MTeague

Loyalist / Responsibilty, is basically a selfless good guy trying to work within the system, even if they are sometimes painfully aware of some realities they wish were not so. Resistance / Warden, is also basically a well-meaning idealist, wanting to topple Cole and bring about a better society, but with lines they're not willing to cross. I think you'd likely enjoy both. I give a slight edge to Loyalists / Responsibility in terms of practicality, because it always seems to me every Resistance story/arc entirely handwaves away the "Um, great, so we take down Cole.... How exactly would we handle Hamidon, if it gets angry again??". Maybe they all believe the Sonic fencing is a lot better than it is, or maybe they all believe it would never occur to Hamidon to tunnel under or evolve things to fly a few miles up and then drop down from above. But I always wished there was some kind of dialogue where you could at least ASK them, "Remind me again, how do we stop Hamidon without this guy?"

What's with this newfangled P2W vendor and prestige powers? In my day, you ran out of END and brawled! And then the Vahzilok puked on us and we died, and Doc Vahz made more minions out of our body parts. And we *liked* it that way! We liked right fine.... Though, nothing I come up with will ever touch the grandmasters ...

Issue 0 memory is very fuzzy, but that sounds right. I dont' think I really noticed that much of a pattern to who they sent me after at first. The differences certainly didn't last to too high a lvl though.

lol. Well, it's not like I think the idea has a snowball's chance in hell. I think GW has pretty good job security. But I guess my main objection is that Arachnos is so completely dominant over everything. If they were on more of an equal footing with Crey, or the Council, or Malta, or Nemesis, then I wouldn't care so much about the named NPC's. I get that my redside characters have to start out as a nobody. I get that nobody gets to be treated like Doctor Doom or Emma Frost at lvl 1. But I hate that even by the time I'm lvl 50, I still have various Arbiter's talking smack to me, and I'm only considered worthy to be a servant and join a faction, instead of really being treated like a power in my own right. The Mr. G arc and Pandora's Box help somewhat, but I still reallllly would like to see Arachnos having less of a "we control everything and if you really piss us off we'll go back in time and erase your genetic line" type of attitude. Because it just makes me want to do it to them FIRST.

Well, if we have to agree to disagree, that works too. But I'd say that ship sailed several years ago in the form of Kheldians, Crabs, and Fortunata's. And really a Sentinels range is fairly limited. They're still in melee or very short range for a cone quite often.

I'd say if considering blast powers ALONE, not buffs or debuffs Blasters > Sentinels = Corruptors > Defenders The Blast tree IS a Sentinel Primary tree (as it is for Corruptors), so it should be better than Defenders secondary. Now, with the effects of their Support tree thrown in, I'd say some certainly could/should outdamage a Sentinel. Particularly Poisen, Trick Arrow, Rad, Dark, things with very strong -RES debuffs. And a Sonic Blast Defender taking pains to stack the -RES, would probably outdamage a Fire or Ice Sentinel. But I would defintely expect any random Sentinel to outdamage a Empath Defender with the same blast set, or a Force Field Defender with the same blast set.

Devil is completely in the details. Matters how? What would you change? I'd be willing to talk turkey, but I'd be leery of anything that created mission arcs that were ONLY obtainable based on a certain Origin, or which provided different combat benefits to certain Origins (inevitably making one origin the "best" min/max origin....), etc.

Completely remove Arachnos, Lord Recluse, the Patrons, and Longbow from existence. Instead have different parts of the Rogue Isles controlled by multiple factions all competiting with one another (Crey, Cage Consortium, the Tsoo, the Family, The Council, Malta, Circle of Thorns, Nemesis, etc.). Make it more of a No-Man's Land / Wild West / Anything Goes, rather than "Under the Dominion of one unconditionally unchallengeable NPC boss". Yes, I'm completely aware that would savage a decade or more of in-game lore, and require rewrites of multple TF's and story arcs. I'd do it anyway. Let the player choose which factions (if any) to ally themselves with, and play a few factions against each other. Remove all War Walls. Remove all zone barriers. You should be able to run/walk/swim/jump from the Golden Giza to Atlas Park City Hall without "loading please wait" even once. These will never happen. But they've been on my personal wishlist for awhile.

