MTeague

I would not expect such mercy from any PvP'er. I'm firmly in the camp of "you went into the zone, you stayed long enough to get flagged, whaddiya really expect?" I'm NOT actually a PvP'er myself. I'm diehard PvE. But anytime I do enter, for a Shivan, or for some RV badges, etc, I do so knowing I can be ganked, possibly repeatedly ganked to the point where I simply choose to strategically retreat and try again at like 3:30 am, one random night if I get a bout of insomnia. (Insomnia SUCKS, but sometimes, hell, if I'm gonna be awake ANYWAY, I might as well try to use the time....)

I've never used the Ignore feature for anything except the goldfarming bots that existed back in LIVE. I have an overdeveloped sense of Voltaire there. ("disagree with what you say / defend your right to say it") I will report someone if I see them using a racial slur, but not until I scan the conversation and try to capture full impact of how it was used. And that primarily because it's directly against the Code of Conduct and because I don't want people like that sullying the CoH community. But... when it's purely political.... "MAGA" and the like.... yea, political speech may be against the code of conduct, but I just can't bring myself to report anyone for that. I have immediate family with political views that I ..... cannot..... fathom.... for the life of me. But I'd rather try to understand what makes them tick, how they got to where they are, etc, than try to shut people down. I don't feel any pity when I see a GM show up and tell them they'll start handing out silences if people don't drop it. That's the GM's enforcing their rules as the people hosting the game. And I would feel exactly zero shreds of pity if some folks were permabanned for going off politically in chat for a half an hour. But that's qualitiatively different from me issuing a report on political speech that offends me, which.... is a line I just can't bring myself to cross.

50% of the time, General chat is fun and useful and worth reading. 50% of the time, General chat is a toxic morass that .... I question why I have it in my channels at all. I'm pushing 50 and I have never in my life seen people so politicized and so circling wagons thinking anyone with different political views is an inherently bad person with nefarious motives, and that one great joy in life should be to taunt the other side. THAT's the real problem, and I have ZERO clue how that gets fixed or even begin the process of some kind of Detente. But it spills out into General Chat. A LOT. Short of having someone permanently assigned to monitor General Chat and slap it down each time it comes up, I don't know how you can stop it. Sure, political speech in chat channels may be against certain rules, but unless you start silencing / banning people I don't expect it to ever stop. And I'm not really thrilled at the idea of having to have people silenced and banned, either. And god knows I would not want to be stuck with the thankless job of having to monitor general chat or become percieved as the Speech Police. A filter would be nice as a way that doesn't need someone who has to be watching it all the time, it just happens silently in the background. But a big big question is "just how much resources / time woudl this take?" If it's a small lift, something that can be banged out quickly, sure yes, please, do it. If not.... I can't justify asking for even moderate dev time if it's a medium-or-bigger project.

I don't want to sell you deathsticks... I want to load up CoH and play my blaster....

My peeves the existence of EnterBaseFromPasscode any question along the lines of "What's the Best powerset choice?" or "What power should I choose for X?" Lvl 50's who literally don't know what zones connect to what zones. I do not expect any of these will ever go away. They're really 'me' issues more than anything else. But they're there.

Now that would be an awesome superpower 🙂

I do not believe it is purely a function of "I've run it so many more times than you, so I'm DONE with it" I've run that low level content .... a lot. A lot a lot a lot. More times than you? Maybe, maybe not. Over 60 times for sure. Possibly a hundred. I still find it fun. It's the start of my new characters journey. I would consider myself robbed if I leveled too far past it too fast, even knowing that Ouro exists, and I have no hesistation disabling XP if I get a group invite on a character I'm not ready to level up too fast yet. I do accept that it's boring as hell if what you care about is playing a max level character. I would call the difference a matter of whether or not the PLAYER is a story-driven player, but, that's probably not exactly right either. Hard to get exact words for some things that are just internal "I like X" "Y is boring" internal preferences.

For this reason, my Mind/Kin uses Polar Lights for lore pets. Still very fitting for a "magic" themed character. Not obnoxiously huge / doesn't block field of vision Decent AE not something that looks like evil or destruction personified. Just floating spheres of light.

The one type of buff I will compliment people for using on low-to-midlevel teams? Status protection buffs. Clear Mind, Increase Density, etc. I don't harp on it again and again throughout the team. Once is enough. But I do want to provide positive reinforcement anytime I see someone taking time and trouble to make sure their teamates wtihout status protection are covered. And particularly on low level teams, I want to reinforce what I view as good habits.

