MTeague

Any aura / shield effect would light it up anyway. "Look at me! I'm a disembodied pair of fists and a cloak". Teammate: Here, take an Ice Shield. *paints ice around the full skeleton, visible or not* Same with Thermal Shields, Stealth, Any armor toggle, any heal spell hitting you that glows around you, etc. I really think you'd be disappointed with the result, unless they re-coded the animations for damn near every power in the game to compensate. That right there is a good reason not to do it, IMHO. It's also why, as much as I reallllly want a Martial Arts Scrapper with a lower-snake-body, I don't expect to ever see it. And that's even with Snakes in the game as an existing resource.

Not opposed to the idea, but my tanker monitors his damage % for exactly this reason. It's on the right hand edge of my screen, and whether or not I notice the exact number I have no problem noticing when it flips to red text, then just hang back for a second, maybe Taunt something, maybe reposition the crowd. I can see how it might be more difficult to notice if you had Red/Green colorblindness or more reduce periphial vision or something else going on though.

/FF is really overdue for a revamp. I get and appreciate that the Homecoming Devs like to be cautious and deliberate, and try to figure out what they can do that will minimize unhappy surprises for the players. That's a good, solid, professional, admirable way to operate. But really, /FF needs help. You can get amazing amount of mitigation out of it, true. And so can /Time. And /Cold. And /Empathy. And /Thermal, and /Traps, and /Rad, and /Dark.... but all of them bring something else to the table. Now, it's true, FF does not JUST bring Defense to the table. Force Fields brings: Defense Permanent Personal Status Protection on a AT that usually has none. Detention Field. While not perhaps popular, it can isolate a specific nasty target while you blow up a crowd around it. Knockback Out The Wazoo. Again, not exactly popular, but can be used to protect against foes who would otherwise bypass your defenses. Mobs that are flying the friendly skies are not attacking you or your pets or anyone else. PFF. Can be used to soak alphas and such if you were so inclined, so your pets aren't as carved up by it, on the initial pull of a Big Meanie. Some care is required though, as it will suppress Pet Auras and Supremacy as part of the "only affects self". It's not quite a one trick pony. But the reality of the current state of the game, is no one gives a flying bleep about anything but the first two tricks. And that is not likely to change in the near future. It's godlike if you're exemping down to lower levels. Midrange teams will sing your praises. 45+.... not so much. I have no idea how you thematically squeeze better offensive powers into the set though. Not unless Knockback ITSELF started carrying extra damage as mobs are flung into walls, slammed into the floor, etc.

AR / Martial is a fun fix. I'm soloing one through First Ward, and she kicks face (literally... storm kick and all....) I don' have quite the same mix of powers you do, but it's easily the most blappy blaster I've done in a long long time. I don't have mids on the laptop, but I've got: 1 - Burst 1 - Ki Push 2 - Slug 4 - Storm Kick 6 - Buckshot 8 - Speed of Sound 10 - Burst of Speed 12 - Sniper Rifle 14 - Reach for the Limit 16 - Dragon Tail 18 - Flamethrower 20 - Reaction Time 22 - Toxic Dart (meh, but placeholder to unlock next one....) 24 - Adrenal Booster 26 - Ignite 28 - Inner Will My character is only lvl 29, so, don't have the rest filled out quite yet. But loving it so far. The main this is just the raw screaming mobility. Between Burst of Speed to bamf in for quick strikes and Jaunt to pop out to proper range for some cones, I can be anywhere at a click. I recognize many will not care for Ignite but with an Immob proc from Frozen Blast, it's kind of nice. Plus, Ki Push and the Knockbacks, properly used into corners, can leave mobs stuck in the fire with no way out, and the Knockdowns can keep them there a bit longer to keep burning. I know, I don't have Hasten, and that makes me a heretic, but I haven't felt a need for it. I've always got a couple attacks up and ready to use. Adrenal Booster is such a wonderful Oh-Crap! key, particularly for some of the First Ward stuff.

