gameboy1234

About two days ago I tried "Circe" on Everlasting and was surprised as heck that I got it.

Makes sense to me. Probably the toughest part would be the inevitable character creator menu to customize it with all the guns available. I'd go with three gun style attacks. "Gun shot", "Heavy Shot", "Burst (AoE cone)". Like the newer Fighting Pool, if you take all three attacks, you get a bonus of some sort. For example your attacks have a small amount of -Resist, or you get small damage boost. Then I'd add either Hand Grenade or Combat Knife. Adding more +Resist to a pool I think could be problematic, it tends to be highly desired by a lot of builds. I'd go with Combat Training, but I'd make it +Def to Ranged and AoE. So nice, but a little less useful for the melee builds. (What I think would be useful is a pool power +Resist or +Def that does not stack with other similar powers from other pools. Then Brutes and Tankers and Scrappers aren't compelled to try to fit in every pool power. They can grab one defensive pool that fits their build, and the others become extraneous. I also think it might be useful to give different values for ATs that already have a lot of defense and resists, and another for squishies. That would allow squishies to get a higher value and therefore be a lot less squishy, while not over powering the already tougher non-squishy ATs.)

My Fort is currently vet level 20, and has all six incarnate abilities slotted, all the way through Hybrid. I only have them slotted with level 2 abilities, not all the way with the top tier level 4 incarnate abilities, but if we're just talking vet levels vs getting the slots, that's all it took for me. Personally I think this is way too fast. It happened basically by accident, just doing some ITFs to get inf for IO Sets. I did some random content like that, didn't even run most of the incarnate TFs, didn't do any DA missions, and bam 100% unlocked. The rate of gain for XP for incarnate abilities is way out of whack with regard to say Inf for buying IOs. In my case (as I mentioned) I promptly lost interest at that point. Lower level content is more interesting (and challenging) to me.

I *just* made a Dark/Dark Dom to try Doms out, and I wonder how it would compare to Dark/NRG? I like what looks like more control in /Dark but of course damage is always useful. My new Dom is literally level 2 right now so I could just re-roll without losing anything.

Played a Bots/FF to 50 back on live. Bots are good but damage issues are real until they get their full attack chain. Consider taking the Pulse Rifle powers that MMs get in their primary. It adds a little damage but at the lowest levels a little added damage helps a lot. You can respec out of the Pulse Rifle somewhere around 22 to 32, it won't be helping much by then. A player on the old MM boards (Sandolphin) on Live did some of the math and showed that the increase in damage wasn't just a perception, it really does add a significant percent damage to the slower Bots damage. I'm also playing a Thugs/Traps now on HC for mostly solo mish play. Traps are a huge End hog. Traps also are slow. They don't move once you place them, and the recharge is horrendous. You can place a Triage Beacon at the start of a fight, and it'll last through that fight, and the next two, which means it'll be sitting there useless while you've moved on. The powers are strong, no question, but they have a hard time keeping up with a fast moving team (in fact they can't keep up, at all) and they'll have trouble keeping up even in solo play. Time might be superior because it goes wherever you are and never gets left behind like your traps do. In slow static fights like whittling down an AV Traps will do well because you can actually get full use out of your powers. Most other times I think Traps might feel kind of bad and extraneous.

This is the way Robotics/Force Field played for me. Lots of "space" to command and micro manage the minions, lots of good pool powers to take. Besides Leadership and Medicine (useful on robots and teammates, i.e., both kinds of minions), Recall Friend is a good utility power, which can also unstick a lost or stuck robot. I can't say personally how well this works for a Defender, but everything you've said makes perfect sense to me and mirrors my own experience on a MM. If the OP isn't dead set on playing a Defender and just wants FF, I'd at least consider playing an MM instead. One word of warning though. Bots/FF is great for leveling and most content up through 50. After 50 though the game starts to move very vast. Travel powers get used constantly, and folks are powerful enough to not constantly stay together for support. Your primary meanwhile is connected to the AI of some rather slow minions. It's hard for them to keep up physically with the group. It's doable and I did it live, I think completing all incarnate level content at least once. However be prepared for it not to be a cake walk, and in some cases the bots can't be controlled enough and have to be dismissed or risk failure.

