PaxArcana

Corruptors are basically Offenders (Defenders who attack more than buff), just codified and official. My current favorite character is Red huntress, an Archery / Trick Arrow Corruptor. And she's blueside, all the way.

That's actually saying a lot, given how solo friendly CoH is.... The thing is, a lot of MMOs start from the assumption that everyone will be in teams/groups/parties, and then work from there. The game never really adapts (or does so poorly) to larger or smaller numbers of players performing a particular quest. CoX did not make that assumption. Instead, it started from the assumption that you'd have one or maybe two heroes in a mission, and scaled everything up as group size increased from 1. Thus, there were great incentives to team up (more XP and INF, faster, plus all the socializing part of it). But at it's basic, default level, 99% of the game is completely doable all by yourself. ... To put it another way: Other MMOs assume you're on a team, then (maybe) try to figure out how to make it more able to be played solo too. CoX assumed you're alone, then figured out how to make teaming up fun and workable too. CO assumes you're solo, and said "eh, fuck it" when it comes to teaming up.

This would also help for those of us with a penchant for creating adolescent characters - generally ages 13 to 15, say.

So, I extracted/installed the files to \Homecoming\data\texture_library\. Several subfolders were created automatically. However, I don't get the overlays in-game. Have I done something wrong? I figured it out myself: the Data folder has to be in the root Tequila directory, not in \Homecoming\ itself.

.... which is why the very first keybind I re-learned after coming Home, was my "SHIFT+LBUTTON GOTO" bind. My pets may not respect you, but I do ...! :)

So you go with only single-target holds and immobilizes. The sets don't have to be ported unchanged, after all. :)

I'd love that too, but from what I recall, they would actually have to create a plethora of otehrwise-identical powersets. The pet appearances are hardwired in to the powers in question. Which sucks balls, because it'd be awesome to have MY Thugs MM be controlling a bunch of Hellions, while YOURS commands Trollkin, and HERS commands a pack of Skulls. :) Which could give us not only different looks, but actually slightly different abilities for the various minions.

So, my love of MMs has been rekindled by Homecoming. But there's still a few things I feel could be vastly improved. I don't know if these are something tat can be coded in or not, but ... Travel Powers My biggest returned pet peeve (haha, pun) is that in order to travel from A to B any faster than Sprint, I need to /dismiss all my pets (or else, drag the pain-train right up my own tailpipe as the pets aggro everything along the way). I wish my pets got the same travel power I picked, and turning mine on turned theirs on too. More pet types I want more. More. MORE...! How about Psychic Mastery - summon psychic/psionic beings, essentially nightmares? Why not Coralax Mastery ...? How about a bunch of super-powered sidekicks - basically, NPC heroes or villains, with varied powers, as pets? Oh, here's another: Ghosts ...! :D Maybe specifically Pirate Ghosts ...!! Yarr!! More secondaries I want some CONTROL-themed secondaries, not just buff/debuff stuff. Let's proliferate some of the Controller and Dominator primaries over as MM secondaries.

Good point, I should have thought of that myself. In my defense, I've been sick as hell the past few days ... ::cough, cough:: ... :D

So, my love of MMs has been rekindled by Homecoming. But there's still a few things I feel could be vastly improved. I don't know if these are something tat can be coded in or not, but ... Travel Powers My biggest returned pet peeve (haha, pun) is that in order to travel from A to B any faster than Sprint, I need to /dismiss all my pets (or else, drag the pain-train right up my own tailpipe as the pets aggro everything along the way). I wish my pets got the same travel power I picked, and turning mine on turned theirs on too. More pet types I want more. More. MORE...! How about Psychic Mastery - summon psychic/psionic beings, essentially nightmares? Why not Coralax Mastery ...? How about a bunch of super-powered sidekicks - basically, NPC heroes or villains, with varied powers, as pets? More secondaries I want some CONTROL-themed secondaries, not just buff/debuff stuff. Let's proliferate some of the Controller and Dominator primaries over as MM secondaries.

