Great. Let's compile a list of ugly opinions we've allowed ourselves to give people grief over. I'll go first. People who think they have some sort of moral obligation to challenge someone who shares a different opinion suck.
This one time I mentioned that I didn't really approve of farmers. You'd have thought I skinned a dog on live tv. It surprised me how much people rely on my goodwill around here.
[Unpopular opinion ahead] I actually think Hasten does need at least one change: Why does Hasten lower the recharge of itself? One of these days Hasten is going to rip a hole in the multiverse.
On the subject of CO, it's true that they have Freeform builds but 99% of them are cookie-cutter with usually 4-6 powers that everyone takes. Once you know how to use the template built into the game it ends up feeling more restrictive than the system we have. You can take a look on their build forums and see.
I think you're just expected to walk up to Montague in the SC University sometime after you hit level 10. Probably expected that people would run the Invention Tutorial and stumble across him.
PS: Hugo does suck. Thankfully the mission you need from him is in Ouroboros.
It's been a slow creep. It mostly started with the release of City of Villains when enemy groups were re-balanced for the Rogue Isles. The Circle of Thorns got those ghosts everyone hates for instance.
If someone want to do it that's whatever floats their boat but not my cup of tea. I don't want to pay someone to level past content I'm just going to have to come back and run through Oro. I like running my heroes through all the story arcs.
It's not an exact map of Providence or RI so you'll have to use your imagination a bit but Paragon is supposed to be in RI. You can see Woodlawn, the Blackstone Hills and the two areas that where combined into the neighborhood of Founders Falls in the north.
As a long time player of Blasters I'd hate to seem some of the uniqueness of CoH go away. Part of that uniqueness is that different enemy groups are really challenging to different AT's and sets. It's not that hard to keep a few Breakfree's in your tray to deal with these situations and you can emergency combine 3 of the same into a breakfree on the fly. Blasters can also get some mez protection from their ATO's and the first 2 powers in your Primary and the 1st from your Secondary can all be fired while under the affects of any type of mez. Blasters are a difficult class and playing one you quickly figure out which enemies can give you the hardest time if they don't go down first. That's all just my 2 cents of course, YMMV.