Then you are using different definitions than I would use. And I'd be curious to see hard data on what the "wider MMO culture" thinks and why you believe that it is so, and not just your opinion/impression. to me, If you're logged into the game at all? You're playing the game. Now there are parts of the game I consider more fun than not. There's parts of the games I really wonder why they were added. There's parts of the game I don't understand why anyone enjoys. But if your character can do it? It's playing the game. And frankly, if someone thinks a pure solo player is someone who may as well not be playing at all.... they can bite me. If I feel like soloing, I will solo. No one is "owed" X many people who are willing to group with them, and I have zero obligation to group with anyone else. I often will. But that is choice. If other people don't like it, that's their problem, start to finish.

Actually I find that very interesting. I had assumed, but not really tested, that an Attuned IO could randomly become any other IO that overlapped any part of it's range. So that a Attuned Shield Breaker Acc/DefDebuff (1-30 range) could not immediately become a Sting of the Manticore piece (lvl 35+). But I thought it you converted it to say, an Attuned Positron's Blast piece, THAT piece, could then in theory become Sting of the Manticore. Or does the hidden/assigned level get re-assigned after each successful convert of an attuned piece?

There's also the Giant 55 Gallon Drum Of Worms of "How would you PROVE your old character was yours?" even if HC had access to the old data. People have moved, changed email addresses, some may have had legal name changes in real life, etc. Everyone starts from scratch. No guarantee that names you had in live can be obtained here. If you have old screenshots, you can probably rebuild the costume precisely (may take some experimentation, but doable). Everyone starts at level 1. Everyone starts with no influence, no enhancements.

worst case, maybe force teleport the mob to it's spawn point (if the game tracks that....) you'd still need to be able to target the mob. maybe not be able to use your attacks, but have it show up as your current target. but I *think* that's usually not a problem.

I hear you, but if I see the team loading up with a skewed composition, I'd generally type something in team, or a tell to the leader, saying "Hm... we're a little light on damage. Want me to grab my Blaster?" or "erm... we'll want some support for this TF... should I grab my Mind/Kin, or you prefer to go as-is?". I wouldn't just haul off and switch characters and expect a re-invite without clearing it with the team leader.

I had no lag all across the entire 4th of July weekend or tonight. And my graphics settings are maxed (though I AM on a relatively new computer, and medium-to-high end) I accept and believe that other players are experiencing lag. But if it's not hitting me, I doubt there's any new issues with CoH code, and I have trouble thinking it's an issue on the HC side. Also consider if your computer took any automatic updates, and whether or not that might have impacted any drivers you may have. It's terribly easy to let your drivers get out of date, and with good reason... sometimes updating a driver fixes issues.... and sometimes updating a driver can cause an old game to that used to be stable to suddenly not be.

It's a game. The content is between 8 and 14 years old. It wasn't produced by the HC devs. if they DID want to remove the content, what do they replace it with? Nothing? what else might you or someone else decide to be offended about next? The Family? the 5th Council? shall we rip out story arcs and content just to appease someone with insufficiently thick skin?

Be prepared for massive critical hits to the feels when you hear the music on the login screen, or start decking out your character in the creation screen 🙂

I sorta get it, in that there's a LOT of enhancement categories, and a LOT of sets in each category, and that's quite a bit of information to memorize exactly which sets span which level ranges. It could be frustrating to keep converting a lvl 20 Serendipity piece, fishing for a Luck of the Gambler, wasting converters and not realizing it's flat impossible because LotG is lvl 25 minimum. (slottable at 22, but the IO's themselves have a mnimum numeric level of 25). It could be frustrating to keep converting a lvl 35 Lockdown piece, fishing for a Basilisks Gaze piece, wasting converters and not realizing it's flat imposible because Basilisks Gaze caps at lvl 30. It could be frustrating trying to turn a Winter's Gift Univesal Travel piece into a Blister Cold, only realize you wasted all the converters because despite the name, Winter's Gift is NOT actually a Lords-of-Winter set. So some kind of reference tab? yea, I could see that being nice. But there's SO MANY combinations, I don't think you could really get them all nicely on screen.

