MTeague

My solution to this? Don't scale everything up. You can still walk up to any contact, even the ones you "outlevelled", talk to them, and accept their missions, just as if you were of the appropriate level range. If you are of the correct level, everything happens like normal. If you had outlevelled them, then as soon as their mission becomes the active mission, you and your entire team are forcibly exemplared down to the top level of that contact's level range. You remain exemplared down until that mission is no longer the active mission. Either because you complete the mission and turn it in, or you quit the team of the mission owner, or the team leader switched over to a new mission, etc. Then all mobs, work exactly as-is. No need to invent lvl 50 Trolls and figure out what powers they should have access to, etc. A lvl 50 doing it exemplared down will still likely be overpowered compared to at-content because of all set bonuses they might retain, but that's no different from doing it via Ouro. By tying the exemplaring to the ACTIVE MISSION, it should be possible to invite others even after you accept it. It would not provide access to the Ouro challenges, or opportunities to earn the Ouro badges. Go to Ouro for reals if you want those. Some incentive is maintained to at least think about certain IO sets that cap at 30 or 40 if you might be exemplaring at lot (where everything scaling to 50 would toss that out the window) You could do the plot in a logical order, for any mission chain, (at least as long as it's clear what the logical order is... Praetoria's timeline can be fuzzy there sometimes) EDIT: Admittedly, this is not possible now. This requires dev work. And standard code rant applies, see dealer for details, offer not valid where prohibited by law, etc.

I'd love to see a newer-tougher Outcast group. We know from tip missions that Frostfire eventually becomes a Serious Major Mojo Power. And a good guy. I'd like to see him and Miss Thistle and the Outcasts who follow them blocking off a section of Khalisti and being like "This neighborhood is under OUR protection!" Fighting off incursions of Syndicate and High-Tech-Family in areas where the law is too overwhelmed / too bound by due process, etc. Something that shows Frostfire organizing some of other Outcasts as a mostly-force-for-good, even if he might need to crack down on one of his own folks who might go too far.

I do enjoy a fair bit of team banter. I tend to have an internal monologue of how my current character would approach any given mission. I struggle with the knowledge that that's probably a rare thing. I either solo 45-50, or just do a flood of lower lvl TF's for that stretch, because I cannot STAND the feeling of being carried / not pulling my own weight, and when you're a 47 player on a team full of incarnates, well... yea. I am a serious Map-Clearing-Fool. I have been ever since Diablo 2. Speed runs just jar me, partly because I'm not really focused on "finish this mission now now now, chop chop!", and because I'm sure the 65 mobs they didn't kill were all going to drop Purple Recipes and PvP Recipes. I'm much much happier with "Kill All" or "Kill Most" and avoid speed runs like the plague. I think it's all-too-human, not correct, just all-too-human, for us to tend to assume what we find fun is fun for everyone, what we find boring is boring for everyone, and that other people would have a vastly more enjoyable experience if they only played it the game the right way (ie, like me). Again, that's flat wrong, but I often have to stop myself from thinking that way. There is a lot of "Same Planet, Different Worlds" at play.

I thought it was "God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom, to hide the bodies, of those people I had to kill, because they PISSED ME OFF" though I suppose that works better on a coffee mug, than in actual practice.

Nerfing Regen is like a Fixed Point in Time. It happened in EVERY alternate reality. All of them.

My memories of the early issues of Live are a little fuzzy with time. But it feels like there's code in the AI that still tries to make this happen. I start beating up on a Family Hit Man. He runs, until he's standing in the middle of a gorup of his buddies, then turns to shoot me. They don't help him. If I don't shoot back, they won't aggro me. But he was clearly TRYING to run for help to chain aggro. I've seen this behavior from multiple enemy factions. Council, Sky Raiders, Malta, Carnies, Skulls, Slag Golems, Arachnos, Longbow, etc. But the aggro never chains. I've never been able to decide if that's good or bad. It could get REAL punishing, REAL fast, for those without a good means to stop runners in their tracks. Solo play could suffer SEVERLY if this were changed to chain aggro. That would be bad. But it's so titantically dumb that their buddy runs for help, stands right in the middle of them shooting at me, and unless I shoot back, they're like, "nah, it's all good Bob. You got this."

My Beast/Empath uses Leadership: Maneuvers, Assault, Tactics Fighting: Kick, Boxing, Crosspunch (costs far less END than MM direct attacks, and cross punch is quite good when you take all three, and makes sure I'm always in range of my pets for the Pet-Aura IO's) Flight: Fly, Air Sup, Group Fly (planned but don't have Group yet) Haven't chosen epic pool yet.

last summer?

My Human-Only-PB is collecting dust at lvl 11. The Quantums and the Voids, they enrage me so. Maybe I'll dust him off and try him more this week. By all accounts the Quants become easier to deal with at DO and IO levels, and as you get more slots to distribute.

Given that you can convert Winter-O's to Winter-O's, ATO's to ATO's, PvP to PvP, Purples-to-Purples, it doesn't seem out of bounds for there to be a "Hamidon Origin" convert where one Hami-O can become any other kind of Hami-O. I approve this message.

If you have no means to heal your pets your probably have some very good debuffs to kittenize foes or good buffs to protect them anyway. My Ninja/Cold's pets don't take much damage between innate defense, pet-aura IO's, both Ice Shields from Cold, Arctic Fog, and Manuevers. Also Snow Storm to apply wide-area -Recharge. I do need to stand semi-close to them, but it's worked fine from 1-33. I did dip into Sorcery and use Spirit Ward. I can't hit them all with it, the cooldown is high. But I can go several spawns at +1x4 with bosses, without losing a single minion. Not bad for still levelling up.

