MTeague

I respect that you're making an honest recommendation based on what you believe would be good for the game. I personally oppose both suggestions. You have *every* right to make these suggestions, and *every* right to disregard or disagree with my reasoning. Aggro Cap: Honestly, 16 seems plenty enough to me. More than that and mobs literally can't pack themselves close enough to you to all attack at once. Like, you're literally surronded to the point that the next crowd of people who want to punch/kick/stab/maul you can't physically reach you. And shooters are shooting through allies. Admittedly there's no such thing as friendly fire, but strictly from a point of view of realism, I don't think we need to go for the scene where The Blues Brothers finally get arrested. (although, that is hilarious). From a point of view of gameplay, sure, I can see it being a power trip for tanks and brutes.... if you're the one with the aggro. If you're the 2nd or 3rd tank on a team, you'll be a 5th wheel at best. Whereas with the aggro cap of 16, a second tanking class can actually hold some aggro. Multiple Summons: Between Lore Pets, Controller Pets, Patron Pets, Shivans, Vanguard HVAS, other misc Temp Power Pets, you can still do swarms when you want. Maybe not 24/7, but you can do them when it's time to pull out ALLLLL the stops. And I find the game plenty fun enough as is, without putting the final few nails in the coffin of balance. Still. Ultimately, it's not up to me, it's up to the Devs. Whether or not they agree with you, whether or not they respond, they do read these forums, so keep the suggestions coming, even if I or some other posters don't agree.

I don't object to certain groups being comprised of only certain slices of the human population where it makes narrative sense for it to be so. But I also don't consider that super-important to preserve, either. I mean, just considering Primal Earth alone, their timeline has very strong differences from our own, and any of those could have been enough to trigger societal shift in attitudes at different points of time. If Cassiopeia literally saved the entire freakin planet, that just might have made a FEW people consider some long held attitudes. Maybe some examples like that had some factions say "you know what? all I care about is can you fight, and will you fight with us?". So really? Who knows. Real-Life-Earth gangs may behave like X and Y, but what abbout Primal Earth gangs whose timeline was influenced in all these ways? For that reason, I think the Devs should have carte blanche to make any changes as they see fit. When it comes to storytelling, the person telling the story is pretty much the last word on what things are like in their story.

My preferred solution is not to let everything scale up to 50, but let you auto-exemp down, even outside of Ouro. Your lvl 50 walks up to a contact in Skyway City, accepts a mission. No change yet. You run around beat stuff up, you're still lvl 50, have all your powers. You change the mission to become the active mission. Now you auto-exempt down to the cap for that mission / story arc, and you stay exemplared until such time as the mission is no longer active. (either because you turned in the misson, or, because you chose to activate another mission instead.) Then no headaches to "how do we fairly scale up mobs, and what new powers should skulls have access to at lvl 50", or "what does a lvl 50 Troll do?" You get the maps as intended. You get the mobs as intented. You can do it without popping into Timey Wimey Wibbly Wobbly. Yes, you'd lose access to some powers while exemplared, but I'd find that a more than fair trade for the convience of going anywhere, doing any mission. I get that some will argue that exemplar itself breaks immersion, but well, can't have everything.

That's what my Claws/SR has Elude. I can go entire evenings without ever needing it once. But that one time a Sapper gets lucky and tags me when I'm standing in a crowd of Malta? It will mean I'll have to keep an eye on the buff, and be ready to pop some inspirations and retoggle, or just pause for a bit and go refill my drink between fights if I think "yea, been long enough, probably should just wait it out". But that's no biggie.

I don't want factions / alignments ignored. But I would like to see more shared space / better use of them. Shared zones where Bluesiders have contacts in Red Zones (but have to be careful moving around and vice-versa, would be wonderful. I would love the option to start a new character as a Praetorian Exile. ie, you're one of the people who escaped complete destruction in Praetoria and made out alongside Provost Marchand, etc. You would need some Timey-Wimey to able to do anything with the older goldside 1-20 missions, but /eye Ouroborous, there's an app for that. And then maybe instead of being "undercover" for Loyalist or Resistance, you could be making "slight adjustments" to the time stream, so that certain specific individuals can make it out who might have otherwise died. (ie, maybe Preatorian Vanessa DeVore leaves the mask behind but doesn't die?). probably not going to happen? But I'd love it if it did. In terms of mechanics, I have a laundry list of things that I think should not be as strong as they are, and things that I think should be stronger than they are, but I don't have a solution for those that doesn't nerf something that someone holds dear, and we've had too many such threads lately.

I *knew* it! I *knew* it! Ever since I saw a Hellion boss named "Battalion", I knew it! It was all a practical joke!

