MTeague

It's kind of a pity HC isn't allowed to have subscription fees. One thing about the old subscription model. When people were DONE, they'd tell NCSoft to halt billing and forget their credit card number. THAT, is a pretty straightforward definition of an inactive account. Since we do not / cannot have that here, then I'm fine with "haven't logged in X days", though I do feel it should be by Account, not by Character. 50's....eh. I admit some of that because I deliberately level slowly and immediately disable XP on joining a team. It'll be a long time before I have many 50's. If any exemptions were to be added, I'd much rather see it in terms of "hours played" rather than "XP earned".

You have absolute freedom to rate the name as Crap-tastic, as long as you remember it's only your own personal rating. Would I get the in the person's face about it and tell them "Your name IS BAD and should FEEL BAD!"? No. Well, not unless it's someone I know in real life. And there's like, two CoH players I can say that about. One of whom is my RL brother. I'm allowed to give him grief. Hell, brothers are practically REQUIRED to give each other a little bit of grief 🙂 But for everyone else, no. II have no idea if the player is a kid or not. I have no idea if the player gives two bleeps about theme, or just typed in something becuase they wanted to get in and play the game NOW. Maybe they simply don't care, and maybe then just needed to blow off steam and punch baddies, and plan to deal with the rename screen to struggle for a better name later in the week. None-a-my-business. But I do reserve the right to judge names, and facepalm at the screen, even if I do so in silence. 🙂

How I responded would depend greatly on the name in question. I have 40 characters total. 15 or so names I have that I'm "meh" on, and if it was a big deal to someone, I'd probably relinquish one of those 15. The other 25 are mine until the sun explodes, or until the devs change their policies such that the name can be taken out from under me. I'd be polite on that first refusal, saying "Nope, sorry, I'm very attached to that name, and I got it first. That's the way it goes." Followup questions asking if I had the name on live and if so for how long, or offering me influence (or anything else) to relinquish the name, would be met with /gignore. For those 25 names it is not a matter of barter. It matters to me to have them. I will not willingly relinquish them. Ever. That said, I do only take names on one server, even for names I'm very attached to. As long as I have the name on the server where I play, it's no skin off my nose if someone else has that same name on a different server.

I think this is quite reasonable. But I also think this would fail to make the issue go away. Because when people don't get the names they want, they'll automatically assume beyond anyone's power to convince them otherwise, that the name exists on a defunct account on a character who was powerlevelled to 50 in a single weekend, and still complain that it's "unjust for them to keep that name". I'll happily be proven wrong. But that's my honest prediction of the outcome. We'd still see threads about this every other week.

I've already got 40 names that I'm happy with, and honestly, given that I deliberately level slowly, and disable XP whenever I join a team, I would prefer limits based on Account activity far more than anything based on Character level. It will be a very long time before I get all 40 characters up to lvl 50. That said, I really do think there's a TON of projection going on on this topic. I'll be very surprised if lots of "choice names" suddenly become freed up. I think it's very much human nature to assume the name you want but can't get is just inches away behind an unlock policy. It could very easily be the holder of the name is an active player, doesn't play when you play, maybe only logs on a few times a month, and simply doesn't respond to any in-game emails asking for them to rename their character. I'll trust whatever decision the GM's come up with. I'm also gratified to know they're approaching it *very* cautiously.

I guess I still remember CoV launch having to separately target and buff Every Stupid Henchman individually. What we have now is So Much better than that, that I barely notice the casting of two buffs.

gogo Mario Physics!

I was very glad to get Thundercrow for my Storm/Sonic defender. NO VARIATON of that name would have been acceptable to me, because it's a recreation of a character from live, and that exact spelling of the name mattered to me. If I could not have had that name, I simply would not have created the character. I would have chosen different powersets and rolled a completely different character. That said, I also wouldn't consider it a great tragedy if I couldn't get the exact name. There were many servers on live, it's very possible other people had the name on live on other servers, and if they got it first, good on them, and too bad for me. Or if someone on homecoming who never played live got it first? Good on them, too bad for me. There were several names I could not get. Some characters I simply did not create. Other characters where the entire concept was brand new, and I wasn't emotionally attached to a given precise name, I was willing to flex a LOT more on. Bluejay was gone. Agent Bluejay was not. Easy change. Fathom was gone. Deepfathom was not. Easy change for a water-sonic resonance. Havok was gone. Red Havok was not. So piled on the Cold War stereotypes and made the brute russian with the hammer-and-sickle on his chest. Glacier Girl was gone. And every remote direct reworking of that name I was prepared to accept. But I did get Frozanna. (Though I can't help but hear Gilda Radner say Frosanne Frosannadanna in the back of my head...) Fixer was gone. So he became Fixeur, and he's from Paris. Voltron was long since gone for an Electric. But I did get Superinductor. (and now I mentally hear Rush "Superconductor" every time I load him up...) etc. You can often find something. But it really does some down to your own personal "How much are you willing to vary it by?".

