ABlueThingy

Male, Female, Huge: Head > Full Helmets > Chitin Helm > "Masks" should now work properly. If you have a lot of Chitin helmet costumes (for those that reported this issue), you can open your .costume files and update the texture path to include '!face_' before the pattern name so it passes validation when loading. Still doesn't seem like the Chitin helm has any masks on there? Assuming this means the textures and not just the geometry

If I had to guess, to encourage diversity of content at max level. So everyone isn't doing the same content over and over. There will always be a "best content" for whatever your goal is. But if one thing, AE farms, are the best at EVERYTHING then that's all people do and it kinda makes everything else redundant. Makes the game world feel small

Ehhhhh I dunno how to formulate my thoughts on this without sounding like I hate everything... I hate most of the combo mechanics as they exist now. I also hate it when a set has no quirky mechanics to it. I also hate it when a set is overly reliant on a quirky mechanic. But I love this game so, idk. Hm. When this game was in Beta there was a "Weapon Master" type set that used Broadsword, Axe, Mace and Katana powers. There was only a few powers for each. The copied the animations and shared them across all the weapons to make the four sets. Katana originally used the same animations and later was given it's own unique ones. I hate that all these sets feel so so close to identical. Instead of "What does someone who uses a Broadsword do that a Katana wielder doesn't?" or "How are Axe and Mace wielders different in various heroic narratives?" They are different by only power order, a few numbers here and there, changes on a spreadsheet for dmg/rech/end calculations. That has always felt gross to me. The original weapon sets are the worst offenders but a lot of the original blasts have similar issues. Trying to fill out slots on an alignment chart for stats where your axes are Fast-slow, AoE-ST, Dmg-Special FX. This kind of design eventually runs into a wall where you've filled out the whole "alignment chart" and any new sets will be redundant. Where everything is just NRG Blast with some of the numbers swapped around and maybe a ST replaced with an AoE and a new coat of paint. Adding in more quirky mechanics allows you to create more axes to differentiate sets from one another. I would have frankly been disappointed if Seismic Blast was just a variation of Energy Blast but with KB swapped for more disorients and slows or something and rock effects. Every Placate and Assassin Strike and BU and Stealth feels like a total waste in Stalker. Every Aim and BU and Snipe in Blasters. Every BU and Taunt for Scrappers. And so on. If they're so important that the AT needs them then just bake them into the AT. Give Stalkers Stealth/BU/Placate as an Inherent and do something unique with the space given. If Scrappers would break without BU such that every set needs one or some variation of one(and most people seem to agree the quirky BU replacements are kinda shit). Then give all Scrappers BU as an inherent and put some other kind of unique power in there. In my opinion the control and buff/debuff sets handled this better. They're still a bit constrained but you more readily see "What can someone who controls Fire do that someone who controls Ice can't" shining through. Empathy and Force Field are VERY different without relying on weird combo mechanics or anything. All that said though... the melee/blast sets with additional mechanics felt like they've handled this somewhat poorly? Every melee/Blast set without a mechanic just feels like picking up enough ticks for AoE/ST to make a repeating attack chain to fill my time with. Most of the powers feel skip-able or that there's an incentive to skip as many as I can without making holes in my chain. But all the ones with combos and "Must have" powers feel unnecessarily constrained. DB without a combo system is just Katana with more AoE/DoT and less direct dmg. Building for the combo just means picking powers specifically for the combo effect which is... idk, it feels off? Every power I pick up in Darkness Control adds a new kind of thing I can do in combat, a new unique tool to use. Some new problem I can deal with now, a new way to deal with old problems. I don't get that feeling from Melee/Blast sets. Every power should be a gain to pick and a loss to skip. Maybe DB is a good example to look at here? There's multiple combos to pick from. Maybe if DB had a few more combos to pick from for even more flexibility that would be a good way to look at the design? If the set had a condensed "minimalist" version with the sharpest most damaging attack chain for people like BillZ that just pick the most brutally effective and simple combo. But picking up the rest of the set expanded on the tools and there was multiple tool sets inside a given set? Aargh I don't know what point I'm trying to get at. I don't like it when a powerset with "must have" powers to pick up, but I don't like when sets have "Must skip" powers. I don't like it when a power set type is samey but I understand why ATs need to have standardized rules to make it even remotely possible to balance and have a fun experience. God knows a controller set without a ST Hold available at level 1 would feel like shit to play.

