Rudra

The buffs last 90 seconds. You don't need to be constantly applying them. Even with a 4 second recharge. And some team members can simply be ignored for anti-mez buffing. The melee classes and Sentinels can be ignored for applying anti-mez buffs unless they actually get mezzed. Most times, they won't be because enemies won't be stacking enough mez on them to actually get through their mez protection, so you can just ignore them until something happens where they need it. And if other team members are ranged, encourage them to stay at a 'safe' distance to fight from. If you have a Tanker or Brute, the characters hanging back at range will need anti-mez buffs much less frequently.

Except as you yourself stated, players will pull those slots from powers they aren't or won't use but need to take for whatever reason anyway. So the balance you think is built into the proposal is out the window. Powers like Boxing and Kick that players quite often take because they have to in order to get Tough and Weave, so now there is an enhancement slot they can use to further strengthen another power they previously couldn't to the same extent for no cost to them. (Edit: Or powers like Quickness from Super Reflexes that already gives their full +recharge effect before slotting and can only slot movement enhancements that are not part of sets. So still a power that will be chosen and used, but literally needs 0 enhancement slots to be as effective as many players want.) Powers like Assault that can only slot endurance reduction enhancements and no sets, because they are going to or have taken the Cardiac Alpha power to control their endurance cost and so weren't going to assign any extra slots to that power anyway, so again they get an enhancement slot they wouldn't have had prior to further strengthen a power to an extent they previously couldn't. Or when they get high enough level, they respec to strip their T1 and/or T2 attack because they won't use it in their attack chain because Hasten lets them chain their strongest attacks instead. So again, more enhancement slots they would not have had before now available to further strengthen a more limited array of powers the player was going to focus on anyway. There is also the consideration that even though you said inherent powers would not be included for being able to strip default enhancement slots from to use elsewhere, I guarantee that if the OP were to be implemented, it would that day or the day immediately after see a suggestion to add the inherent powers to having their default enhancement slots allowed to be stripped to be used elsewhere as well.

Players pranking each other? Sure. Whatever. The game pranking them at the behest of those players? No.

Menu options don't grant players powers and it took a power to disable the effects of Group Fly on others.

Honestly, I just would like a search function so I can type in part of the saved costume name and have just those show up for quick reference. (Edit: Like how we can do a search for a partial character name on the character select screen.)

Where is this coming from? You posted a response, and it only addressed my first 2 points. So I pointed that out. Yeah, we do, except I'm doing my best to cite (from memory) how the devs back on Live explained the powers and their built in enhancement slot. At those levels where we get enhancement slots, those slots are not linked to anything, so we can assign them to anything we want up to a total of 6 enhancement slots, 1 default + 5 free to assign. Powers come with an enhancement slot built in to them. As best I can remember the explanation, they are built into the power. They are not just another enhancement slot that can be re-assigned to whatever we want. Now, I may be remembering wrong, and if so, feel free to provide the correcting source because I would like to know, but to the best of my knowledge, this is how the enhancement slots work. We have a total of 67 enhancement slots that are available to slot however we choose with our characters, and get another 24 enhancement slots (edit: 31 counting inherent powers) that are built into our chosen powers, 1 per power. Yes, all powers are capped at a maximum of 6 slots, but you are ignoring what a player can do with 24 more slots to place however they want. (Yes, we get 24 power picks, but Brawl, Sprint, Rest, Swift, Hurdle, Health, and Stamina also have those default enhancement slots.) For starters, that makes it much easier to get the preferred set bonuses players have to juggle currently on their builds. Second, right now you have a maximum of 13 powers you can 6-slot. With your proposal, that becomes 15 16 powers you can 6-slot to get the final set bonuses from and still have a 3-slot power. And I guarantee you and others will be stripping Brawl and Boxing/Kick, as well as probably Swift and Hurdle. And while that may not change some build's relationship to +4/x8, it will others, +4/x8 is not the game's defining difficulty, and you will make even the Advanced Mode content much easier to deal with because it will now be easier to build for them. Especially since players will use incarnate abilities to make up for the shortfalls they may find from stripping starting enhancement slots. (Edit: They already do by not building for END management and just relying on their Alpha to keep them afloat.) So your proposal is still a call to more optimize what are most likely already heavily optimized characters for end game content, even possibly trivializing 4-star Advanced Mode content with no justification, creating a larger gap between players that only do end game or high end content versus players that build for all level ranges of content, and calling for a change to how powers and enhancements work for powers being chosen with no justification.