It sounds a bit like Jack Emmert's mantra from the early days of CoH that "three minions = one hero" -- his vision that three bottom-tier enemies would be a significant challenge to a solo hero, the last vestige of which can be seen in the fact that the default minion spawn in solo missions at x1 is three minions. He also had the fixation on 'fun' being throwing yourself at the end boss again and again and again, being defeated over and over, until you figured out what the obscure specific actions you had to do to defeat it (as if the correct tactics wouldn't get splashed across the net within hours of that boss being beaten for the first time). Both of these aspects that made CoH more tedious to play got phased out as he was pushed upstairs, then the buyout by NCsoft freed the rest of the devs to make play feel more 'heroic'. Except it wound up being "1.5 minions = 1 hero". See, what triggered the whole thing is this: a small cadre of over-achievers who had a lot of experience in the Beta managed to hit the level cap within the 3-day Head Start. So they panicked, and grossly over-corrected. They nerfed everything playerside - especially player defenses - and buffed everything NPC-side - especially NPC defenses. I used to be able, on my Munitions/Devices character "Arsenal of Justice" during that headstart, to bounce from 3-5 spawn to 3-5 spawn, pretty much nonstop. It truly felt SUPERHEROIC; I still had to not be asleep at the keyboard for Lieutenants, and actually pay attention for Bosses. But the generic mooks? Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, all day long. Like I was the friggin' Batman, but with guns and a hoverdisk. Then, on Day One? Suddenly, I couldn't take more than two of those mooks, or one single Lieutenant, without having to find a safe spot to "take a knee" for a few moments to heal back up. And that's WITH Healing Drones following me around 24/7. My speed of play absolutely crashed, to less than 1/20 what it used to be. When your DPS goes down by 1/3, your defenses go down by half or two-thirds while simultaneously the enemy's DPS goes up by a 1/3, and their defenses go up by half or two-thirds ... ... it's no longer the same game. I was one of those who wanted a refund for my Lifetime subscription. I was not one of those who was given that refund. >_<

That is the one thing that Champions Online did better - Cryptic really did learn the right lesson from the complaints about character naming in CoX.

^^^^ This, in so many ways. How about an Archery-summon primary, with Trick Arrow as a secondary? That'd be brilliantly thematic, IMO. Or, how about a primary set that summons psychic monsters - "Delirium" or "Nightmare". SO many possibilities ...

I think there were a few other powers. My gunslinger had a pair of Healing Drones he could put out, which would heal team-mates as well as myself. But yes, there's no real provision in CO for "my character's reason to exist, is to make YOUR character even more awesome". Whereas, CoX has Defenders, Corruptors, Masterminds, and Controllers that really focus on "buff other people / debuff the enemy". Several other ATs have similar effects, albeit to a lesser degree IMO. Doesn't even have to be a Defender. Yes, all the healing Primaries belong to Defenders, but plenty of others have strong-enough healing from their secondaries. /Empathy, /Thermal, /Kinetic, and /Nature Controllers ... /Thermal, /Time Masterminds (and very minor healing in several other secondaries) ... /Pain, /Thermal, and /Time Corruptors ... :)

I got that ALL. THE. TIME. on my Robotics/Forcefield Mastermind. And, well, no, I didn't attack - but I kept your ass bubbled, while my six shiny robotic minions off-tanked for the whole group. All while maintainung situational awareness, repositioning myself to use Forcebolt's strong KB to throw enemies closer to the melee fighters, watching for additional adds (and sometimes making my robots "take care of" those adds before they ever threatened the other players), and on, and on, and on. Finally, I came up with the best answer, for an MM faced with that complaint: "Next big fight, I'm going to sit out and do nothing. Robots on passive, no bubbles, no leadership toggles. THEN, the fight AFTER that, every one of you will sit it out, and it'll be JUST me and my robots." Every single time, "just me and my robots" could tear through twice as many enemies, in less time than 3+ other players took for their fight. I would even be intentionally pulling extra spawns, just to make my point. And every single time, I stopped getting complaints about whether I was doing anything, or "just leeching". Highly, highly satisfying. :)

I played CoX for years (and stopped mainly because of serious issues with the parent company, NCSoft). When CO came out, I was super-excited. Giddy, even. I pre-orderedit, bought a brand-new PC _just_ to be able to play it, and ....... I bought a Lifetime Membership. Before the game even launched. ... Then the Day One patch happened. I don't know if you were able to play during the Headstart, but believe me when I say the game was different. Night-and-day different. That Day One patch cut player power by about 30%, while increasing NPC power by at least 50%. I went from being able to solo spawns of 1-2 LTs and 3-4 mooks .... to faceplanting if there were more than 3 enemies of ANY power level. Same character. Same enemy faction/group. Same bloody block in the city, even. ... But I did my best, and stuck with it for as long as I could stomach it. Even when, disaster of disasters, CO went "free to play". Hell, I was the guy who first championed the idea of giving the "set in stone" Archetypes one or two "pick from this short list" power options, in order to give free players a taste of Freeform's possibilities. I haven't played the game in seven or eight years. It's just soulless, to me. And that Day One thing, really ruined the pure video-game enjoyment of it, too. Finally, with almost every mission being done "in the world" rather than on instanced maps, there was just too much competition for spawns, and too huge a visible population of heroes. Early on, before the population tanked and F2P happened, there were times when player heroes within view outnumbered NPC mobs to fight. In CoX, away from Atlas Park (and maybe other Trainer locations), that really never happens. :shrug:

Carefully done, KB and Repel can actually HELP. On my Robots/FF mastermind, back in the day, I'd often run around "behind" the enemy, and use Force Bolt to knock things TOWARDS the melee guys. (Also, towards my Assault Bot's burn patches, but, eh). Or I'd throw up the big Repel-Dome FF power, and just _flush_ enemies towards whoever was tanking for the group (and then, since that'd pull tons of aggro my way, bubble up for a few moments while said tank/Brute/whatever threw out some taunts).