I definitely enjoy characters the most from 18-44. A few characters make the cut and are still enjoyable at 50, but even then, I prefer being exemplared back down to pre-incarnate levels. When I solo, I do story arcs. Taking the time to read the mission text, think about how whatever character I'm logged on at the moment would react to it, etc. Tip Missions, too. When I team, I set aside the roleplay-vs-game, because, no team ever has time for that. And because team banter can be fun as well. I tend to look at a group of +3x8 Malta with the team, and type stuff like "They look friendly. I bet we can talk this over." before pulls. I don't have a strong preference on duo-ing or midsize teams or full teams. For characters, I definitely prefer Control and Support characters the most. But any character at all with a well-fleshed out backstory and established motivations is a joy to play. This past weekend I solo'd the Night Ward story arc with "Ward" on my Invuln/SS Tanker on +2/x3 (lvl 34 character). That was kinda brutal just because the damage output was low (No Footstomp yet, no Spring Attack, allll single target punches), but it was all kinds of fun just imagining the Talons freaking out over just how many of them kept swarming me and I just WOULD NOT DIE. It got VERY nasty at the end when I had four, yes, FOUR purple-con Elite Bosses on me at all once. But I activated the Ring of Peebles for an extra +30 resist all on top of being a well-tricked-out Invuln, and basically nothing could harm me. I did have to keep an eye on the endurance bar and my inspirations, but when I got down to the last EB it was like "seriously, what are you gonna do? There were four of you, then three, then two, now just you. You cannot harm me." Definitely felt very Super on that mission.

I think here is the best place it's just.... Don't get your hopes up for any kind of Official Word-of-Developers answer. In the last 13 months, I've only seen the Devs announce completed work as they release it in patch notes. I have not seen them formally promise anything in advance of it being completed. They do open some weekly discussion threads to solicit feedback and opinions, but again, those ares still not a formal Q&A with any kind of promised list of items. To be clear, I agree with their approach 100%. Promise anything before it's known to be doable and there's holy hell to pay if it turns out it's not feasible. And this isn't their full time job, they're working on this as a labor of love while still holding down day jobs, while still dealing with family and social obligations like anytone else. It doesn't make sense to pre-promise anything under those conditions. They have surprised me with the amount of work they've churned out thus far though, including making the switch to a 64-bit mode, and lots of other "for the long haul" items, as well as the newer powersets, etc.

well.... I'd say the Thematic Defensive Niche is already filled by Energy Aura. EA is basically already "Force Field Armor". That said. Nothing wrong with asking for a second flavor of Force Field Armor, I suppose. No armor set works quite like what you've proposed, that's for sure.

I was teaming with someone just yesterday who got auto-booted from a team three times just last night, 6/6/2020. It was not a TF. It was just a regular mission team. World Wide Red arc, I think. Not flashbacks. Just at-level-content. I was not team leader, so I can't give a yay/nay on Eclipse's speculations about team leader being pure hero vs not. It did seem to happen right when someone ported to Ouro or to Base though, each of the 3 times.

I don't think it can be all that bad. The citizens of both Paragon and the Isles aren't dead from starvation, so crops and livestock are still grown somewhere. InFront Steakhouse, Up N Away Burger, El Super Mexicano, and all the rest get sufficent supplies to make restaraunts possible and affordable. I doubt it's all supposed to be brought in by Portal Corp. There are several hero contacts that are with the FBI, CIA, FAA, the US Military, etc, so some degree of the USA still exists enough to have such agencies and national identity. You do occasional tip missions to help rescue foreign dignitaries and ambassadors and there's concerns about international incidents, so there's some functioning governments abroad. It just always struck me as odd that Nemesis and the Council and Malta and CoT are so focused on succeeding in Paragon City instead of going for vastly lower hanging fruit across the globe.

I actually kinda would like to know more about the rest of Primal Earth. What's going on in say.... Belize? Or London? Or Cape Town? Or Kiev? How come all the heroes and villains have to duke it out over one city and one island chain? Some kind of spiritual magnetic attraction that compels them to seek each other out? Do we have to say "There can be only one!" at odd intervals?

I only join "Kill Most" (or "Kill All") teams. It means I pass on most teams, or decide to organize the team myself. But I'm happier with how the missions go, even if sometimes I only end up with 4-6 people on the team instead of 8. I also much prefer missions vs harder enemies.... Rularuu, Malta, Carnies, Night Ward, First Ward, etc.