biostem

IMO, this "review process" should be limited to making sure the custom characters are properly balanced and their names/bios/chatter are inoffensive and/or not lore breaking or infringing.

This could be mitigated if these missions were limited to simply submitting a villain group, but sticking to the typical radio mission format of "retrieve X object/defeat Y-named boss/rescue Z-named hostage", with any text being strictly limited to stuff like "I hear [character name] is on their way" or something...

I recall seeing a Madame Web in the 90s cartoon, so I'm wondering if either one of the women shown in the trailer will become her, or if there'll be some sort of reveal where she'll be introduced - either partway through or only at the very end...

I don't think this would play out the way you envision, and would instead tie up dev resources more than it'd be worth. If players cannot be bothered to play the dev choice AE stuff more than they already do, this implementation won't remedy that. What could be fun, though, is if players could submit costume ideas that could be featured in radios where you have to defeat a named boss - they'd keep all their normal powers, only using the player-submitted costume...

It's not an either-or scenario, though. Have you put an idea for this "Earth-themed support set" out there, yet? May the best ideas win!

Yeah, basically .50 cal generates more heat in exchange for more damage or something...

Maybe ice manipulation to further reflect her water powers, since there's no water secondary for blasters. Alternatively, you could do something like a poison/water defender, (with the poison powers colored bluish to better reflect water). As for a travel power, maybe stick to more "realistic" movement like just swift, hurdle, and perhaps combat jumping, with team teleport accolade to reflect the jet they had access to. You could also rationalize teleport as Gaia giving her special access to the ley line travel or maybe just hacking the mediport system, (or whatever it's called that teleports us when we get defeated).

I'm not hugely familiar with the lore, but it looks kind of like Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow, to me. Is it going to be in the same universe as Spiderman, Venom, or any of Sony's other "Spider Movies"?

It's easy to lose track of time, there...

Hmm... maybe combine @FupDup's idea about a "spin-up" mechanic along with an overheat one to provide a combination of factors that allow's one to switch between a shorter duration but higher rate of fire with a lower rate of fire that can be prolonged. You could further expand upon things by having mutually exclusive toggles, (let's call them ".30 cal" and ".50 cal" which further affect things like the damage, heat generation, spin-up time, and perhaps other effects, (like adding a minor stacking -res or -def debuff). It may be too much to have going on at once, but could be fun if implemented correctly...

Well, besides the general "for balance" reasons, I'd imagine some handwave to explain why the slower-firing chaingun would do more damage than the faster-firing one. You could say the slower one uses higher-caliber ammo, or maybe it'd allow for more accurate or armor-piercing attacks.

Cuz they're spiders, duh! 😋

Maybe I'm missing something here, but "lower fire rate" means fewer attacks per second, and "higher fire rate" means more attacks per second. Giving the former more damage and the latter less damage would help balance that out, no?

I wonder if, to give it a little more of a distinction from other such firearm sets, a sort of "variable fire rate" ability could be implemented, where lower fire rate would increase damage but lengthen recharge times, and higher fire rates would do the opposite, maybe even changing animation lengths as well...

Weird, then, because it does look different in hand position to me. ** shrugs ** Without getting too much into the weeds on the issue, I'm not terribly concerned with what other CoH private servers do/have done... I'd also like to note that the Council troopers that use chainguns also have differently named attack powers than their AR-wielding brethren...

Isn't it held differently, though?

Well, a precedent could be found in air superiority, and presumably the -range effect would persist for a short while, so tagging an enemy with that would be yet another way to keep them close. Which is something that melee ATs have very limited access to, and ranged ATs don't really need. It would still be useful if you can tag an enemy with a melee attack, (by jousting or other means). I wouldn't be adverse to adding a ranged variant as well.

I made a savage/ea stalker using the twin-hook cosmic corsair hands for both hands, called "Hookz", and was surprised it wasn't already taken...

Why would the -range component of an IO work any differently than it does in taunt, though?

I have not experienced this behavior when using taunt on enemies...

I don't have the full set details figured out, but I'd love to see a melee IO set, (or two), that include a -fly and/or a -range proc, (inspired by this thread).

One of the biggest problems I think both Marvel and Star Wars have experienced in recent years is this tendency to gloss over years or even decade's worth of events in order to rush to "now". We really needed to see more of, (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers), what happened between Captain Marvel and The Marvels, vs the numerous "info dumps" we're given instead...

Is the version available from arena vendors usable outside of there? If a web grenade temp power is reliably attainable for villains, then I see no reason why some parity couldn't exist for heroes, and visa-versa. A quick search also shows that there is at least 1 APP/PPP with a -fly power available to all melee ATs. Lastly, the -range in taunt and confront are also kind of meant to address the lack of range, so they're an option as well.

I've been experiencing a bit of a dry spell, so I've been trying a few different things out to see if something clicks. Here are 2 that I think turned out rather nicely; One's kind of comical, and the other a bit more on the horror side... The Savage/Energy Stalker "Hookz" and the Staff/Ninjitsu Scrapper "Knave of Staves":

I dislike autohit powers as well. If they're going to exist "by necessity", then they should be used extremely limitedly...