If I was designing a CoH 2 I would likely add in a "Morale" bar in addition to Health and Endurance as a secondary method of defeating foes. You could be depleted by having nearby foes defeated, being held, being debuffed. So some characters could win through more non-violent means. A lot of fights in comics are won against minions by Iceman just locking the whole room down and moving on or Spider-man sticking someone to a wall. Would be nice to have those methods available. I feel like kind of a jerk holding someone and then beating them with a stick until they can't move. Buuut beyond something as huge as that getting added in the best "Pacifist" character would likely be a Mind Controler with Emp, Kin, Sonic or FF. And just focusing on sleeps and support abilities. If you're going for more RP type thing maybe... An MM? Necro or Demon + Emp. And having the zombies/demons being reanimated/summoned unwillingly by your character. They just have so much life energy spilling out it attracts these things like Remora latching onto them. And as you're their food source they defend you against your will.

Skintone used to have more options back waaaaay early in the game but were nerfed down to what we have due to nude costumes. But that's as far back as nipples existing They also nerfed the colors we can use for the costumes a bit as I recall

Doesn't Blizzard have bonus damage for being a long DoT that people can just walk out of? Again, Meteor has average damage for a nuke. It has an advantage in control from KD/KB and the delay, large area, large range all allow it to pull some tricks that other powers can't. In addition to being able to break it's Dmg per Rech formula with the inherent set bonus to recharge. That is, for any other primary set with a nuke of comparable damage and slotting. Meteor should be doing more as it's recharge can be leveraged for more casts WITHOUT suffering a damage penalty. So yes, some nukes have tricks that Meteor can't do. And Meteor can do some tricks that no other nuke can pull off. If you want it to do more damage you're either asking for it to lose some of it's unique traits as a trade off or you're asking for it to break the balancing of powers visa-vie Dmg:Rech:Secondary effects.

Min-Maxers will always be sad that a new set it's not better then every other set in the only ways they care about. I personally think that building sets around "Fast recharging, large aoe, instant cast, mob wiping dmg" and judging all sets that fail to reach as broken, bugged, or otherwise lesser is a dark path. There's already so much AoE damage that on a moderately well built team it functionally invalidates half the kinds of ways of engaging with combat. Mobs violently explode into particle effects the instant the team reaches it. You can't built sets around that paradigm.

If you're on a team, that complaint applies no matter how fast you are. It's an issue in the design of the game. I don't want every power built around the idea that you have to first-hit a massive nuke for it to be worthwhile. Seismic Blast might not be the power set for you. That doesn't mean it's a bad powerset or otherwise designed wrong. It's big, slow, heavy hitting and requires a bit of forethought. If you can do that, it does catastrophic damage. To make up for the speed, it gives you some defensive powers as well. In addition to being able to speed itself up. It fills a number of both thematic and mechanical niches while still being competitive with existing sets.

You know Meteor having that lag time makes it stack up alongside Upthrust and Rock Shards nicely. If you cast BU/Aim->Meteor->Upthrust->Rock Shards rapidly after one another then all the attacks will land at the same time for a single burst of damage more then virtually anyone else can achieve. Meteor has a long lagtime on dropping in and Upthrust has travel time so they both land about the same time if stacked one after the other at just the right distance.

As I recall "jumping" is actually reverse-falling as far as the game engine understands it. Jump mechanics are wired in a very weird way. That's part of what gives it that unique feel. It also makes it hard to mess with. There was an Arcana post on it some years back when she busted open the demorecord to see what was going on I think. This game was build out of paperclips, twine and chewing gum. Every patch re-enforced that foundation with extra prayer.

This... and this. Are contradictory. A game with "The Trinity" means a game that requires a tank/healer/dps to complete the content. Nothing but the Tank can survive the damage but they can't survive long without a Healer and neither of them can output much damage so they need a DPS. That has never been true in COH from the Beta onward. In both mechanical reality and design intent by the devs. I personally tanked multiple AVs with my Kat/Regen on a "DPS" class. Before CoV launched I had acted as the tank for every AV in the game. So pre IOs even. I had even tanked Hami. "Healers" are the weakest form of support in the game. Debuffs and Buffs beat them out. I've personally seen Blasters tank the pretorian AVs in, again, SO era. Before difficulty sliders. This was always both a strength and weakness for the game. I remember the purple patch. I remember City of Blasters. I remember the Tanker nerfs. I remember City of Statues. I remember the time before the PTOD. I remember the arguments about Blasters being worthless because Def could output more damage at range when accounting for buffs/debuffs and Scrappers could do about as much but never die. I remember the scrappers complaining they were worthless because Blasters did more damage but they couldn't even tank. I remember Tankers complaining they were useless because an FF and Dark Miasma on the team could turn anyone into a tank. I remember Controllers complaining that Tankers could lock down mobs just like they could and Defenders had better support so THEY were useless. You never needed a tank, but people thought you did. You never needed a healer, but people thought you did. You never even needed DPS. But people thought you did. Every issue it would cycle out and someone new would be the "Most useless AT" and every 3 issues there would be an upset and things go wild. And the truth was always that literally any AT combo could work for any content up until CoV. Not every powerset combo could, but every AT combo. All Tanker, All Defender, All Controller. 7 Def/1 Scrap. 1 Blast/1Def/6 Tanks. As long as the powesets were right it would work. You just needed enough HP, spread across the team, to survive the damage. And enough damage to reduce the enemy HP before yours ran out. You could use a Tanker or a Blaster and just have raw heavy numbers. Or you could use a Scrapper and buff them into a tank. Or a bunch of Controllers and debuff/lockdown the enemy until they couldn't hurt you. AND NONE OF THAT IS EVEN TOUCHING THE INSPIRATIONS! Lord! That was the whole point of the Insp system, to specifically shatter the trinity into bits. Anyone could pump themselves full of insps and take on any content. A team of (the right kind of)Blasters could use Insps to power through anything

