gameboy1234

Ah, right. Yeah the Incarnate level drops on live were pretty sparse, esp in the beginning. You had to do a lot of content just to get a few of those drops, and they were totally random. I guess I was thinking of later, when threads were more available and you could at least reasonably side grade a lot of stuff.

Was that Incarnate, or just the early Task Forces? A Task Force like Faathim or Numina were big time wasters and had you travel all over just to pad out the content. But that's not Incarnate. I find the Incarnate TFs and the LFG queue to be at least decently convenient and relatively compact. I'm not sure, maybe you were referring to something else.

Super intelligent gorillas are a staple of the silver age. And how does one fight a super intelligent gorilla? That's right! Sharks!

... Yeah that seems legit.

What the power set really needs is a cool travel power. Something that just really screams silver age comic. Something that shows off how awesome the Silver Age was. Something that even a god would use. Something like... ...Space Skis (That's Black Racer btw, invented by Jack Kirby in 1971. Because of course Kirby is going to decide that the way to travel through space is on a pair of skis, complete with ski polls.)

I want whatever the heck power this is.

Blaster would probably be my first choice, with the power-up being whatever you like. Energy Blast probably being my first option for powers. An actual henshin would be also my first thought, with a full new set of clothing or armored gear, but I'm sure there's other ideas too. I also have a Titan Weapon brute with power armor who "powers up" for fights. And I have a more classic brute, a large green man (Atomic Bulk, don't generic me!) who also "powers up" and loses half his clothing in the process. I do have a Sent who powers up. He's a riff on an old doll, Captain Action, who came with a variety of gear and face masks to let him look like a number of other superheroes. My character wears disguises, to confuse and prey on the superstitions of his enemies. It's a weird schtick but it's actually fun to play around with deliberately different costumes rather than clustering around a theme.

This for me also. I often try to "do content" and read the text blocks and such, to try to get a sense of how the game was meant to be understood by the developers. Too often doing content in teams simply means smashing your way through large spawns until you get to the end.

Mighty Mighty -- idea stolen from chat and from The Commodores' song lyrics ("she's a brick house, she's mighty mighty") about an attractive woman. Stone/Fire tanker, at least the concept makes me smile and gives me some incentive to put up with the poo rocks, I've never played a Stone anything before.

And Sombre is French for "dark." (I dunno if anyone has it tho.) I was looking for other French names and found this list of Gothy names, some seem like good ones. I was thinking you could combine these with something else. "Sombre Branwen" for example. https://blackrose.co.uk/blog/the-ultimate-a-z-of-gothic-names/ Adrienne – French name that also stands for ‘the dark one’ Branwen – Representative for ‘beautiful raven’ Calliope – ‘Beautiful voice’ and the ‘muse of poetry’ Eris – After the Greek goddess of discord etc.

Released Valiant Maiden

Have I posted here yet? Not sure. Anyway, yes, old Champion player here, lots of Tanker Tuesday. Edit: actually I have posted on this thread, I just needed to scroll back 3 years!

We sort of have that. There's Agent Watkins in Steel Canyon, whose arc is various factions of Vahz picking up (and fighting each other) after Dr Vahz is vanquished. Also in Sharkhead, Doc Buzzsaw has decamped Paragon City and is now offering re-builds for Freakshow (tho she's got "plans"). More Vahz wouldn't be bad, but Agent Watkins' arc establishes that the aftermath of Dr. Vahz's defeat was kind of anarchy, and not really a new organized movement. Or at least that's how I felt things went.

With the Name Release going active soon, I wonder if we'd all like to try something. I've got a level 1 hero I made when the name release feature was first announced. Free to a good home. Of course, if you leave your new hero at level 5 or less, someone else can just grab it too. And if you mention it here we could all see the long progression of that hero as different archetypes and powers. The hero's name is: Captain Hotdog Yeah, so, pretty sure not a great name. The idea is just to pass the name around and see what folks come up with. The original Captain Hotdog was a level 1 Warshade.

I got "Breakwater" on Everlasting after Marine came out, I was pretty pleased with that. I tried a few names before that, and ending up releasing "Sea Worthy" on the Everlasting "Drop a name, pick up a name" thread. I was happy to see someone decide to use it just recently.