For bonus points, have Benny Hill music playing in the background as you sprint around with scads of mobs chasing you.

Mine is *team zones in* *looks at giant mass of CoT mages, summoned demons on fire, shrieking spectral ghosts, etc* my character: "They look friendly. I think we can talk this over." usually gets a few chuckles and encourages more banter from the rest of the team.

I just want more animations for Crippling Axe Kick. I hate it's vanilla animation AND the alternate punch animation. I'm just too darn picky about some things, I guess.

I would not want to see Elude (or any other armor T9) turned into a constant-on toggle. (Yes, I'm well aware of Granite, and always HATED granite because it invalidates most of the armor set once you get granite). But. If they were doing a complete Revamp of all Armor-Set T9's? I would like the idea of a Non-Perma-Able click T9 that helps boost defenses for the entire team. Whether by granting the team +Defense, or +Resist, etc, with the idea being that yea, you either help them dodge, or you dive in front of them to soak some hits on their behalf, etc. It might need a max number of friendly targets (ie, Team only, not unteamed allies) to avoid becoming completely Crazy on Hami or Ship raids, etc. But it would make for an interesting twist / reason to bring more melee's on certain content. [EDIT: and x4 style points if they could make an animation of the activating character briefly popping up in front the squishy for a second when they're attacked to show them intervening.]

I'd actually like to see far fewer / zero such missions. Or at least some advance notification that the story arc may contain such a mission. They make perfect sense for most humanoid heroes. "infiltrate the skulls" makes a lot less sense if your character has digitigrade legs, or looks like a large battle robot, or a minotaur, or is a creature of living stone, etc. If I know in advance I can simply ignore the story arc / never accept the missions. Failing that, an infiltrate where you're controlling someone ELSE.... ie, you the hero is staying outside, but Officer Vic Johansson is going in and you guide his actions? Sure, I can work with that. Or the EagleEye missions where you control the thug beating up Back Alley Brawler, etc, I can work with that. But the Skulls are not going to just be all ho-hum if freakin Robocop shows up in a 5X leather jacket and tries to act like a gang member.

I'm agnostic on multiple weeklies. But I would like to see some classic arcs make the cut. I'd particularly like to see some First Ward / Night Ward action for weeklies. I acknowledge "Defend the Mightnight Mansion" does have some issues re: respawn point, that might need to be dealt with before that one could be made into a weekly. But some great stuff there, does not in any way shape or form lack for challenge. Even if restricted to just Primal Earth. World Wide Red? Terra? Von Grun? The Aeon Conspiracy? The Cult of the Shaper? Automatic Villainy? Good times, man.

While it may be a distinctly minority viewpoint, I've always though the best solution to the Coming Storm / Battalion was to ignore them. Really doing them right feels like it would need tons of work. Not just a new trial or whatever, but potentially lots of changes in existing zones. You think every part of Paragon City / Rogue Isles would be 100% untouched except for a new Trial area? No. I mean, more zones would get the Galaxy City treatment, refugee camps all over, maps redone, etc, something to reflect that a Planet Eating Threat has just arrived. They wouldn't confine themselves to just one designated Hazard zone. Since I really don't expect anything coming close to that level of changes, then I prefer that they simply not be done / left undefined. Keeping them extremely localized to just a few trials would feel.... cheapened.... somehow.

I don't care if it's a salvage or just an option during a respec to KEEP your current powers, KEEP your current slotting, and then move slots on a one-by-one basis. I mean, none of it is necessary. We all manage respecs under the current system just fine. And I literally have more respecs than I know what to do with. If I could auction respec tokens I get from superpacks, or even hand them out as a gift, pure gratis, I would. But it would definitely be a quality of life improvemen to have some manner of "limited respec" to just move a couple slots around, keep your powers, and keep any power tray butttons untouched if that button involves a power you had both before AND after the respec. I'm sure the coding work would be non-trivial. I'm sure they'd need to take a snapshot of additional data beforehand and do a bunch of compares during each stage of the respec. But I'm hopeful (though I do not truly KNOW) that respecs are kind of tucked away in their own section of code, and would have pretty low risk to any impact on how powers preform afterwards or have any risk of breaking missions, etc.

A combination of Recharge enhancements plus the proposed "Lasting" enhancements, could well result in some things becoming Perma-Able that were previously impossible. Whether that is a desireable or undesireable outcome would be something for the Devs to make the call on. Sure my /regen would love a Perma-able Instant Healing. Sure lots of characters might enjoy an easier path to Perma-Hasten. It still may not be a door the developers really want to open.

I usually prefer oldschool travel. I'll use Ouro when I'm on a team (just to keep pace), or when I actually plan to GO to Ouro for a flashback. Not much otherwise.