I am dividing my time among CoH and a few other games, but CoH still gets probably 60% or more of my total gaming time in any given week.

Goose egg for me. 0%. I have T4 for alpha, lore, judgement, and T3 Destiny for my Mind/Kin controller. I do plan to get him fully done. Someday. If I'm not distrac- I have 3 other 50's, none even have an alpha yet. Been having fun levelling my other alts for the time being. I'll probably incarnate out a couple other characters at some point. But character concept wise, only the Mind/Kin needs it, since he's kind of the Gandalf of the bunch.

I'm absolutely certain it does. I mean the other detective in the zone is Det. Fish. There's no way in hell that's not talking about Abe Vigoda.

I'm curious. What do you mean by "decentralized" in this context? What changes would you want?

Last restaraunt metaphor for me, I promise. If it's a place I've been to many many times, and it's always been good, then sure, if one waiter is rude, I may speak to the manager about that waiter, but I'd likely still be a regular. If it's my first time visiting them? Nope. Buh-Bye, See Ya. I probably wouldn't even tell the manager why. I'd say, nope, let Darwin sort out the good restaurants from the bad, not my job to try to save you. PvP is pretty much in that "First Impression" arena for me. I'm not a regular, I haven't enjoyed it in other games, so anything that makes it unpleasant has me decide "Nope, that's not how I want to allocate my limited gaming time."

Is it really that unreasonable? There's a bazillion restaraunts out there. Why should I give Chez MacSkull 3,4,5,6 strikes? It may not be fair to the restaraunt owner, or chef. But I guarantee you, real world, it's very often "one strike and you're out forever" in the restaraunt business.

Well. Let's face it, if staff at a restatraunt is rude, it's quite likely many people will leave and never come back. And it's not necessarily just the person the waiter was rude to. Patrons at nearby tables may also decide to vote with their wallet. That happens, in the real world, every day.

I very much prefer to eyeball and wing builds. I do not have Mid's at all. I've considered getting it... just so I could post what I've come up iwth in a language most of the player base can use. But generally I eyeball combat stats, and decide what I need more of, and then look to see what slotting I'm happy with, and what I'm not. I'm also perfectly fine and dandy if the result is Not Perfectly Optimized, but can still kicks azz. If I only have 2-3 LotG +7.5%'s slotted, and no Hasten at all, I'm okay with that. I prefer mixing up different pool powers and using different things on different characters REGARDLESS of what's most effective, just to shake it up a little and experiment with a varied toolkit.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard

I will never turn down new content, whether that's story arcs, whether thats changes to powersets, whether that's new features in base building or AE maps, etc. That said, I've also learned quite a bit of patience in the 7 years I waited for this game to rise from it's grave. And I would much rather have a well prepared omelette than a plate with some raw eggs and a slice of cheese and some chopped ham and onions. So if you NEED to take your time? Do so. I have no fear of the game "Dying" out from under us again if we don't get new shiny toys on a regular basis. Transparency is a good thing, but I get there's also the factor that this is a labor of love, and not a paying job, and people have families and other obligations as well. I can understand that while I as an end user might very much appreaciated some kind of blog or posted notes from scrum sessions of who's been working on what lately, what's starting to look good, what didn't pan out and went back to the drawing board, what's been set aside into the "sorry guys, we tried but no" bucket.... as much as I'd like that.... I can understand that from the standpoint of the developers, that might just be BEGGIN for non-stop criticism and "why didn't you do this instead" and the always 'helpful' suggestions of people who've never read the code and don't get why some things are not straightforward. So, if you guys WANT to do some kind of blog / weekly minutes update, whatever? I'll devour it, I'm sure so will many others. But if you'd almost rather saw your legs off? I get that too. And I'm fine with it, if you prefer to keep things behind the scenes. TL;DR You Do You, I'm here for the duration.

