Enamel_32

One of my favorite smaller updates is the option to show the remaining recharge time of a power, displayed over the power icon. So here I am, asking for more! What: My suggestion is to add another UI option to display whether a click power is currently active, like the status window and its icons (which depending on your settings may blink when they're nearly expired), but overlaid on the power itself in the power tray. Why: It's easy to lose track of active effects, especially at higher levels and on large teams/leagues where you might end up with several shifting rows of icons. It's still possible to check for the power I'm after, but hard to do quickly in the midst of other things. For some powers like Moment of Glory, that's important information to have in the heat of battle. Instead, I could look at the power sitting there in the tray - something I do all the time to see if it's ready to use - in a fixed position. Much easier, right? How: I think there are a lot of possible solutions, like adding a power highlight ring, changing the tint or opacity of the icon, or even putting that blue spinning indicator around it like with toggles. I'm sure the dev team can figure out some cool design variations of their own. As long as it conveys that a power is active I'm happy, and if it also conveys when it's close to ending, even better.

I'll start with one from 2012, my cheerful and stealthy bane spider.

I had no idea people were making money selling T2 and T3 inspirations. In this economy?

I apologize if I took your suggestion and ran with it in the wrong direction. For what it's worth, This is a really cool idea, and something I'd see as being duplex-worthy.

This is the hypothetical next version of a power set. Imagine if there was a new a version of Electric Blast with a "shocked" mechanic, for example. Some players might just want to play the version of the power set they remember from back in the day. I can't say I would personally indulge in them, but I enjoy the idea of a "time capsule" version of power sets. That's really it. This has been top of mind for me, as well. As a person who frowns at reviews other people's code professionally, I can agree that changes are the enemy of stability. When the engine itself, or a specific interaction is changed, yes, having multiple versions of a power set is extra effort. When you're introducing a change to a power set like a creative new proc mechanic, I would argue it's a benefit. The original powers aren't modified, instead the new version is a copy of its predecessor. You get a direct A/B testing benefit too. Ultimately this is a question of what will be changed vs. added to the game. If changing core mechanics is more common, I concede the suggestion doesn't make as much sense. But ehhh, this isn't a hill I'm willing to die on and I'm not even sure it's in line with the original poster's suggestion. If we don't like it, we don't like it!

I don't recall asking for one. I'm curious what you're referring to here, am I missing something? I'm specifically not asking for... I've been a player since the early days, and generally speaking things have only gotten stronger. Do I want to go back to Energy Aura before it had a heal? Not really. I'm also not asking to bring back anything pre-nerf, like That One Set. If HC went and totally overhauled a set, and it was super cool and made it more fun to play, but it required a full respec, I'd like to choose when to update to that version rather than having a busted character. And potentially someday for a retro experience, I could go back to that older build, if that makes sense.

How much time is spent maintaining Invulnerability for tankers, or Earth Control for controllers? I'd hope the answer is essentially nothing unless those powers are being re-balanced. I definitely get your point, but I would rather have a developer step in and provide this reasoning than us players. I wouldn't want a suggestion to be shot down because we're not familiar with how the engine works, you know?

Yeah, I think if anything this would need to be a whole power set switcheroo kind of thing. I've occasionally wondered about how feasible it would be to allow players to choose older versions of a power set, like having a "classic / pre-shutdown", "homecoming rebalanced" and even potentially "fully reimagined" or "launch day" versions (except for maybe That One Set). If you wanted, you could even put that option behind some new time travel or alternate dimension related unlock.

It sure would be nice if this discussion was constructive and about the suggestion.

I like the server tray icon for players affected by the buff, and I think that toggling/untoggling it could be made to interact with the existing Null the gull power, probably. That said, I think you could also add a pop-up power tray toggle for the person with group fly active, to suppress group flight for other players, effectively making it a pets-only version of the power.

I think this could be implemented with a similar check to Grounded from Electric Armor, so that the hover effect is suppressed if you teleport to a location on (or very near to) the ground.

Yes please. I also wouldn't say no to hover as a default stance.

Along those same lines, I'd love to see the Mu Mystic lightning aura(s) available.

Ooh, another regen thread! Here's my 2 cents: Changing a power from a click to a toggle would at the very least probably require a respec, which is going to be annoying. Don't get me wrong, I'd respec my brute and probably enjoy it a little more but I would have to do some thinking about the whole thing and I can't speak for other regen players. I've always wondered why the click powers have no passive benefits. Like sure, it's exhausting to go full Instant Healing, but if you've learned how to Instantly Heal, why is it an on/off switch? Also, @Troo, excellent write-up!

You are indeed correct. However I don't think it's unreasonable to find the middle ground between the OP and the old enhancement type. We can look at them both as being ways of increasing a power's area of effect, which is what a player would ultimately care about. Honestly, I think enhancing a power's area of effect directly might be the level of scaling that makes sense for a newly proposed enhancement type like this. If you increased the radius of Fire Ball by 50% for example, you get 337% more volume.

For the AoE radius proposal specifically, that's at least doable. Some of the older players might recall there used to be cone width enhancements, so there's precedent for this style of modifier as well. Agreed that balancing that would be... Very Difficult. If you don't enhance the stat very much, it's not going to be worth slotting. If you do too much it becomes easy to always hit the target cap for AoE powers. There is a cap, which perhaps helps things from getting out of hand, but a change like this requires significant consideration.