I would definitely prefer some kind of tech-looking thing as opposed to webbing. I defitinately would not want a huge actual grappling hook. More like a mini-harpoon or something that launches and either sticks to or imbeds itself in the target, and releases on command. And the rope / chain / tether would need to lengthen / retract intelligently, so you could use it from ground level, fire at a building, and have it retract to pull you up, OR, fire to another building, connect and NOT retract to let you swing. I'm thinking kind of like the Prawn's grappling arm in Subnautica. That said, my understanding is that the engine and the way physics work in game would be semi-hostile to this. Is that a burden that cannot be overcome? Who knows? We can hope. Once upon a time power customization was "it simply cannot be done." I will gladly be wowed. (just not WoW'd....). That said, I do think it would be one of the more limiting travel powers. Probably far less useful in navigating around than Super Jump. But, it would be Just Plain Awesome for several concepts

I remember seeing oldschool Generic products in grocery stores. It wouldn't make for that great a costume, but hey... probably possible.

Unfortunately yes. As cool as "Speedster" is.... to do it right, you should be lightning-fast even compared to everyone else... even your non-speedster teammates. Which either requires slowing everyone else down (never gonna happen), or making yourself so fast you can barely control your own character (what's the point?) or just.... not really feeling speedy. Having some animations like the Diablo 3 "Seven Sided Strike" is just a glorified PBAE attack. They'd never give a speedster set extreme recharge without making the attacks relatively weak. I really do think a lot of people would be disappointed with what a "dedicated" speedster set would actually play like, once it were balanced against everything else. But, perhaps I'm just "cup is half-empty" today.

Praetoria 1-20 (Nova, Imp City, Neutropolis) really not that bad. you can do it with most anything if you want. though certain particular missions you want to prep with LOTS of inspirations. I've done it with Staff / Willpower scrapper Archery / Tac Arrow blaster Cold Blast / Dark Armor sentinel Ninja Blade / Ninjistu stalker Dark Control / Rad Assault dominator First Ward / Night Ward: now these, definitely kick it up a notch or five. I have yet to get anyone 100% through all of it, I have gotten multiple character through different parts of it Staff / Willpower scrapper, did all of First Ward, not yet into Night Assault Rifle / Martial blaster, did 90% of First Ward, still on Asylum mission Invulnerable / Super Strength tanker, did all of Night Ward, but skipped First Ward You definitely want to be slotted out well for the Wards. I'm not sayig you need to level to 50 first, because you don't need to. But I do think every slot you have available should be filled with IO sets, and you should have key ATO's slotted if you plan to solo the Wards. All of that said, don't necessarily feel you must solo them. You probably won't find a team forming in LFG. You will probably have to form a team yourself. Praetoria is NOT low-hanging fruit. Most don't default to it. But you'll probably get a few bites for people who've been itching to do some of it, and there's still a world of difference between solo and 3-4 man team. Also, depends what you have your difficulty settings on. I tend to be +2x3 with bosses by the time I get to the Wards, and well, ... that's probably not sane. Not for a lvl 25 or 30 character. If you did +0x1, even with bosses, you'll still probably slam through missions without toooo much trouble.

Oranges are delicious! Oh the inspirations, not the fruit. Rugged's and the like can be decent for building up resists you're weak to.... esp for attacks that simply DO NOT MISS, like some of the First Ward / Awakened. Or if you know you're GOING to be hit by a solid WALL of Defense Debuffs. Sometimes, you want good resistances, or a healer buddy, or a controller buddy, or better yet, both. But these are pretty situational at best. Luck's are hands-down useful in like 90%+ of content, regardless of AT or powerset. Rugged's simply can't say the same. Do I think some of the numbers should be swapped? Yes. Do I feel a bit hypocritcal saying that after having leveraged lucks to get certain characters through content? Yes. So I vote: "Abstain".

On the other hand, when you do some Knockdown with Eye of the Storm, and immediately follow it up with Innocuous Strikes you can be um.... well.... jabbing your fallen opponent right in the tenders with that staff. Which looks .... pretty painful... if you have the Bladed Spear, and a Staff-Saber would be just as "oh god no! that's too cruel!"