Alright, so Rage is the issue right? It makes/breaks the set. Can we just convert some portion of the bonus damage into a smashing Proc? Like if Rage gives 80% damage now just cut it down to 50% or 40% and add in a 100% chance for Smashing Dmg Proc to all the SS powers equal to the missing amount of damage on each power. It would stop the Crits from giving Scrappers an Assassin's Footstomp worth of damage but still give them a huge amount of damage. If you wanted to be fancy you could make the proc damage unresistible or untyped or something so they have an edge on all the crazy amounts of smashing resist in the game.

I was actually considering trying a Grav/Storm and seeing if I could load down the storm powers with Procs and make a little death bubble using DS. But I've never gotten a grav up that high. Would that work? How do psudo-pets work here.

I would not like it if Soul Drain was turned into a basic Build Up clone, we have too many Build Ups as it is. Frankly we should be looking for ways to get rid of Build Up and Aim and Taunt and Confront and Placate type powers that are cloned across sets.

This is why the Devs shouldn't ever let anything go. People get real entitled to stuff.

If I recall the original power customization issue per the old Devs... The issue was the way the power works at the moment is that it overwrites your model entirely and calls up a new one. Because it's just "replace with DE_Granite_LT" there's no way for the power to transfer information to the Granite model. As all that info is stored in your model, which Granite Armor just deleted to replace with a new one. All the power customization is stored like costume info. It's not in the power it's in your model, more or less. The other stone powers for example all ADD something to your model. So the power trips and says "Add Crystal Armor" and your model says "Actually I have the data for that and it says 'Use Lava and color it blue' so we're doing that. This isn't to say it's impossible just that it's not an easy fix. Gonna have to rewire the power. And they really need to take a serious look at Stone Armor as a whole anyway such that Granite might not even exist in it's current state by the time they're done

If we're trying to keep the thematic components intact then just have the status protect at all times and then double it when you're on the ground.

I wouldn't change Recon like that, it works fine as it is I think. Revive is the power no one takes. Rename it to "Second Life" and make it so you can use it while alive for a big Absorb shield. Maybe make it give you a that if you use it while you're dead. Maybe have it auto recharge Recon or something too. And throw in a ton of -regen and -rech protection. There, anyone what feels Regen is lacking can pick up "Second Life" and everyone that thinks the set is fine doesn't have to change anything. And Regen gets it's most glaring and unnecessary holes patched. And with the ability to soak an Alpha strike via Absorb it would be safer to port to Tanks.

What about reducing the base NPC To-hit by say... 5 percentage points. And adding an additional 5 Accuracy to all NPCs? So if you have no defenses nothing changes you're still at a 50% change to get hit. But now everyone soft caps at 40% def no matter how many IOs they have. Then just add in Elusivity only to sets that focus on it like SR and FF to let them push back up to the 45% cap. You should be able to rejigger the math so those def focused ATs won't see much of change. Maybe shave 10% off all the +def powers and convert it into Elusivity and make +def ENH also add to Elusivity. It won't hit power creep that much as there's lots of other ways to squeeze survivbility out of the game but it would at least give some sets more of a mechanically unique identity. Also this might have to come with changes to squishy sets if it impacts them too hard. Maybe also maybe add in more -def protection here and there. I'm not even saying this is a good idea mind you. Just that if you're going to mess with the whole to-hit system there's a lot of ways you can go then just randomly capping it off.

If I recall right, it's because it's not like a normal power. The power customization lets you change the effect as it's called on the player. But the "effect" for Granite is just the little rock particles and the activation animation. Once those are done the power itself, in the code, pawns off the rest of the effect to a kind of "Replace" effect. The replace calls the DE Rock monster model in. Last I heard there was no way for the UI to tell the Power to tell the replace effect to be different. It would have had to be a different power that called on a different replacement. Unless they did some behind the scenes work of course. It's just more complicated than most powers.

