MTeague

First Ward. Fell in love with it first time I ever saw the place. Love the missions, love the enemy groups, love the big nasty floating around the middle of the zone, love the Hidden Paths.

I have this entirely irrational hope that (/cue Someday Over the Rainbow) Serum will become an amazing buff and Mercs will start out DPS'ing Demons. Of course, I buy powerball tickets every so often too.....

OMG no enough with the power creep! This would make people so overpow.... er... um..... *ahem*. Carry on.

Among the first things I do on rolling up a lvl 1 alt is /altinvite them to my personal SG, specifically so I don't get SG invites from other players. I'm skittish on "guilds", like other MMO's have. I did that for eight years in a raiding guild in World of Warcraft. And four years before that in EverQuest. I do have very fond memories from both games and I get seriously nostalgic for each of them. I really enjoyed my time with both guilds. But it eventually broke me, how much I was scheduling my life around it. Now I play games on my terms or not at all. No alliances, no expectations, no nothing. If people are doing something that looks fun, I'll join. If not, I won't, and no amount of tells or "c'mon man, we really need you" will move me. I know, with CoH, this is probably the one MMO where I could relax my guard, because no one is ever needed the way some roles are needed in other MMO's. But it's reached a certain amount of "Never Again". Even if that's entirely a "me issue."

Plus, it could allow for more Ouro badges. /twitch

Before anything else, this screams out for And with that out of the way.... You're not entirely wrong. Half the reason I used to love Diablo 2 Hardcore and Diablo 3 Hardcore was the massive adrenalin rush you can get from a permadeath mode, in danger on a character you've invested a lot into. There was that kind of "Holy Crap! Almostdied almostdied almostdied almostdied" from narrowly avoiding a bad car collision, but without any risk of getting ACTUALLY killed or maimed in real life. Among the most memorable moments in WoW was back in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, on our first kill for Sindragosa on 25 man mode. We'd been struggling on her for weeks (we were still learning how to switch from casual mode to raider mode) and finally, finally, we won, and we had exactly TWO people standing at the kill, and one guy keeled over from a DoT 2 seconds after the kill. The guild erupted in vent cheering and in relief, but all of us were in stark fear only moments before. Counting down the health bars and saying "oh my god, no not again, we're so frickin' close!!!". On the other hand, there's some games I play where I want to be terrified, and some I don't. City of Heroes, I do enjoy some clean stompy arcade-y beat up the bad guys fun. Especially when work really sucked that day. So, I guess fear is fine.... if it's controllable. If people can know, up-front, are you signing up for the Bumper Cars, or for the Scream-For-Your-Life Roller Coaster?

I love strong Story-Driven arcs with multiple endings / player choice deciding the outcome. Specifically, like the various 1-20 Praetoria arcs. Now I get, for a team mission / task force, that would probably mean "only leader decides". It would be neither practical nor desireable for half the team to stand with one faction and half the team to stand with the other faction and go all MCU:Civil War over it. I mean, OK, there's memes, and god knows we need more memes, but really, it'd have to be leader-choice only for any kind of TF, and you want to choose the outcome, you be the leader. I'd also love to be able to put in that kind of choice / branching outcomes into AE missions. I'd love to see how creative mission writers could be with that.

Yea. I mean, as much as I can I try to get people to work with what they like here, and find ways to minimize what they don't like. I try to never give a "go try X server instead" answer. But in this specific case? @Sapharan .... I just don't think you're ever going to be happy here. Brutes are a thing. They're not going to suddenly go away, or have their durability nerfed into the ground. Controllers and Doms are a thing. Heck if anything, I'd say Controllers need some love to feel relevant against mobs that either die to easy to roving murder-balls, or when then team is up against a EB/AV with Purple Triangles and all their wonderful control means exactly Jack und Schitt. I don't have much hope of that happening, but the point is, I definitely DO NOT expect to suddenly have control powers nerfed. Team sizes being reduced? Never gonna happen. Although you can voluntarily just stop recruiting more than 4 if you're the leader. You could try soloing / small teams, and hunting down some of the more difficult content like the First Ward / Night Ward story arcs, or Number 6's arc, etc. But.... if you're looking for a game where Tankers tank a raidboss and clouds of adds a 10 minute fight? This ain't it.

<channeling Bob Ross> "Maybe... maybe we can put in a Sapper in here. Righhht there. There. Just a happy little sapper. And let's give him a friend over here. Everybody needs a friend."

