Greycat

I absolutely do not want a teleport component on those. There are times I'm using Confront to try to pick out specific targets - that does NOT mean I want to be where that target is (and in the middle of all their friends.) And there are times it'd be objectively useless, such as when I use it to taunt gates (and thus pull groups of Rikti) on mothership raids. For assassin's strike, I'm *already* in melee range, I don't want to teleport anywhere. You want to teleport, pick up combat teleport. And no, "Every other game does it" is not valid. Every other game is not COH. So many "every other games" rely on a holy trinity of DPS/Tank/Healer to get anything done. Know what I don't tend to play for very long? Every other game. Most other games have even more of a grind to them. Most other games seem to have you actually have to *pay* in some way (not talking microtransactions, usually) to level up. There are a lot of things "every/most other game" does I would *hate* to see in COH.

Main issue is that it's a 35+ zone. I really don't think they'd want to face that... (Honestly, I don't think it needs an event, but that's me.)

I'm not arguing. I'm here. I play the hell out of C&C remastered (and 3.) I *like* my old games. And a lot of indie games go for even less detail in the old 8-bit aesthetic. (Disclaimer: Yes, I do still own an Atari 2600, though the retron 77 console's much friendlier to try to play those carts on.) But it's not going to *help* draw people in, necessarily, or keep them past novelty.

Time: OK, so they sit a little longer on a farm first. INF: ... isn't hard to get. Side problem for any restricting is, well, a lot of us are "oldbies," and just want to get an old character up and running. (Or, like me, are in it primarily for the RP now.) All these sorts of ideas would do is add some annoyance. And as to the OP: Mentioned elsewhere, but this game's old enough to start trying to get its learners permit and crash the car into a tree. The game *looks old.* NCSoft butchered every chance they had to promote the game when it was live - deciding, instead, to try to sell us sneakers on billboards in-game. While we still had a profitable enough population then, now? We are still in a rather grey legal status, we have a volunteer dev team that does things as they can (and, yes, has been pretty good at that, but still, small, volunteer team,) and our character models don't even have fingers. I mean, I took a break during live and played Aion... with facial expressions, round characters, gorgeous environments, nicely done wings, and the ability to sit in chairs - and *that* game's a decade old now. We're not as flashy. We'd probably get more retro gamers interested than anything. Short of a total rewrite, with a new engine, etc. (and how are those "spiritual successors" going even with money?) we're playing an old game.

If doing the "on air," I'd almost think the space we use for prefixing titles (the "the amazing fabulous" and whatnot) would be the space to indicate it. See a red rectangle with "on air" there, it's distinctive, should be easy to notice. Don't know about desirable or doable, I'm mostly looking at "visible" and "unique."

What build should everyone try? We have 1000 slots per server. Try *all* of them. Don't worry about permacappcharging your defensiztance. Get some dice, pick an AT with it, then a primary and secondary set. Take it to 50 (actually playing, not just PL-then-incarnate-then-cap.) Find a FOTM build. Flip it. (I did this occasionally on live. It ... leads to interesting combinations. When Ice/Energy blasters seemed really popular, I ran around with an Energy/Ice.) Or take a popular combo (Rad/Fire brute!) and ... don't make it a brute. I don't mean "make it a tank." I mean a rad/fire sentinel. Or controller. (... granted, fire/rad there, but you get the point.) Or blaster. Make an MA/Stone Armor just for flippy stones, don't worry about "optimized." Try all the builds. ALL of them. Work through "Everything/Invuln." Or "All control sets." Explore a little.

Have to 100% disagree. Crossing over gives me more flexibility to build a character the way *I* want to - as mentioned earlier, the subject of this thread, "Do I want my damage or de/buffs first?" for instance. Or, if you're going controller/dom, "do I want to do support or damage." *I get fewer limitations in building the character I want.* As far as people migrating off redside? The only thing that had Redside feeling good about itself was how few people were on gold, even on live. There's a *lot* more going on for why people don't play red than "my AT is no longer locked to that side." And those get listed out - with obvious variation between people - every single time someone asks. People don't like being lackeys, or they're turned off by suddenly hitting an arc doing things they really don't want to do, or their character is railroaded (or basically called an idiot) in the missions, or they don't like the way it is environmentally, or ... how many more reasons? So... sorry, but saying "Yep, called it, crossing over sucks and should never have been done!" is just ... no.

Vorlon MM.

