." I'm saying "This is the price of existing within this game engine, with game models developed in the early 2000's.

Well of course not. They're separate and Even Bettah!

There might be some way they could split the difference. Ie, if leader already has credit for the tip, bypass it, if not, add an extra pre-requisite mission to the Strike Force. or maybe if every member of the strike force has credit then bypass? Not sure what would be considered proper balance. I mean, that probably wouldn't be fun to CODE. but it would allow longer-term redsiders to have the feeling of gradual progression while not leaving visitors stuck behind an unexpected "Nope!"

Presence / Pacify?

some of the one-off tips, I believe, were intended to provide a gradual feeling of progression for a Villain. Not just a checkbox for "okay, i did this TF and got this badge", but a feeling like your character is having some agency and some plans gradually come together as you come into your power. admittedly, that's no doubt less important to a primarily bluesider who's at most a tourist to redside, but ... is what it is. I like the current system.

As long as each power has a 30% chance to result in

I don't believe either unique directly boosts the power of Health at all. So if endurance is not an issue? I'd sacrifice the Miracle unique and keep the Numi's, and the Numi's would still carry a slight +Regen boost.

Life is hard. I don't think there's a single story arc in the entire game that can't be solo'd, though some might require use of certain temp powers at certain levels. (and I'm not talking P2W, I'm talking Shivan Shard, HVAS, Ring of Peebles, etc) If people don't want to join you, they don't want to join you. Be more personable and persuade them. Or accept that their choice is their choice and solo the darn thing. An appeal to the devs to hold out more prizes just so more people will be available to help you.... I can't get behind that.

"Judge, eat a snickers"

Because they're my kind of fun. My favorite, even if I don't play him that much on any given week, is always going to be my Mind/Kin Controller. (also, my avatar, and the first character listed in the page my sig links to) At City of Heroes launch, I came from EverQuest, and the AT and powersets were specfically chosen to be as close as I could get to an EQ Enchanter. It made him feel like an extension of my EverQuest character. I mean, sure he wasn't a gnome, but enchanters are masters of illusion. Who knows what he *really* looks like, or what species he *really* belongs to? In flurry of new people trying out a new MMO, people were doing Superman or Wolverine or Ironman or Batman knockoffs. I made Cygnus specfically to be a "Hidden Hand" type of hero. NOT one who's probably going to make the evening news. Not one you'd see combating an alien invasion downtown. But more like a Dark Watcher figure, before I even knew there WAS a Dark Watcher NPC. Someone who might slip into the enemies lair undetected, warping what they see and percieve, and leaving them all trussed up and ready to be arrested without the bad guys ever even understanding what had just happened. More of a teacher and a guide than a Man of Steel. Both powersets are amazingly Click-Heavy. I know that's a huge drawback for some, but it WORKS for me. Anytime he's in a mission, my brain is rapid-fireing triage of what I need to do next.