This is a great thread. I think I'd agree that Tsoo, CoT and Vahzilok are the big bugbears of early fights. Tsoo and CoT because they tend to just run away, delaying the inevitable and leading to player frustration, without adding any interesting game play mechanic. Vahzilok because their damage types are poorly resisted by low level players so they just lead to deaths and team wipes, with no real recourse other than "eat a tray of inspirations." Back in the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and EverQuest was new, mobs running away would summon new mobs if they got close to a mob that wasn't aggro yet. It lead to trains and getting "mobbed" and it was important to stop runners for this reason. That's a mechanic. Bad things happen, but players have a way to stop it (hold or kill the runner). Mobs that were low on health also moved more slowly (like the GURPS table top game), so they were easier to catch. It was a decent mechanic for players. In CoX, runners are just an annoying delay, there's no special mechanic other than wait around for it to come back. Personally I like fighting Hellions and Skulls. It's a real "hero's journey" of slowly building up skill and power, starting with fighting street games in the early levels of your hero career. It's a nice start for a game (better than starting by fighting snakes and bunnies) and also it's part of the comic source literature. I actually think there should be a little more emphasis on being a "street level hero" in the early levels before becoming a fully powered hero in middle levels, eventually leading to basically being part of The Avengers in later levels and Incarnates. And yeah the early maps are a pain and need to just go away, but I realize that's a ton of work for the current devs with very limited pay off.

You know... taking this seriously, it wouldn't quite work, because there's more blue side players than red. Even selecting random costumes wouldn't quite work, because I personally usually keep a couple of "civies" on every character, and the randomizer probably wouldn't want those. What would be fun is to add a mission to Nerva to allow players to "donate" one costume to the randomizer. That way players get to add their actual villain costumes to the randomizer. It would be fun for players, I think, to know their own costumes were going to be used as part of the game. So the mission should tell the player explicitly what's going on -- "We're going to use the costume you are wearing for this random character generator. Please select your best costume slot, then enter this mission." The mission text should be something like the villain finding a "patsy" to be captured by Longbow, and setting them up with "their" costume so they'll be mistaken for the player. This could be used to generate both random heroes (just make the same thing for blue side) and villains, with less work by the devs.

You know, I saw that fight. I didn't understand what was going on though. I just saw some Longbow fighting their own turret and thought "that's a weird bug." Maybe there should be some Arachnos waiting there, and if you talk to them, they'll kick of that hacking sequence. Give players who are about even with the Longbow an edge if they need to defeat some of them. There could be more sets of Arachnos around the island too, give the players more chances to notice them, and also each Arachnos operative should direct the player to look for more Arachnos to help them. Some Nemesis automations in states of disassembly would be a great addition.

I'm a bit disappointed. There's only DE in the Longbow cell blocks in Nerva. I was hoping for something more sinister.. What other things could we stick in those cell blocks? Some randomly appearing spawn would be neat, so there's new things to see each time you wander by. My first thought was some pirate ghosts, with the "struggle" emote bound up by some sort of energy. Bonus points if they're inside one of those spirit traps from Port Oaks. Circle of Thorns mages also come to mind. Bonus points if they react to a nearby player, promising "untold power" or something if they are released. Super villains is another obvious one. Looking dejected and sitting on the cell floor, or even just lying down. Any other ideas?

Welcome Home!

Could you fix this for players too? Seriously I always get lost in those darn non-euclidean office buildings, I figured the AI was just being "realistic."

I don't really have any puns, per se. I do have some jokey character names but they're not really puns. Closest I have are: Ann Droid -- Bots/Elec with a robot body Chroma Arrow -- more like a joke name, all the good arrow names were taken (Red Arrow, Blue Arrow, Black Arrow, Light Fuchsia Arrow, etc.) so I got this one. Blue Three Shinobi -- a ninja, the name is a joke from Azumanga Diaoh, where the girls try to pronounce "Bruce Lee" but get it wrong. Lord Volemort -- my rodentia necromancer Ninja Beam -- my Beam Weapon/Ninjitsu sentinel, another anime joke Sparkly Vampire -- what it says on the tin, he's undead and very angsty Spectacled FlyingFox -- a caped crusader who dresses a bit like a bat

To be fair, I was just on a pug today and we were a bit short on support. I was trying to time my spawn rushes with the tank, soaking a bit of aggro and help to keep his health from getting too low. I'm sure the folks behind me were likewise strategizing how best to tackle the spawn and keep folks alive. The game isn't hard and doesn't require perfect play. Nor does it require strict adherence to some sort of script. But I think I've never not cared, I'm always at least trying to do something good to support the team.

When you arrive at a new zone, you're often given a detective to talk to. This can be a pain because it erases your old mission in your Nav bar. I wonder if it's possible to "remember" the previous mission, then reinstate it after the detective is finished. I'm thinking mostly of new players here, and especially the first time they are sent to King's Row. Their mission to talk to Blue Steel will be replaced by one to talk to a detective, and then the Nav bar goes blank and they don't have anything to do. This would be a lot more convenient for them, and also players in general, if they could just have their old mission pop back up on their Nav bar.

I didn't notice until recently that there's a chat message when you find the monorail during Twinshot's arc. This is during the part where she tells you to talk to Ms. Libery and are then sent to King's Row. For new players, this message might be a bit more visible. Perhaps also make the message appear over the players head in one of those shiny messages. I think a short "Monorail Station" message would be enough.