I would use Seeds of Confusion relentllessy, unless specifically asked by the team leader to stop. If the team leader asks that I not use Seeds, I drop group. Period. I have very few true red lines in this game. But "omg I losing xp!!!!" is such a misplaced concern compared to the vast increase in kill speed. And hell, blasters are probably following any case of Seeds with a Fireball, so the mobs are all tagged, you're going to exp.

"You don't want to sell me Deathsticks. You want to go home and rethink your life." More seriously though, there's very few sets where I could argue mobs are merely subdued vs broken/killed. Mind is a good example of one that works. Esp if your final blow is Mezmerize. They slump to the ground asleep, and wake up in the Zig. Dominate, well, okay they're clutching at their head in pain. But the Hellion Humane Society probably prefers them getting a temporary migraine to being "Arrested" by your average Fire Armor/War Axe tanker.

You can both get merits running stories at once, if you have "enable collaberative missions" in options. At least, it's supposed to allow you to both get credit for advancing them, as long as you both have the same mission(s) available and if you both talk to the contact as you progress along the story arc. Other possible fail conditions.... not sure just spitballing are you not yet level 10? ATO's are 10 and up. are you sure you're looking under the same section of the menu as your friend? There are no Recipes, you have to be looking under the Enhancements section. .... drawing a blank beyond that, though.

I guess. I actually *like* it when I'm the squishy and there's stray mobs running around. Lets my "get outta my face!" powers get used, whether it's a KB, or Immob-And-Kite, or a Fear, or a Repel, or a shorter term Hold/Stun, etc. And the Controllers are pretty much always delighted to have stray mobs. Something to DO!

My OCD requires me to perfectly balance my heroes against my villains and figure out who is which one's nemesis and how a "Final Showdown" would play out among all my alts. And the Goldsiders have to be a smaller subset that I figure out which one will side with who when S**t Gets Real. And I can't Ding lvl 2 on any character without a 900+ character backstory. So I only have like 40 characters right now, not the hundreds that some have. Still, yes. I'll have weeks where I'm focusing my way through First Ward on a Blaster and finally finishing the Infiltrate the Asylum mission and being "GOD that was rough!", and then I'll kick back and fire up the lvl 50 Plant/Psi Dominator and just BWAHAHAHA as entire battalions of Longbow fall before her. Or I'll fire up the Claws/SR and hum "cant touch this" as she dances through packs of Malta and Carnies. Probably the biggest, "okay, this character has arrived!" though, was the Invulnerable/SS tanker, lvl 36. I picked him back up after a month of tooling around on Corruptors and MM's. And then had him solo Defend The Midnight Mansion, Night Ward, on +2x4 with Bosses. No Footstomp yet. Just single target punches. And He just DON'T DIE. Like "nothing of this world can harm him." The final fight, he had 4-5 EB's on him at once, and while he had to be careful to hit-and-fade out of their charge-up-PBAE attacks, he mopped them ALL up. All by himself, all alone. Okay, I said after that, You Has Graduated.