I feel the same way about Force Field. Yes it has some wonky powers, but the main stays -- the two personal shields and the PBAoE Dispersion Bubble -- are great powers and should not be underrated. Your tank at level 50 might be capped to all positions and not need your buffs (unless they take some huge -Def debuff), but the squishies on the team will likely appreciate the added Defense and status protection. A set with wonky powers just gives you more options to dip into other power sets too. There are replacements for any powers you don't want to take. I may be biased though. I played a Robotics/Force Field mastermind on live and it's not really the same as playing a Defender. My solution to problems on live was "point the bots at it and it goes away." Force Field was just the icing on the cake. And wonky powers just meant I picked up Leadership for basically free, as there wasn't anything more pressing.

I don't think we can blame Mender Derek for Halloween. That rake left lying just outside the door of City Hall? Definitely Mender Derek. But not Halloween. P.S. Costume creator needs Mender costume pieces.

I feel much the same way. I accidentally opened all incarnate slots on a new 50 just by doing basic content, and promptly lost interest in the end game system. Leveling new characters is more fun. I can't imagine anyone looking at 30 odd alts and saying "I need to completely incarnate every last one." Even on live I picked two of my 50s to incarnate: one was my first 50 and my badger, and one was the Fort that I was having a ton of fun with. I think for all the folks who want less rewards and more challenge, opening a new server would be the way to go. Then folks who don't want change can stay where they're at, and folks who do want more challenge can migrate themselves. We ran a poll some months ago on making the game more challenging, and the results were very obviously bimodal. That is, there was a really large group that wanted the game to stay easy (I recall about 60% to 70% of people said this, a classic normal distribution) but there as a distinct population, nearly 20% who wanted the game to be less easy. 20% is probably enough for a new server, so I think we should investigate this possibility. If enough folks continue to say "we want a harder game," then it might be worth actually implementing it.

Just yesterday I clicked "Buy" in the Invention crafting menu when I meant to click "Create". A sell-back feature would be nice too. (Why?! are those buttons so close together?)

Well, yes, but that was my point. Why couldn't they repeat it on Blasters? It makes no sense. If they came up with a mechanic that was just as good, fine use it. But I don't think what they have is just as good. So there's no reason not to use Fury or something very much like it. In game design "Don't repeat yourself" is not useful a tenet.

This is a great point. One addition I have would be that if blocking is implemented, that the devs should at the same time eliminate level tiers of salvage, so that all salvage drops for everyone. (What I mean is the level ranges where some salvage no longer drops. Not tiers as in common, uncommon and rare.) This would help supply all levels of players, and would also mean that lowbies who might need the money could sell to higher level players who are better able to pay the higher prices. The bit I quoted from you is also a good counter-argument to what I posted above about dropping the auto-buy price. I think now the devs should try letting the market float before tying to intervene too strongly. (But dropping the auto-buy price should be reserved for a last option.)

If the devs allow players to block invention salvage, I'd be all for dropping the auto-buy price in the AH down to 1k for common salvage, and about 5k for uncommon and around 50k-100k for rare.

Personally I think the whole salvage system is broken with relatively low numbers of people playing. We could: 1) Automatically seed the AH with salvage for each player (like it never even shows up in inventory, just send it straight to the AH) or even just give players some sort of universal coupon that substitutes for any salvage at all. Then we don't even have to do the AH thing, just make whatever recipes or IO sets you want. 2) Dump the salvage/recipe system altogether and just seed the AH with Common IOs and IO Set Enhancements. Basically a cheaper version of reward merits, people get Common Merits (or something) for cheap IOs just for playing regular content, or convert Common Merits to Reward Merits to allow for the more expensive stuff. Somebody would need to data mine this for drop rates but I'd like to see all slots fillable at level 25 with common IOs plus one or two of the more expensive IO Enh. Drop rates for Common Merits should allow for slowly IOing out your character up through level 50. Possibly drop the costs for the current Reward Merits so people can just buy IO Sets they want, this will compensate for the fact that salvage to make those sets no longer drops. The idea that people were going to stand around East Commons Atlas Park auctioning off the salvage and drops they got to other players was a good idea, but something went really wrong with the implementation, and I'm not sure what. Maybe just the balance, that IOs were balanced around needing to be a money sink for advanced players. Or just the fact that the whole crafting mechanism is tedious to deal with. Either way, I think some simplification for current players is needed. (Aside: don't forget that the current AH is seeded with an infinite supply of common salvage, just at prices no one really wants to pay. (Common salvage caps at, what, 10k? Around there.) So turning off salvage drops will NOT result in people going wanting, it just means they'll have to pay more. Drop the max rate at the AH for salvage and the problem goes away. Or just dispense with the need for salvage at all and the problem goes away too.)