Okay, that's good inspiration for a Bots MM. I'll go with names of the late 70's/early 80's "Shogun Warrior" robots. Danguard Ace, Giking, Raiden, Posiden, Mazinga, Grandizer. Probably not the "official" Japanese spellings, but hey, going with what I remember from my childhood. Keep any other ideas coming though. Probably other MM's out there looking for inspiration! 🙂

There have been kind of a lot of "first post ever but gonna seriously stir the pot!" posts lately. Not it.

Definitely fine with anything that keeps it optional. If extendable timers are used, you might need the timer base value / bonus value to be dependant on the map type / size. Small office building? Don't need that big of a timer (though @Coyotedancer has a good point on accessability issues for various players...). Giant Orangabanga map? Yea, you're only gonna get so far so fast. You'll need more time. Big Shadow-Shard cave map? Probably don't need as much time as a big CoT map, but again, you can have some serious twists and turns to navigate, and the timer shouldn't assume you have speed boost or super speed.

So what kinds of themes do people use when naming their cannon fodder? Oh, Cannon Fodder's not very nice is it? Naturally I mean Expendable Resources. How about, Valued Employees? Summonable Bro's? So far I've got: Beasts: Daisy, Buddy, Lily, Fluffy, Mittens, Mr. Snuggles (stereotypical crazy pet lady names) Ninjas: Rain, Hail, Snow, Thunder, Lightning, Hell (all words that pair well with "Storm" after their name... rainstorm, snowstorm, etc) I've got a few other MM's on my backlog to try out, but I'm drawing a MAJOR blank on name-themes. What are other folks using?

I have not noticed procs firing well with Caltrops on Homecoming. It's possible I just have bad luck / poor observational skillz. I admit, I did not look at my combat log. Mainly I use them for Area Denial, and they're fantastic for this purpose. If I start to take too much damage, Caltrops, and I get time for inspirations, or for Regen to kick in, and 3-4 free hits. Usually even more, since some mobs then run back in (slowly) to melee you and then are like "omg! I'm on caltrops!" and run back out again (slowly). They're also the hands-down best way my Scrapper has to IMMEDIATELY take heat off a squishy. Yes, "kill the baddies" is a better long-term way of taking heat of the squishy, but if they're not going to live long enough for me to cycle some AE attacks, I can fire off Caltrops with a Keybind-and-Click. I always do this if I see someone get nailed by a Sapper and Detoggled. Toss caltrops at their feet, for a measure of protection. Then claw the Sapper's face off. (/SR, the Sapper didn't hit me...) My Thugs/Traps used them a lot at lower levels to keep minions alive before I got both Enforcers and Force Field Generator. I still like them for the same reasons above. And they're a nice One-Slot-Wonder. You certainly CAN slot them up for certain set bonuses, but they're good for the job I use them for right out of the box, too.

When I play Tank my default is "Soak the Alpha strike and any successive strikes until things are a) good and pissed at me, AND b) starting to get very hurt. Then, run off in search of the next pack, let DPS mop up the rest." A few mobs will chase me and DPS will just shoot them in the back / stab them on the run as they follow. That seems to be what most groups want from a tank these days. Or at least, what most groups that I've found myself in, on Excelsior, have seemed to want. That said, I've got zero problems changing how I handle things upon request / if the group seems struggling. If the squishies are taking too much pain during mop-up, I'll stay longer. If it's really bad, I'd even to the point where I wait for everything to be fully dead if I move on. That's almost never needed, but my first job is "Meat Shield", not "Keep Pulling Moar!". And of course some missions require much more aggro control than others. A generic council mission is one thing. "Defend The Midnight Mansion" is *quite* another thing entire.

He did it in German. So, don't anyone try to create an Ubermensch character with a big U on their chest. (Actually sight unseen, such a character must have been created, on several shards, though it may have been generic'd.)

The real killer on the Oldschool Posi TF's, you'd have a travel power, was Old Faultline. Because there was always someone who fell into the Marinara Trench, but who somehow managed not to die, and wanted to try to find their way out, instead of just sucking it up and taking the Hospital Express back to safer ground. Plus that mission filled with piles of CoT spectral demons stacking -To Hit buffs all over the place, when most of the players still had only Training Enhancements, and hardly could squeeze in Tactics. (if that was even POSSIBLE in the old scheme)

And then people would be moaning that Defeat All mission has stray mobs left behind they have to go and get, what an operatic tragedy it is that they have to run around the map to find the mobs they couldn't be bothered to stay and kill before. Though I am somewhat salty after fighting with code that Is Bad And Should Feel Bad all day long.

I still do the Mender Ramiel Arc anyway if I'm going to use incarnate powers at all. Mostly for RP reasons. (And a select few of my characters, will not. Ever. Not even an alpha. Because they're just mortal humans.)

I just think it's illogical to the point I can no longer suspend disbelief to have 20, 30, or 40 mobs all attempting to dogpile the tank, even when they cannot physically even compress each ohter to get close enough to melee the tank at that point. At a certain point, excess hostiles would say you know what? Rather than take a number and wait until I can physically get close enough to the tank, why don't I smack this Blaster / Defender / Corruptor / Squshy instead?

But the nice demon lord / devil / Circle of Thorns mage / demon binder whose business I was poking into / whatever, told me so! They would never lie to me, would they? Next you're going to say the car salesman isn't really my friend....

Another option. If the name was "Praetor Weaver".... you could try just "Weaver"... starting on Goldside.... then get them to lvl 50... and then upon dinging 50 you should get the "Praetor" badge, and could set that as your Badge Title. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Praetor_Badge Edit: although, I don't hold much hope there. Most single word names I've tried were taken.