@Gulbasaur..... I get what you're saying to an extent. But.... "Get used to disappointment". Converters / Availablity of IO's / Power Creep: You're not wrong. It HAS caused power creep. But that ship has sailed. In fact, I believe that ship has completed Magellan's Voyage seven times. It's too late to change now. And even if you did? Wouldn't change any existing characters, and No Way In Hell do I see the devs doing anything about existing characters, nor do I see them wanting slash availabilty to new players while leaving existing players unaffected. Defense / Global Recharge. I sympathize and if IO's had not gone live yet, I'd be sounding a major warning for exactly the reasons you outline. But do I expect it to change now? No. Not a chance. Mezzes. I like where you're going and I'm willing to talk turkey. But can we also say something about Purple Triangles? "Everyone can solo", well, that's a lot more true than not. But if my Mind Controller's only option to "solo" the Envoy of Pain is a Shivan and a Vanguard HVAS, it's hard to call that "soloing" anymore. If we want to make mezzes shorter duration and make more AT's vulnerable to them, okay, but let's not give AV's a giant "Nope!" button, either. "Nerf Brutes". No. "I Can't Get Behind That!" (for bonus points, hear that in William Shatner voice) They already have Poke-Voke instead of Punch-Voke. They already have a lower AE target cap. They do still need something to distinguish them a bit from Scrappers. And whether or not the Issue 6 Devs intended for MM's to be "Villain Tankers", I never saw it play out that way past lvl 15. Even on Live. Brutes tanked redside for anything past a certain threshold. At least in any redside teams *I* was ever in after Cap Au Diable back prior to Going Rogue Aggro Cap. Here I'll largely agree with you. Dumpster tanking / zone herding was dumb. But it's gone, has been gone, so not worried about it coming back. Kheldians to me, aren't MEANT to have a specific niche as such. They're Jack-Of-All Trades. Need a Tank? They can tank. Need ranged blasting? They can do that. want more Sentinel-like Durable-Midrange Blapping? They can do that too. They're like WoW Druids. They specialty is the flexibility. Capes / Auras. Ain't no one stopping you from refusing to don a cape or use an aura until you do the unlocks. The missions are still in the game. Other players, quite frankly, aren't your business how they setup their costume. Their character, their choice. And what would it really change? Force someone to have a costume they didn't like, so they powerlevel and bang out the rush mission to get a costume they do like? And you never see them do it, soooooo what really would you gain? What would be the point of changing it? No, I can't get on board with that one. Use of /ah. I still visit the AH in person over 80% of the time, because I do it by habit before I even remember the command exists. But really again, what's the big deal? So someone posts some salvage from the middle of Striga or Eden instead of Talos. Woo woo. How is that impacting you? If they were forced to run to Talos (or Cap or wherever...) you'd never know, you'd never see where the vast majority of players are at any moment. So what would the restriction really GAIN for you? Null The Gull: I do not use Null. I will never use Null. But I do not want Null take away. Taking Null away wouldn't suddenly pump up redside population. All you would accomplish is have people who want to blueside with VEATS and villain types to AE powerlevel to 20, run 10 missions, and bamph, they'd still poof out of redside and you woulnt' see them again. All you'd do by removing null is annoy the CRAP out of them, and gain nothing in the doing. So no. Let the bird be. If you prefer tip missions, GOOD!! There's excellent writing on many of them! They're among my favorite missions, second only to Goldside missions! But let the bird be.

I mean, I guess? But my understanding of game lore, is if you use enough 'dyne, you mutate into a Troll. That's not exactly on part par with Gandalf smoking some pipeweed at Bilbo's birthday. I don't think it's inappropriate to have some harmless stoner NPC's though, as well as having the game highlight that same things, like Crystal Meth, will do Very Bad Things.

Well, i decided to put my money where my mouth is. So, introducing, Green Company. Yup. Mastermind, Mercenaries/Radiation Emission. In Praetoria no less. Then I rolled some rolls so I could roll before I roll. The result was, Scrapper, Kinetic Melee/Shield Defense. I came up with the costume before the name. I must have tried 30 different variations on Silver Fist, Star Fist, Silver Streak, Silver Shield, Star Shield, Argent Aegis, Argent Strike. They were of course, all taken. Then a pun popped into my head, and Lo And Behold, I got the name. Introducing.... Argent Tina.

joke answer: This looks like a job for Michael Crichton and Jeff Goldblum! real answer: I'd listen to Luminara. Yea, there's no doubt some *very* fine details we may not get. Did they have round irises or cat-eyes? Some things if too much connective flesh is gone or if it's too far removed from the bone, we may not get. And may they come to some conclusions at first, and recalibrate after? Sure. But this doesn't look like someone winging it to me. If you go from the linked article to the scientific journal where they published their findigs (link to that exists on the first link), it goes on and on for some time, and does explore whether this skull could be a juvenile skull or fully developed one, and compared to other types of dinosaurs whose fossiles were found in similar regions from a similar time period. There's 122 different sources cited to it. I'm not going to read all of them. But it doesn't say "snow job" to me.