Whenever we have these discussions, I think the main thing people agree on is that Detention Field sucks and needs to be a click toggle so it can be shut off early, whenever the player wants. I'm not against more damage, though I'm a little pressed to see how two damage powers are going to contribute much to a team (FF players get a whole other power set if they want that). But those are the two main things people seem to want: damage and a change to DF, so sure. Of course, development seems to be plugged up at the moment, so it's a serious open question that we'll get anything at all in the near future. Not sure what the dev plans are for the future either, what has priority.

Plenty of people have already said it, but: welcome home.

Something I've been thinking: Honestly I think there's only so many good mechanics that one can come up with for a good and fun class buff mechanic. I feel like the idea that one needs to have a unique mechanic for each class is what is causing problems finding good mechanics. So, why try? Fury (Brutes) is fun. Give Blasters Fury. The more hit rolls you throw out, the more damage you get. Sounds like a great mechanic to me for Blasters. Also the more you get shot at the more damage you get, but pulling aggro has different connotations for a Blaster as opposed to a Brute. Let's just pause a moment to remember all of our blasters who (briefly) pulled too much aggro.

This is probably fair. I played with a teammate on Posi 1 who by that level could actually drain the CoT down to 0 End, so that they couldn't attack at all. It was cool and awesome and helped a lot, but it was also either OP or did nothing. Not sure what to do about the End Drain / Recovery Drain because it affects every mob in the game, and could take a ton of work to rebalance. Maybe: reduce the End drain / Recovery Drain so it's only a little, and then put a ton of it in the Tier 9, some nuke with a huge recharge. Allow *some* total shutdown at highest levels, but only some as it's a Blast set after all. Then I would replace the End Drain / Recovery Drain on all the lower tier attacks with a light Stun effect, to add a little CC to the set without being overwhelming. Clockwork get a stun that you "wake up" from if you take damage (it's basically a Sleep) which might be good, and the VFX for it is already in game and looks cool. A small chance of that per attack would add a bit of control without being overwhelming. (A high chance of Sleep would make the set very solo friendly, but might require adjustments elsewhere -- to base damage, or End cost -- to keep it balanced.) I also think a Sleep type CC would be much more intuitive for the Devs to balance. But I'm guessing from having watched the set played. Take with a large dose of salt.

I like the cohesiveness of CoH better than say Champions Online, which feels like a lot of random locations just smushed together randomly. But yes now that we've got that cohesive locale, that home base, I wouldn't mind seeing what's going on in Paris or New York or Venice or Tokyo or other places.

Also: we need to just a little update to the lore, that Rogues Isles was always closer to Paragon City. They're probably both in Florida. Or maybe the Mediterranean? I dunno.

I have definitely been kicked off teams as a Rogue because of both Ouroboros and base portals. I think only on blue side TFs but I wasn't making notes or anything either. They may have fixed it since last summer 2019 but that's what happened.

I've had the same idea running through my head for a while now. I think new missions should be added to blue side to go to Praetoria or Rogues Isles and do some missions there. New missions and new sides would have to be added, but in the meantime just letting people go there and do missions would be fine. Also, I often do play a Rogue, and I pretty much hate the split Red/Blue side we have now. There's all sorts of ways this doesn't work. Including kicking you from TFs or other teams just because you used a base portal or Ouroboros. That system should go away too, it encourages everyone to just congregate on one side (blue) and not bother with the others. Connecting all the trams and other travel affordances is a great idea, keeps people from getting stuck (or lost, or confused) if they're sent there on a mission. You can always get back! And of course makes it possible to go there until contacts and missions are added.

I see what Patti is saying though. Powers are a lot more fun when you actually have the whole set. The early game is slow and can feel tedious to play through. For incarnate content, a lot of effort has gone into the content itself (not really the powers so much) that makes it more interesting to play, and I can see why people might be asking for more of that at lower levels. (And I think theoretically Preatoria provides a lot of the things that Patti is mentioning. But it's so depopulated that it's hard to recommend, especially to new people.)

So, seriously: for new players, what do you like about the game, and what do you think could be improved? Anything at all, open ended question!

It does fell like ideally this is the sort of thing that we want new players to experience. Actual content that they play through and enjoy. But I'm not sure how many new players we are actually getting, and how much of this game is just nostalgia for returning players. Given the graphics and the pre-WOW presentation, is CoX really going to attract new players? It might but I don't think it's certain. One thing we might want to consider is a survey when creating a new login to ask if players are new or returning. Might give us some hard data about what players we do have here. Anyway, good thoughts and well expressed. I do agree that we should be thinking about player experience, new content, and presenting that content to the players. But I think we also have to be careful about making assumptions and be certain about who our player base is and what kind of experience they want.