To be used and thrusted like a spear? or still to be twirled about like a Naginata? I would like a Javelin / Short Spear set, so you could do 1-hand-stabby-spear and shield. But cooking up new sets is definitely a taller order than adding an weapon look to an existing set.

Yea. I mean, there ARE the various "Carnival of War" staff looks, but .... honestly, they don't do it for me. If I'm using a staff in melee combat, it shouldn't be a staff with this horribly unbalanced lump of ornate metal on one side that looks like it's a refugee from a WoW drop table. That type of staff is fine for spellcasting. Not so much for using like a quarterstaff / bo The plain wooden staff, or the metal staff, or the wooden staff that has some iron-shod ends, but with a glow, would be far better IMHO.

I still have to give priority to the Hockey Stick request. But a glowy saber-staff could be nifty too. Just keep an eye on where your characters hands are on the staff at all times. Don't want to have animations that look like you'd be chopping yourself to bits.

The models are doable. I see Council whip out the miniguns all the time. 🙂 I suppose I'd probably want some snazzier animations showing blazing bullets flying out of it though. The existing minigun animation is a bit... blah.

Dangit. Now I want to roll up a Huge Body Assault Rifle blaster.

a Quiver of Longbow. an Asylum of Awakened. a Flock of Shepherds. a John Q Public of Luddites a Canteen of Knives (of Artemis) a Bob Marley of Wailers a Van of Vanguard

I do not like Incarnates. At all. Period. Full stop. I accept that they are not going away. But so long as they remain, I oppose any kind of "let everything scale up to lvl 50", because if that ever happens, I'll basically never find another team I actually want to join, ever again. Because EVERYONE will be lvl 50 and incarnated out the wazoo trivializing everything even during flashbacks. And I really hope for at least 1/3 to 1/2 of all new content be designed for levels 1-44.

Philosophically, for game balance, the characters with the strongest offensive powers should have the weakest defense. The characters who can basically never die should have the lowest damage output. That is the source of why I dislike the idea of handing out toggle mez protection to squishies. Honestly, if it were up to me, I would remove all P2W amplifiers from the game, forevermore, putting nothing in their place, starting tomorrow. They're an INF sink sure, but they're unbalancing and just lead to more people speeding to 50 and then being bored after they've sped lots of characters to 50. I'd make a lot of other changes that many posters would really hate if it were up to me as well. There's still enough of what I think the game should be that I still enjoy it. But every bit of power creep, even reading theorectical proposals like "why can't I have access to my Alpha even when I'm exemplared", eats away at this. Maybe I'm hitting a burnout phase after playing nonstop since Jun 2019 and need to pause it for a bit. These things happen. But my kneejerk reaction was "sure we can do this, as long as that same toggle that gives you mez protection, drops your damage output by 50% and disables all damage procs", in a very spiteful way to offer a deal I'm sure NO ONE would ever accept.

I do not leave the Tutorial without at least a 900 character bio, and most are within 5 characters of the limit. I obsess over deleting spaces between words, and then re-adding a single space between them, to reclaim characters falsely consumed by the wacky editor. Sometimes I recover 200 characters because of that. I do sometimes wish there was 1024 characters for your origin story, and 1024 characters for "what have you been up to lately?". Because by the time I'm lvl 39 or so, that maxed out bio I had leaving the tutorial feels like it's missing a lot of significant events that have happened since they arrived, but I'm FAR too attached to the existing bio to even consider slashing it down or replacing it.

I'm aware I'm in the VERY distinct minority, but I actually like Regen *exactly as it is* and I don't even think it needs to be 'fixed'. For an armor set that provides Resistance/Defense via Clicks..... Conceptually, I immediately think of Shields. How in a lot of other games you have to actively manage use of your shield in combat. Of course, in CoH, "Shield Defense" already exists, and it's unlikely to undergo a wholesale change. But maybe some kind of "Deflection" set? With several powers that provide a Parry-like bonus for X seconds upon use, vs a variety of types? I agree that actual Damage Reflection for some kind of "Critical Deflect" would be wonderful. But extremely hard to balance if it actually did the attack's incoming damage to the attacker. It would probably be both easier to implement, and easier to balance, if it did a FIXED amount of damage to the attacker.

This. I remember seeing a similar idea floated for expanding on "Winter-O's." That is, add Spring-O', Summer-O's, Autumn-O's. BUT, you could never have more than one "Season" slotted at a time. If you slot any Spring-O's, you could not slot ANY Winter-O's, and vice versa. A scheme like that, I could support. Even some variation on that, but which still limited you to the same number of grand total "Superior" sets that any one character could slot.