So, jumping around gathering explore badges in Talos. The ghost ship "event" comes up. And I hear someone actually ... ask for a team for this. I don't think anyone cared about this on *live,* past the ectoplasmic badge. Primarily because this is just such a basic, not interesting, not worth repeating event. GM hunts? 6-10 merits per GM? Yes, people do that... and ignore this. But this should be *interesting.* A literal ghost ship, dropping off ghost crew/passengers, tied to some of Paragon's lore. Tied to Striga, to Spanky Rabinowtz (and I know I probably spelled that wrong,) and earlier Paragon history. So what's wrong with it? - It appears in Talos and IP. IP's not fun to begin with, but the ghost ship's path takes it over water... long stretches where it can't drop off anything even if you ARE hunting for the badge. - There's no reason other than the badge to *do* it, and then you do it once, maybe twice, to get the ghosts... and they're probably grey to you. There's no reason to repeat it. - Despite being tied to lore (and some interesting dialog, sort of,) it just ... is there. Nobody asks about the Moraine. It's just "the ghost ship." Now, no, it doesn't need to be a giant GM to take down, or drop off a ghost-GM. Boring. But it should open up *some* possibilities... perhaps tied to Ouro, to the history plaques, to Striga. (While these don't make "attack the ghosts" necessarily repeatedly attractive, it'd make looking for the ghost ship worthwhile, perhaps.) Ideas: - Ectoplasmic badge earned: You get a chance to board the ship and travel to its last days, trying to rescue who you can. Reward: Honestly, not sure. More badges, typically, since that fits. - Ectoplasmic plus Striga exploration badges/Hess unlocked (something like that) - New mission chain on Striga ... which I don't have ideas about, since I'm somewhat spitballing things. Possibly a "Find the wreck, unlock the secrets, and stop bad guy from burying you back along with the secrets." - Ectoplasmic, Striga and Ouro unlocked - Time travel arc back to before the last voyage. See Old Paragon, see undarkened Astoria. Try to get your warning out, perhaps. (Yes, these would be stacked, you could have all three unlock when the ghost ship is out or something.) Rewards? Well, merits for the arcs, of course. Badges. Get all three for an accolade. Get a tiny ghost ship pet to follow you around (or ghost, if that's your thing.) Honestly, mostly spitballing to see what could make this an actually *interesting* event to look forward to.

I think we can ignore the whole "this is what the name is, so it's EVIL!" thing. There's no difference between, say, a "mastermind" and a "squad leader." Even the powersets - mercenaries are not necessarily evil, for instance. They're a squad of guys in uniform with guns. If we could reskin them they could be a SWAT team, private security, any number of things. Same with thugs. Same with brutes, as long as we're looking at ATs - it's the "tough guy that punches things." What makes a "brute" more evil than a "tank?" Hard to say tanks (the mechanical sort) haven't been used in evil acts. Zombies? I have zombies who are fulfilling oaths, working willingly. Demons? The whole "working towards redemption" thing isn't a new idea. There's zero reason to use "but they started on redside back when the two were "sorta separate games but not" so they're good/evil" as reason to argue against... well, almost anything. That's long past, both with side switching and Praetoria (which didn't ever restrict that way) and the terms are irrelevant as anything other than a label you see at character creation. As far as re-envisioning what MMs as a class were meant to be... no, not needed at all. They were, and are, the only pet-centric archetype, and there's never been any confusion about that (unlike "what's the point of tanks/brutes/scrappers?" that comes up.)

Well, the character screen's long been in need of an overhaul. I don't think I'd need it, but I wouldn't argue with it being there.

Back on live, I did a guide to one of the old trailers. Had some discussion on these: https://web.archive.org/web/20120905065800/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=117073

Yeah, preferred pre-13 zone PVP myself. Part of the question that comes up when someone wants ATs or builds in PVP to be "competitive" is - "what do you mean?" Should anyone be able to 1v1 anyone else? That's pretty much not going to happen - COH doesn't have a "fighter," "dps," "rogue," "healer" basic class setup, it's got ATs which can vary wildly within themselves, which makes that balance very difficult. Always has. My answer for some time on live about how "x is unfair/unbalanced" was, often, "bring a team," because while I'd had some fun 1v1 fights (or, honestly, 1vmany,) a team that worked well together - even pickup - could really shine. (Yes, held Siren's Call with a team of 3 for quite some time once, 'til we were overwhelmed by numbers. It was a *blast.*) Now, that's not to say things shouldn't be adjusted, but ... POV helps with these. And it seems everyone wants something different. 1v1 is always going to favor certian builds - my earth/FF troller isn't going to do anything, for instance, and I'd *never* expect it to find or be given any sort of "balance" to be competitive. Even in PVE, enemies tend to die of old age rather than damage. 🙂 Incentive-wise... I don't know about arena, but zone varies zone by zone. BB I think is ... fine, really, with its main issue being the level range and what that can bring (a new level 15 vs someone exemped down to 25 with up to level 30 powers... that can be rough.) Same with RV, it's pretty good. Warburg's ... mostly hobbled by stupid AIs being unable to follow or path up ramps properly and their issues with stealth. The big outlier is, of course, Siren's - bounty doesn't persist, even if you go into zone missions, it takes too long to accumulate and what you can buy with it isn't worth it (woo, an SO at ... what, 6000?) The zone battles are slow and uninteresting and take too long to get started or ... really do anything. Of all the zones that need a look over for reward, and events (I'm "eh" on the jade spider, personally) Siren's needs it... even if we were looking at it from a strictly PVE POV.