Clarifying. I meant that Incarnate Difficulty, if selected, swap out / otherwise buff up truly weak groups, because I can't take "incarnate difficulty" with a straight face and not laugh if it's used to face the weakest possible opponents. I would absolutely leave council / council missions 100% untouched for all existing modes of play.

If we want "incarnate difficulty" to be a thing, then please eliminate Council and other easy enemy groups from being possible foes. Send people up against Rularuu, Malta, IDF, etc.

Full disclosure: I'm on lunchbreak at work, and because I'm at work, I'm kind of pessimistic / glass is half empty. But really? How long do you expect "new endgame content" would bring your friends back for? Blizzard spends a year and a half to two years on new expansions and new raiding sets in warcraft. People always hit the new level cap in a week, and finish the new raid sets in two weeks at most. Not everyone of course. Casual players never came close to it before they added a scaled-down "LFR" system to queue for Pug Raids. But the diehard "gimme endgame" players focus on the new raid / hardmodes like a starving squirrel who just found an open bag of peanuts. I never saw it be all that long before they were bored again. And in the case of WoW, that was with a full for-profit AAA gaming studio cranking out content. I cannot see any possible way that Homecoming Devs can possibly provide enough Incarnate Focused Content to keep people who are burnt out on what we already have happy. I'm thinking a few new story arcs / trials would entertain your friends for a few weeks. Perhaps two months. Tops. I would like to see the Devs focus on giving AE more tools because really I think crowdsourcing content to mission creators is the only realistic path forward for large-scale new content to be generated. And I'd like to see selected missions curated by the devs and turned into a "real" outside-of-AE actual implemented mission ("developer's choice" ones), for those missions that they thought had a really good story and interesting layout and good enemies that fit the game lore.

This. "endgame" for me, is rolling more alts, and exploring the story of each new alt as they level up, deciding how they fit into the rest of my squad, etc. Although it's also true, that, at some point, every game has a shelf life, and at some point, the day may come when I'm simply done. And that's not really the end of the world, either.

I mean, we know, beyond any possiblity of doubt whatsoever: It's All A Nemesis Plot. We just haven't found all the connections yet 😀 That said, I think *some* connections make sense. {A,B,C} connected, but not D, and none of those connected to {E,F}. People are going to have their own personal headcanons and backstories that involve misc factions too. So I actually prefer HINTS that some things might be connected vs any kind of PROOF that things are connected. Then people can pick and choose what makes sense for them. Of course, lots of us will pick or choose things anyway, Lore Be Damned... just not Lt Commander Data <ducks> Plus, jeez, with the Amount of Time Travel and Janked History Rewrites via Ouroborous, I mean, good luck to anyone trying to puzzle out Paragon's "real" timeline. The entire universe should have already imploded from massive paradoxes already. And that's before we start involving Alternate Dimension versions of NPC's trying to muscle into this Dimension. (not just Praetoria, but others too). I think it's safe to say even the most determined kitten is going to spend lifetimes on this ball of yarn.

100%. I know lots of people hate typing extra characters, and it's all-too-human to project "well of course this is the right way to play? why would you do it any other way?" expectations onto the rest. But just putting in a few extra characters in the LFG recruitment text can avoid a lot of this. I am a Map-Clearing-Fool. I do not like leaving a single enemy standing. I also do not play for Max Efficient Rewards. So I ignore any any LFM that includes the words "speed", "speedy" or "fast". When I recruit others, I always include the phrase "kill all", and either "+2 w/bosses" or "+3 w/bosses". And if I'm planning to do arcs in uncommon zones, like "First Ward arcs" or "Night Ward Arcs", I type that too. Or if I'm planning to do arcs vs unpopular mobs I say that too. "World Wide Red! Sappers GALORE! (but you can rack up some Zeus)" Really doesn't take much extra time to type. Really helps people pre-filter / know what they're getting into.

Oh hell ya. I have wanted this visual as a sonic blast choice since my first time defending the Midnight Manor, fighting the harpies at the end.

Loosely support the idea. If damage / recharge / endurance cost / slotting options are all approximately the same as other MM attacks. I do feel it's worth putting in a plug for Kick/Boxing/Crosspunch and Tankerminding on an MM though. (though that may depend a fair bit on your secondary....)

Man. as long as they don't use your middle name. When they yell at you with your full First, and Middle, and Last name, all strung together, it's just instant regretful puppy / don't hurt me!

Which always makes me think of my favorite part of Red October.

Hm. Well, I was going to say lots of brute secondaries have to wait for taunt auras... but Invulnerability does seem to be an extreme case at 28. Some are 20. A lot are 16. So that part, ya maybe. I can't get behind the rest though. Invulnerability is among the LAST classic sets I would say needs looking at. It's nothing super flashy, but it's like that old reliable pickup truck that just always works and always gets the job done.