This game has always had a progression. That's one of the defining features of role playing games in general. Everything from your powers to the type of content you can do to, yes, what zones you can access. Specifically relevant here is that CoH has always had limits on travel that created a progress. Low level characters on fresh accounts had less access to travel then a maxed out 50 with all the Vet rewards. You'd start with sprint/swift/hurdle. Everyone gets that for free. You can even buff them if you want at level 3 with some enh. That costs you both slots and inf in addition to the time required to level to 3. Not much, but still *A* cost even if just an opportunity cost. On live a new player could either get a paid account and accrue vet tokens or spend real money in the shop to start getting Vet Tokens and spend those on travel unlocks or they could buy the Beast Pack or... whatever had the ninja run. I forget. You could buy the VIP Pocket D pack. You could unlock Oroboros. WW TP, Base TP Day Job. Heck, you could pick all of them. But if you picked none of them you would be at a relative disadvantage to someone who spent the time/energy/inf/real money. That was intentional. Adding the /ebfp command removed that progress. Suddenly everyone had equal access to all the travel content. This broke a core tenant that the more time/energy/inf you invested into the travel systems the more options you had for travel. It removed the progression that was present and intended by the original devs. This is likely why even the Homecoming devs have made the comparison to a GM /killall command. There is a progression in the combat systems that starts with Brawl and your initial powers being kind of crap. Up to some ATs getting the power to wipe out whole groups in one shot with the proper investments of time/slots/inf/etc. All those new combat powers and Enh and all the other powers and systems add up to reducing enemy HP faster. Some attacks are slower but do more damage. Some are faster with lower damage. Some protect you while you deal damage. Things like Incarnate systems dramatically improve your abilities there. But they are not the best it COULD be, they all have positive and negitive traits. Requirements, time sinks, inf costs, etc. They do fall along a progression though. A hypothetical /killall command would be the most effective option. It does the same things all the combat powers do, just better. The goal of combat is to survive long enough to reduce enemy HP to zero. /killall just does that better then all the other powers in the game. It also renders all the progression and variation in power choices irrelevant. You could formulate an argument in support of a /killall command... /killall doesn't remove content, it just reduces a timesink. Combat is so easy that winning is basically a foregone conclusion already. /killall just speeds up mission completion. No one has to use /killall but if you remove it you force people who don't want to do combat-content to play the way you want them to. Forcing players to play the way "you" want is inherently a bad thing and should be avoided. Introducing half-measures like boosted damage or new high dmg AoE temp powers is not enough because it's not as good as /killall. Now, there are actually several arguments in there. Being able to bypass some missions isn't necessarily a bad thing and can be considered separately. Of course the existing systems actually allows for that to various degrees already so it's not a perfect comparison. Unless... you compare that to people being able to enter bases more freely and being able to save access to specific bases. If that is considered separately you can see part of the issue the Homecoming devs are having. It seems they have no issue with people accessing bases more easily on it's face. It's that bases are not JUST bases. They're also TP hubs. If the exploits were removed and the base TP beacons were removed, I bet the devs wouldn't care that much about the /ebfp command. As long as the TP beacons remain then quick/easy access to the bases also means quick and easy access to all zones. That negates the traditional progression of power as it relates to travel in this game. While the Devs were clearly ok with opening more options and giving people more options then they had, as evidenced by the fact that they did do this. They were not ok with completely blowing up the travel progression in the game that had existed since launch until closing. Any argument that starts with a request to remove or negate the travel progression completely is going to be a non-starter. In the same way any request to remove or negate the combat progression is null. I am not saying anything that one or more devs didn't already say. The justification has always been that this is the way the game is. Changes to the status quo must be justified.

Looks like the Dev reasoning went: "Oh, we should add the movement boosts to the blaster version too, that would be nice." "Wait, historically these kinds of buffs don't stack. We don't really have a good reason to break that rule right now so let's remove stacking" "Oh, everyone hates that. But we still don't have a good reason to break that rule. Guess we'll shelve these changes until we have more time to work on it" but that's just what it looks like from my pov

I thought they changed it because the ninja powers were basically straight copies of the Ninja Run power. And because ninja run doesn't stack with any of those powers it should follow the same logic. Or that was my understanding?

huh... Well would you look at that. Looking at this I think I remember now. People complained that ice armor obscured too much of their outfits so they redesigned them to be easier to see through. That was early on I think. Like issue 5 or something wasn't it? Or did that change with power customization? Icicles must have used the same texture style to be all opaque. Yeah, that'd be a neat option. If anyone still has an original CoH disk you could pull the original textures they used. You might even be able to mod your own personal game to original icicles but I wouldn't know. There's a guide up online Edit: It's your guide, you wrote it. D'oh. I freem'd myself there

I thought it was always blocky snowmans?