Better to make it a "Default Base / Code" option rather than "My Base / My Code". That way, those who want to could have another base set as their "don't ask me just DO it" default, too. I suppose there would need to be a fallback check to prompt them for where to go if the access failed since last time they set it, though.

<starts to say something, stops> <starts again, stops> <goes and makes coffee>

Now, I want a Dominator Secondary called FREEM Assault. Just so we can say: They may take our lives.... but they will never take... our FREEM DOM!!!!

So much this. I would go from "solo half the time" to "solo 95% of the time" overnight. I'd likely be able to find a small cadre of like-minded folks, but it would reallllly change the feel of the game for me. Not for the better.

your milage may vary, but for /Regen, I've found focusing on +Resistance set bonuses and some Defense on the side, is more reliable than trying to go all in on Defense and then watching as Cascade Failure sets in. But as a qualifying statement, I do a lot more Story Arcs and Flashbacking and I'm almost never at 45+. (the Incarnate game just doesn't do it for me)

Clearly what we need is a KnockBACK interface!! /ducks for cover

For true honest-to-god TF's, I'm fine with "nope, this is a TF, finish it with whoever's left from when you started it.". But Ouro flashbacks? Things that were just plain old Story Arcs around Talos Isle or Croatoa or Sharkhead Isle? C'mon. What's the big deal? No foul to recruit more if you really *were* that level, doing the arc on the way up, shouldn't be when flashbacking it, either. One possible exception: if you flashback with certain challenges added for Ouro badges? Maybe then, inviting more people should disqualify you (certainly anyone you recruit partway through, because they weren't there for the whole thing...) from recieving "credit" towards that badge. I'm hopeful (possibly without reason, but hopeful....) that some of the code refactoring Homecoming has done in the last couple years, may have made it more possible to untangle that particular knot. Certainly don't hurt to ask, even if I have to keep that line from Princess Bride in mind. "Get used to disappointment." 😀

Interesting comparison. I hate radio missions because they're sooooooo blatently one-off generic and are uusally "oh no! Go stop the people who stole the P.L.O.T. device!". By contrast, I usually love the tip missions because they have a nice writeup and a degree of player agency in deciding what to do with the tip, and frequently some good dialogue in the mission themselves. But yea, my first reaction was "This already exists, it's called AE". That said, I would not be opposed to additional vehicles to create missions against varied enemy types. With a caveat. I don't want dumbed-down level scaling to create, say, lvl 50 trolls that have zero difference in looks/powers but just have buffed stats. So if enemy groups simply STOP at a certain level, I would want them to stop being available beyond that level, unless you exemplar down to thier level. I'm fine with the devs introducing actual new mobs that are INTENDED to be fought by max lvl players and actually have a carefully curated selection of power combinations intended to challenge lvl 50's/Incarnates. But just turning Outcasts into bullet sponges? No. Maybe Outcasts who are in Granite Armor, or who hit you with Bonfine, or Outcasts who can cast T9 nukes on YOU, etc. But if they still have the same powers they had at lvl 15? No. that's just garbage to try to scale them up as-is. Not saying you were going for that specfically. Just saying, that's one direction I'd want to wall off. If we can prevent that, then I'm on board with the basic idea.

The two ideas are not incompatible. We could have an "auto-exemplar if higher than contacts lvl cap", as well as players being allowed to self-exemplar when/how they see fit. I'm fine with either or both being options.

It is also possible, that the HC Dev's simply disagree with the premise that making it a non-perma click power was "one of THE greatest injustices done during the live version of the game".

Darnit @Troo I want to see that Mercs/Rad!! Do it! Doooooo eeeeet!