I love the idea. Now, it's true it may affect some builds more than others.... but I would actually see the main use case for this not being solo, but doing some "oldschool" runs of misc content for giggles. Absolutely, 100%, it would have to be advertised. a) Just basic politeness / common decency b) enlightened self interest. no team leader enjoys when people ragequit in a huff not realizing due to wildly different team expectations. (well, okay, there's always that one guy who takes sadistic pleasure out of it....) Most people just want to put together a team and keep that team for a few hours anyway. If I'm recruiting I want people to know up front what the deal would be. But if we take set bonuses off the table, okay. Maybe your perfect IO build now lacks severe amount of recharge. Maybe your Perma-Dom can't Perma-Dom anymore. Or your may find that you selected so few attacks because your focused on a few *very* hard hitting winners that came back fast enough with set bonus recahrge. And then you're feeling sliightly gimped at first. I get that. Then the /kin on the team Speed Boosts you, and the Rad Emission guy hits you with Accelerated Metabolism. You're back in business, wrecking face, but you're keeping an eye on your buffs and staying in buff range again. Or you lose a ton of End Reduction and your toggles are bleeding your blue bar dry. Until you get Speed Boosted. And the Empath uses Recovery Aura. Or your Defense are now so low you feel like a fragile porcelin vase lying in the middle of the mud on Monster Truck Sunday. Until you get Bubbled by the Force Fielder. And maybe pick up a Fortitude from the Empath. Is this going to be everyone's cup of tea? F**K NO. I'm sure some players would shake their head and wonder why it was enjoyable to have to check in with buffers, to wait for debuffs to be applied, instead fo just being the invincible tankmage. And hey, that's cool. Perfectly Cool and Froody for anyone to say "nope, not interested" and ignore the recruitment, just as I ignore all speedruns and incarnate runs. Why make it a Notoriety Option? To allow people who haven't specifically planned for this, to decide "what the hell, it might be fun" on the spur of the moment, without needing to spend the time to setup an extra build (assuming they have one to spare) and then crafting the plain IO's or buying the requisite SO's to slot in every power, and then having to deal wtih both builds on every respec. This lets people TRY IT, just on a What-The-Bleep, 100% risk free. /signed /endorsed

Even just something where the crab legs folded up / retracted after X seconds of not using attacks that require them could go a long way. Kind of like a bird folding up wings when done flying.

i don't really have a solution. I definitely play the game much less now than I did a year ago. some of that is no doubt just the "ZOMG it's baaaaack!" has worn off for me. I still enjoy playing my characters, blue/red/gold. But like... well, one game that had a Giant Impact on me, was the original EverQuest. Especially Vanilla, Kunark, and Velious era. I get massively nostalgic about that era and what the game was like then. 20 years after. But you can never go home again. I've changed. no matter how nostalgic I get for it, I'm not looking for a game with that much built in XP grind, tradeskill grind, that punishing on deaths, etc. The players have changed. Yes, there are private servers out there that maintain old code sets at fixed patch points. So, on paper, the fundamental rules of the game are what they were. But back in the day "twink" was a mortal insult among a lot of players, right up there with "ebay". No one cares anymore, and I can't blame them. People will dual-box. People will accept showers of plat from veteran players, and why not? But it will never have the feel it had back in the day, when Everyone was new, when Everyone was learning it, when Everyone was exploring it and learning, instead of already know all the mechanics worked, already knowing what's "most efficient", already knowing where to find "the best drops", before people had memorized various maps, etc. I think a fair amount of that applies to CoH / Homecoming as well. I'm glad we have City of Heroes back. I do enjoy it. But it will never have some of those early-days feel for me. I have to let that go, and find enjoyment in the i27 world. Or I have to put the game down and fire up something else for an evening. Or I can get wild and crazy and spend a couple hours chatting on the phone with family and RL friends, and planning out what we want to do for a bash once everyone's vaccinated and the right number of weeks have passed.

War Witch in Croatoa, and Ravenstorm in Striga, too.

I would say "devolved" rather than "evolved"... but really that's a preference judgement on my part. The ROFLSTOMP steam roller *is* generally, more efficient, and tends to get most players what they want. So yea. I guess in that sense, it's the fittest adaptation to the environment. I just like it when some degree of team awareness (most of the team being within sight of each other?) is a good idea. So I solo a lot. A lot a lot. And when I do team, I'm doing First Ward, Night Ward, Firebase Zulu, World Wide Red, etc.