I'd be totally fine with Incarnate powers if they were only available in content that was created in the same issue or after incarnate powers were created. That is to say, not available, and not in effect, not even your alpha, in most 45-50 content. I'm well aware that the majority (or at least a vocal subset) the players Completely disagrees with me on that. I'm well aware that where which incarnates are in effect, is Highly Improbable to ever change. My solution to that is I solo the vast majority of 45-50 content. I just don't join most lvl 50 teams unless they really ARE doing truly incarnate content. And no, I do not count ITF's there. I'll do a low level ITF, run by people at 35-44, gladly. I do not join at 45-50 ITF. Even if that means people look at me like I have three heads. If even more incarnate powers were added... not gonna lie, I'd think it was a compounded travesty if they were also made available at 45+. But since I already have my own solution to that, I can no longer summon the Hulk Smash rage.

There could be a Tunnel Snakes splinter faction. And they could rule.

Not untrue, but I've been a strong proponent of "I shoudl be able to walk up to any contact, at any level, and be auto-exemplared down to the right level for their missions if I accept the mission" Hasn't happened yet of course, but I hold out hope nonetheless.

I'm having a blast on my Staff/Willpower scrapper. She's lvl 29 though, so has a few more powers available to her. Staff is going to be a little be AE centric no matter what. You'll MOW down a wall of minions in an enjoyably short time as you ThunkThunkThunkThunkThunk away. When you're down to just the boss, you'll be a bit slower to take him down than say, a MA scrapper. But it's not that bad. If you find yourself having End issues, Form of the Soul can work as a short term fix. @Vulpoid is correct, once you CAN, then Form of the Body is generally superior, you'll likely switch to that and never look back, unless you're doing some kind of RP concept. But if you're sucking wind and running out of End, Form of the Soul fixes that pretty quick until you have more slotting available to you. Mercurial Blow is meh. I respecced out of it, haven't looked back. Precise Strike is a decent single target hit. Nothing snazzy, but hey, it's a T2. What do you expect? Guarded Spin on cooldown. It's your Parry. Live it. Love it. Eye of the Storm, if surrounded, use on cooldown with 3 stacks / orange ring. If not, can still be worth it for chance of Knockdown. That's saved me vs bosses in close fights before. Serpents Reach, good solid single target hit, decent shortrange strike, decent chance of Knockdown. Plus, if you use the bladed staff, looks like you're stabbing with it if used point blank. Innocuous Strikes, strong cone. use if guarded spin is on cooldown. I don't have access to sky splitter yet. Some things of note: No BuildUp for you! the sads. 😞 But you do have some constant on bonus damage in Form of the Body stacks. Consider Tactics and Gaussian's proc toss in some -RES debuffs where you can. Fury of the Glad for sure. when you can spare the slots for it, toss in a Force Feedback proc into Eye of the Storm and/or Serpent's Reach

I am sufficiently bad at statistics / probability calculations that I'm withholding judgement. I don't feel that I'll be able to really grasp it until I did it out and played it. But I do wonder the result will just be too unpredictable / unreliable to trust. After all, if the AV can 3-shot my Controller... and the Envoy of Shadow certainly did take me down that fast, first several attempts....then 4 out of 100 uses feels... like most of the time, I'll be taking the Hospital Express, and I'd never actually SEE an Overwhelming Overpower. Thats' kind of why I was suggesting some kind of "Sluggish" debuff, ... I'd suggested -Recharge, but -Damage might work too... that could allow for *some* reliable degree of mitigation without neutering the Big Bad completely.

the only problem with Scirocco's patron arc, is if you're a more-or-less decent guy, you kind of want him to succeed. And the arc has NO option for that. That's one thing I wish you could do. TRY to back him, even if the game then railroaded you into failure. I get that in terms of storyline he *cannot* succeed, but the player should be allowed to TRY. (even if they must also hardcoded fail at that attempt)