*looks at several boxes full of Magic:The Gathering cards from the mid-90's* *whistles, trying to walk away and look innocent*

Awhile ago, I would buy a bunch of Superpacks, harvest 1/3 of the ATO's, play converter roulette with the other ATO's, and then put those 2/3's up for sale when I had them converted to "Pricey" ATO's. That worked good for me. Eventually the ATO's I used to put for sale stopped being as profitable, and I wasn't as desperate for infuence anymore. So now I buy fewer superpacks, but I basically keep everything from them. If I can't use some of the ATO's now, they can rest for awhile in my mail, and sooner or later I'll have an Alt who needs to withdraw some ATO's and/or some Converters from Petty Cash.

very mixed feelings on reading this post. On one hand, I want to agree. Badly. I never join groups that are advertised with "speed" "speedy" or "fast". I see any of those words, I give a mental "nope" and keep doing whatever I was doing. I prefer Kill All or at least Kill Most, and I always hate it when teams branch out totally separate from each other, especially when it happens silently and organically, basically just a team of soloists as opposed to a team. On the other hand, other than "I don't like that", what's my real objection? People are being efficient? Oh the inhumanity. People aren't playing how I want them to play? I mean, I can only keep a straight face for just so long when trying to tell other people what they should be doing. And particularly in a Pug situation. I mean, in a team of PUG's okay, you don't wish actual harm to befall anyone in real life, but at the same time, if you've never met them, they've never met you, and really they're not there in that group to be introduced. They're there to stomp face and get exp and maybe a couple drops. I can't really blame them for being goal-oriented. Gamers gonna game. But the above dichotomy is a big part of why I solo as much as I do. I don't seem to want the same thing from the game that most people I meet want from the game. That said, I may take an alt or two and server xfer them around, just to see what life's like on Everlasting, or Torchbearer, etc.

is your character very short? It's always been waist high on my Storm/Sonic defender. I never considered it unusable. That said, I certainly have no objection to some kind of alternate Fx being made as an option. I do kind of like the existing animation though (although, neither can I reproduce what you are apparently seeing,sooooo yea.)

I always do the Mayhems Or Safeguards. Most often getting each one as I level up, sometimes I miss one and have to go back for it. As @DoctorDitko says, Mayhems are just crazy fun. A nice "lets see what you can do" as you level up. I do tend to solo them though, because experience has taught me teams will gang-rush the bank and trigger 7 ambushes all at once and then not understand why they die (in addition to never doing any of the side missions and gaining temp powers). Safeguards too, are a nice periodic checkup as I gradually level each character. (I level slowly and disable XP multiple times along the way.) Most other accolades... yea. I probably should get them. I tend not to. I get that I'm leaving free endurance / free HP on the floor by not chasing Atlas/Portal/TF Commander/etc. But honestly most of them are more hassle than they're worth to me to seek specfically on their own. Some of them will just happen organically as i'm playing. Particularly TF Commander. But I make no special effort to get it. It just happens on its own sooner or later.

I'll take any additional Praetorian zones I can get. I'd also super super love it if the game could remember your Loyalist / Resistance stance even after going to Primal Earth. I wouldn't mind a bit of exploration of lore for the rest of Praetoria either.... like you see these tanker ships and planes in Neutropolis. Where do they go? How do they manage it on a world dominated by the Devouring Earth? You hear about the Syndicate running all these mega corporations.... Where? How did the other pockets of humanity survive in other places around the Praetorian Globe? I mean, okay, some of that, may be best explored via AE because limited man-hours is a thing. But I always did wish for more there.

I'd definitely like it to be a mechanic. I could see some animations using a tether line, some using more arcane / gravity pulls, etc. I am not aware of anything in game that has this power / mechanic. Single Target or AE. Although I've certainly seen people ask for a "Reverse Repel"/"Reverse Knockback", several times, particularly in threads on Gravity Control. implementation would be interesting. if the mob was helpless during the drag, that might be too powerful unless the user of the power was also locked into the animation and unable to use any attacks until the pull is complete. If the mob could still attack / shoot, that's less of an issue. They'd probably need to have some "can't be pulled if already affected by a pull" to avoid people trying to use four simultaneous pulls to Draw-And-Quarter an enemy 😄, but hey. Can't have everything

Ah but if you're dealing with lawyers (literally), you should probably be able to drop the phrase "repesents a security risk" "may open you to ransomware for using unsupported software" etc, and get them on board through fear if nothing else.

I sort of have the "everyone should have a 64 bit machine by now" mindset, but, I'm a programmer by trade. My expectations are shaped by my job and don't always jive with the real world. I have to perioidcally remind myself there's plenty of people whose real world situation may mean that a potato computer may still be the best thing available.