Yeah... I think this is something that can likely be tuned per individual stealth power. Especially if there's already a power in the game that works differently. I'm sure most of them are currently configured to cancel the stealth effect once you've "attacked" an enemy, but this seems to equate to activating the attack power and probably that power succeeding on its accuracy roll. If we look at City of Data, we can see that a stealth power like Shinobi is flagged as canceling the effect when AttackedOther, Sleep, Stunned, Held, and MissionObjectClick. Contrast that with Hide, you'll see that it's only set up to cancel the stealth when Stunned, Held, or Sleep are active effects. The stealth is instead suppressed, when AttackedOther, MissionObjectClick, or Damaged. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between canceled and suppressed is, but my educated guess is that's the reason the powers work differently. Edit: there's probably another tag that could be used here for dealing damage, rather than attacking, as well. The game's got all kinds of parameters to utilize.

In software, restrictions like this are never impossible to remove, just incredibly difficult. Given enough time and effort it could be done, but often that time and effort is better spent elsewhere, on things that more people are asking for.

It's hard to see a transfer of money as a donation if the donor receives something in return, it becomes much more like a purchase. While I have no insight into the agreement made with NCSoft I can only imagine this ventures into undesirable legal territory.

Neat! Some general notes: This could be an easy FX recycling power set, making it easier to get into the game. There's also some alternate bubble-style FX you could shoehorn in. What does this look like for stalkers? From a game mechanic point of view, it's not the world's most interesting offering, but that's fitting since it's emulating an issue 0 power set. For a new power set these days, I think people will ask: what makes it stand out? Maybe the stand-out mechanic IS providing both positional and typed (except psi) defenses? Not sure here. There's a lot of debuff resistance for being a defensive set. Mostly they just resist defense debuffs and sometimes -speed/-recharge and the other debuffs are avoided thanks to the defense. Purrfekshawn has opened an interesting door with the idea of incorporating procs. I think adding a chance for knockdown and smashing damage could add some fun repulsion flavor to the set. I think there's an opportunity to add or swap in a location-based bubble power, similar to Faraday Cage. Specific powers: Density Field: I would maybe consider a different or much weaker debuff effect, as the -recharge is ~3x stronger than the one in Entropic Aura, for example, and that doesn't also reduce enemy movement speed. Kinetic Barrier, Frictionless: Nothing wrong, but these are places where the set could be made more distinct from others. Force Recoil: Big crowd control. I don't think I would pick this power unless I was playing a capital T tanker to be honest. I do think it'd end up looking hilarious, since most knockdown animations put enemies on their backs, and they're simultaneously being pulled toward their target. Shield Compaction: I have a suspicion that the resistance component pushes this into Way Strong territory, but a click absorb makes a lot of sense to me for a defensive set, particularly at lower levels where you're getting hit more. Maybe it also makes sense to shift a portion of the defense debuff resistance from the other powers into this one? Force Sanctuary: the regeneration feels out of place here; it reads like an Empathy power to me. With the initial suggested numbers it's exactly as potent as Regeneration Aura and Regeneration Aura combined, though it differs in that follows the player around vs. being a one time click, and has a shorter duration and radius of effect.

People RP all sort of stuff and... just let 'em? For instance there's nothing saying that an illusion or psychic-based form of stealth couldn't exist entirely in an NPC's mind. Stealth doesn't have to equate to transparency; and I believe a good chunk of the powers in question have other tells like particle effects and sounds when activated. I would be 100% on board if there is an identifiable alternative to it. The weird ones to me are group stealth. I think that's a case where the affected player is not always the one using the power, and they should know when they are under the effects of it. I think that can still be addressed without transparency, but it's worth calling out.

A lot of the suggestions for overcoming MoG rely on having a team or a specific combination of powers, it seems. While that's a perfectly valid perspective, let's also consider that not everybody plays One Way or Another for all sorts of reasons. I'd personally like to see more variety in what MoG is currently lacking. Right now it's susceptible to psi damage alone (though it still provides a lot of defense), but what if it was one of several weaknesses, picked at random? You could even alter the FX to make it visually recognizable to liven things up a bit, like the ice armor, flame shield, and so on. This way it becomes more of an active gameplay element, while presenting less of a "solid wall of frustration" for some players.

Unless you invest in additional stealth, a single stealth power from the armor sets is usually just enough to not accidentally draw aggro from a neighboring group. It's honestly pretty nice from an aggro management perspective as long as you're aware that the rest of the team might be more noticeable to enemies sometimes.

Fury is a good power to focus on, rather than sweeping numerical changes, because its effects change over time and I feel the dynamism is part of the draw. A brute at full fury should feel like a force of nature, something terrible to behold. It takes (or should take) time, a bit of resource management, and decision making to build and maintain a lot of fury - an investment - so what fury provides should be rewarding. Today, it's what helps a brute achieve competitive damage output. I like the idea of providing mez resistance, and potentially mez protection (IMO that's tricky to balance) as fury builds. It's definitely in line with building that sense of overwhelming momentum. I've thought about suggesting recovery of an endurance discount, but some powerset combos aren't going to ever notice a change like that. I also like the idea of increasing target caps as fury increases, but at the same time, it's kind of copying the tanker's homework. Maybe it's less of an issue if their AoE sizes don't scale up as well? Looking at the field we have steady-state damage with some natural variance from critical hits with scrappers, more controllable alpha strike damage from stalkers, and most recently some serious AoE output from tankers. What's left for brutes aside from just bouncing between those goalposts? So now, a couple thoughts for consideration: Add a minimum fury level based on missing HP. Getting smacked down to 60% health grants you a guaranteed 40% fury to retaliate with. As fury increases, a portion of damage dealt bypasses enemy resistance. Pretending it's doable, brutes at full tilt become a source of more reliable damage, no matter the enemy type.

I like the specific call-out for stalkers and the interaction between placate and hide, but feel maybe it should also apply to banes and widows that have taken their respective stealth powers too?