Pretty much what Glacier said. I've seen a few bases that are very specifically in some part of the city - even going so far as to replicate part of the outside - or just vaguely "nearby." Others have been under the city, elsewhere in the world (old temples, jungles, etc,) in space - both in orbit, on spaceships and on other worlds - or, yeah, magic or otherwise "other" dimensions. Supergroup bases are everywhere you want them to be.

Seeing your response shows just how *badly* you're missing the point. You're on earth. The point is over in the Oort cloud. You're missing it *that badly.* Here: This. The internal monologue reflects Cole *very well.* He's from the turn of the (20th) century. Not only is this "problematic" line reflecting his view of how women should be in general, but he calls her a *harlot.* Not a slut, not a whore or any similar term, but one that's frankly seen as archaic. When's the last time you heard *anyone* called a "harlot?" Maybe reading the Bible? If it's in a modern setting, it's probably someone being presented as a religious fanatic yelling on a street corner. This is not saying anything *close* to "It's ok to call a female this in game." The COC does not apply to NPCs. NPCs do not have conduct to begin with, or agency to conduct it. Hell, while we're at it, Cole's not even saying this. He's *thinking* it. Are you, OP, advocating for thought police? Isn't that part of Cole's gig?

Name: Ji'ann Status: Active Location: Alternate dimension, no homeworld - dispersed Physical Description: Varies through life cycle and feeding, from bestial and four legged through semi-humanoid to near entire psychic entity Affiliation: None Idiosyncracies and way of life: The Ji'ann are brutal creatures from a brutal planet. Left to their own devices they probably would have been extinct by now. The majority are bestial, mostly running on four limbs. They feed primarily on psychic energy - that being an evolutionary quirk from their homeworld, where physical bodies tended to wither quickly in the environment. As they feed and fight each other, they become more intelligent, becoming huntsmen, overseers, then overlords. As they do, the psychic energy in their bodies burns more of their physical being away. Most remarkable tech hallmark: Their primary tech - the ships they use to travel and strip worlds - are stolen tech. Tech itself advances a bit differently on each ship, each being essentially a world to itself. The scientists (themselves a new thing in the society) are learning to adapt and modify the tech - and other tech they've stolen. Similarly, some are learning to adapt captured beings from worlds they've harvested to be more than foodstock... Cultural Progress Level: Mixed History: Current Agenda: Find and strip more worlds. Conquer, survive, grow stronger.

Wondering what you think peoples' reasons are. My decision tends to be "Do I want my attacks to come first (Corrupter) or my de/buffs ASAP? (Defender.)" Also "Does Scourge fit the character?" (Much the same as deciding between tank and brute.)

And I'm mostly just throwing out an idea in part to be a smartalec 🙂 Though having people discuss what it could be? Talk on!

That's not the character's name. It *is,* however, the way Cole's seeing that character. He doesn't see *any* of them in a particularly good light. This - his internal dialog as he looks over what he has left - is an accurate reflection of his opinions. They quite obviously aren't SUPPOSED to be positive. So, no, it doesn't need to change.

*cough* Yes, it is, because: ; ) That's 100% the justification for it. If I were doing anything more, theme-wise, yeah, it'd be dealing with slows - resisting slows, healing, even a slowing aura (to keep things (a) attacking less frequently, therefore less incoming damage, and (b) to keep them from leaving your AOEs.) "Quirk"-wise, for the heck of it, I'd probably have the healing provide an AOE heal-over-time if you have the aura. (Perhaps useful on teams, also useful for NPCs you have to keep alive.)

Yep. I want time armor. Ideally part of the defense (such as it is) comes from slows, and slow resists, has a decent heal, etc. But I mostly want it so I can roll a spines/time and name it Auld Lang Spines.