No worries. You prompted me to go out and actually FIND some documentation on that command, which has advanced my MM bind-file writing skills back to nearly what they used to be. :)

In fact, here: this is my basic template for MM keybinds, so far (I'm relearning it all now, as I haven't had to do any of this since a couple years before Sunset happened): SHIFT+RBUTTON "petcom_all goto" ALT+Q "petcom_all attack$$petcom_all aggressive" SHIFT+Q "petcom_all follow$$petcom_all defensive" numpad1 "powexec_location forward:6 _1_" numpad2 "powexec_location forward:8 _2_" numpad3 "powexec_location forward:10 _3_" numpad4 "target_custom_next mypet" numpad5 "powexec_name _A_" numpad6 "powexec_name _B_" numpad7 "powexec_name _C_" numpad8 "powexec_name _D_" numpad9 "powexec_name _E_" numpad0 "powexec_name _F_" divide "bindload_file _filename_ The bolded parts of 1, 2, and 3 need to be replaced with the specific pet summon powers you're running. Numpad 4 snaps your targeting reticule to one of your pets, for the next several keys. The bolded parts of 5 through 9 are for buffs - customize the ones you will be using, delete the rest. Note, your pet upgrade powers count for this! And / is for swapping back and forth between "Command" and "Summon-and-Buff" modes for the number pad, so you can have BOTH at once. :) Don't forget that you'll need to put this command in your Commands bindfile, too, to bring back the Summon bindfile.

You want to use the new command powexec_location. The format is: powexec_location location power One of the options is direction:distance ... from the patch notes: direction can either be one of six cardinal directions relative to the player: forward, back, left, right, up, down, -or- it can be a number. If it's a number, it is taken as an angle in degrees. 0 is straight in front of you, 90 is right, etc. It can also be camera, to indicate the direction the camera is facing, including elevation. distance is either a number in world units (feet), or the keyword max, which means to use the maximum range of the power. So, for example ... numpad1 powexec_location forward:6 Call Thugs That would summon your basic Thugs at a spot 6 feet in front of you. You could then add: numpad2 powexec_location forward:8 Call Enforcer numpad3 powexec_location forward:10 Call Bruiser And drop all your minions into play, literally as easy as "1, 2, 3". ... Now, excuse me, I'm going to go do all that for MY masterminds, too. :D

Dixa, the perfect MM build is simple: More than one MM. :D Have a good computer (easier now, than it was before Sunset) and bring a full team of MMs. Back before Sunset, I was on a Strike Force (first Respec, maybe?) where fully half of us were MMs; not only did we tear through that sucker like crap through a goose with diarrhea, we did it while the rest of the team just stood back and watched (with out blessings, mind). All different secondaries, two Robots, one Ninja, and one Zombie, IIRC. It was glorious!

Anything well-run. Don't let your minions (of any sort) block doors - move them. (I bind Shift+Lbutton to petcom_all Goto as a quick, easy way to do this without having to take my fingers away from my MM's own controls.) I stopped playing shortly before i14, IIRC. My main villainside was a Bots/FF who was frightfully effective ... and aside from the horrifically impatient, never got a complaint that my robots were blocking doorways. (The impatient complained because it took all six bots half a second, gasp the horror, to get through that doorway themselves.) ... Also, I haven't tested this recently, but I think they made MM pets pushable specifically to address this? I mean, back before NCSoft tried to murder the IP.

That's wierd ... I got the same result. But when I get to the page by other means, it changes the URL to be what I shared. Here, try this one: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Macro

What do you mean, "switch off" ...?

I may be misremembering (it's been almost a decade, so that's quite likely really - I last played during i13 ...). I just know that, with the Leadership toggles up, my Robo/FF had some END management woes to deal with. Possibly because Equip, Upgrade, and the various Bubble-buffs were single-target not AoE, so I was fair SPAMMING them every minute of a mission, solo or otherwise ... :) I'm expecting END to be less of a problem in i25, obviously.