MTeague

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.

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.