Name: Meian Status: Presumed extinct Location: Parallel dimension Earth Physical Description: Primarily human. Heavily psionic, shared empathy, other than a few mindblind. Affiliation: NA Idiosyncracies and way of life: The dimension, while being an alternate Earth, is somewhat "faster" than Primal by about four times. There's a periodic desync, best described as a storm, that prevents travel for much of the (primal) year. The Meians were standard human until about a century and a half ago, when much of the world - mid-war - suddenly became psionically active. They also learned that this came with empathic sense - one person's pain would be felt by all those around them. This drove the majority of them to be pacifists, and the few that still wanted to cause harm were seen as "ill" and priorities for treatment. Non-Psionics (known as "mindblind") you may expect to be discriminated against, but just the opposite took part - they are honored for the fact they can do jobs that the rest of the public can't (thanks to the shared empathy) - things like firefighting, rescue, and front line law enforcement. Most remarkable tech hallmark: Psionic tech and materials - paintings and music can be enjoyed by non psionics, for instance, but those with that perception can see "more." Cultural Progress Level: Post-industrial, or "eco-industrial," given the harms that can otherwise occur. History: Much of the history was similar to Primal Earth through about the Napoleonic age. As warfare turned industrialized, whatever event "switched on" their psionics kicked in, making warfare exceptionally painful for both sides. Treaties were rapidly drawn up, and the world entered an extended era of peace. The world became united, not through conquest, but through a shared sense of being. The industrial technologies that were starting to take hold shifted, as well - the sicknesses early industry brought on were quickly identified and the causes found, so new methods were needed. The environmental damage Primal has felt was nipped in the bud, though discoveries led to newer discoveries at a very rapid pace, especially in science, medicine and the arts. Portal Corp. made contact with the world and began a tentative exchange of information and goods - and the occasional patient that needed delicate psionic care or surgery in ways Primal could not provide. Shortly after the last of these, where one Eileen Sinann was passed on to handle a "psychic tumor" that threatened her sanity and possibly her life, contact with Prime was cut off for an extended time. Unfortunately for Meia, this is also when their world was detected by beings that fed on psychic energy - the Ji'ann. Scavengers, predators and beasts in many cases, the Ji'ann descended and started to overrun the world. Fortunately, that last Primal proved to be a clever strategist, and having decided to make Meia her home previously, she gathered the other Mindblind and formed an army. One destructive war (and the loss of her husband and child) later, the Ji'ann were driven off. However, the Meians - grateful as they were - were horrified by the destruction and afraid of the power that might come with this army. With the portal to Primal opening, Eileen and much of the mindblind army was sent back, exiled to Prime. The next time the portal cleared, Meia was a barren rock. Signs pointed to the Ji'ann having returned to harvest the world. While there may be survivors, either in this world or in the hands of the Ji'ann, none have been found. The Meians are presumed extinct at this time. Current Agenda: Presumed extinct. No agenda.

You ... just have to remember your origin? The ring around the edge is different for each origin, shouldn't have to bring it in to see if it's the right origin.

Hmm. Have a few... not all (re)introduced to the game. I'll have to remember to write up a few.

Honestly, I think talking individual powers over ATs / sets is a better spot to start. Since different sets - or different pairings - can give a wildly different experience ("Salmon Melee is horrible with Ice Armor but great with Regen.") For instance, you call a MM underperforming... yet people talk about MMs as, depending on the set (and experience) "Boring" (for instance, me trying to level a bots/ff on live, and nearly getting bored out of the entire AT,) "safest you can play (also bots/ff, often,) or "AV/GM killers." That's a pretty wide range. About the only general statement you can make is that the MM's attacks are ... eh. Or, you mention tanks as being overpowered with (paraphrasing) "your healer friends get bored." Well, that's less a problem with tanks and more with the fact that "healing" goes from much loved early on to really not needed much late game. (And also "are we talking Empathy or Pain Dom? And are they doing the self-nerfing 'pure healer' thing or actually doing other things too?") And, of course, the last bit - also touching on the OP's tank comment - is are we talking sets/ATs, or *IOs?* Would your tank be jumping in at +4x8 and not taking any damage if they were just on SOs? If not - and I suspect the answer would be "no" there - I don't think the powerset or AT is the issue. The "I can perma/cap/floored recharge" does horrendous things to game balance. (I mention in some of the "what would you change..." threads that pop up occasionally that I'd drop the rule of 5 to a rule of 3, among other things (like folding LOTG into the generic recharge percentage) - not a popular opinion, but I think the complaint of "this AT/set is overpowered" might get a new look if that happened.)