Agreed. OP fleshed out a character, not a villain group, let alone a villain group that fits in the game.

It already does. In a respec you place all your slots wherever you want them in one go after selecting all your powers, allowing you to six-slot your level 49 power pick, which can normally at best be 4-slotted with level 50's slots, and otherwise arrange your slots in ways that are impossible while levelling. For another example, I'll often make use of the free respecs from levelling to immediately move full slotting into nukes as soon as I get them. No, it doesn't. Enhancement slots are not tracked for level, so when you do a respec, all your level granted enhancement slots can be assigned however you want, even placing 5 slots on your level 49 power if you want. You are talking about default power granted enhancement slots. Those do not change between leveling and respec'ing. Because the enhancement slot is baked into the power rather than a free to assign slot granted as a level up reward. That is what we are talking about. That is the difference between leveling and respec'ing. As you level, those slots are locked into their power because they are part of the power. For your proposal though, during respec, they would be split off, which is different than when you level. The difference is a power's default enhancement slot versus free to assign enhancement slots. So no, it does not already do so. (Edit: So to be clear, we are talking the difference between the free to assign as you wish enhancement slots, which remain so during a respec, and the locked in their power enhancement slots. During a respec, those free to assign enhancement slots remain free to assign, but now you are asking to differentiate between respecs and leveling for enhancement slots that are not free to assign.)) And you still haven't addressed points 3 and 4.

It's not particularly common joke, at least not in my experience, though it has been a while since I did an MSR. It does get made though.

First off, why should the game's enhancement system work two different ways, one for normal leveling and another for respecs? Second, how would the game know if a player using a respec is a veteran player. You earn respecs just by leveling up, and a newbie or more casual player would be more likely to use or need them since they would much more likely need to correct any power/slotting mistakes they made in their intended build leveling up. And if you have the devs add an "advanced respec", then how do you ensure a newbie or casual player doesn't screw themselves over getting and using it, winding up with an unplayable character at their current level or while exemplared? Third, your proposal would only really benefit end game players that never exemplar down for anything, or at least never exemplar down beyond a minimum threshold to always have access to specific powers they are not harvesting enhancement slots from, making those characters more powerful than other characters that continue to play through the whole range of levels via exemplaring/Ouroboros when they go to do end game content, not because those more powerful character players are more knowledgeable about building their characters but because they will have more enhancement slots available to devote to their late game powers than anyone else. Fourth, we can already make insanely powerful characters that laugh at pretty much anything the game can throw at us without harvesting default enhancement slots to place elsewhere.

I really, really hate that badge. Can't tell you how often I died without getting it trying to get it on each character I bothered to get it for. So not exactly a good justification in my book. So does fighting in the bowl during a MSR when the timer runs out and the shields come back up. So what would be the difference? I guess I will just never understand some desires. Whatever. There is no good reason to oppose this, it just also makes not a bit of sense to me.

So... you want to make a ridiculous prank that no one in their right minds should ever believe into something that actually exists?!

My apologies then. I read it as a flight toggle that disabled Group Fly's effects on the player receiving the toggle to use.

*shrug* Guess they need to visit Null then.

That is not what I am saying. I am saying that a popup tray power that only affects players could be added to Group Fly that when activated by a player prevents Group Fly from affecting them. This would mean that pets have no say as to whether Group Fly affected them or not, because the toggle would be activating the hidden power that prevents Group Fly from affecting the character, would only be a valid power for players to even receive, and so would only be available for players to activate. So pets would still always be affected. (Edit: Because the popup tray power would only be valid for players to receive, like with Mystic Fortune, only players would get to activate that toggle power while within the radius of the affecting Group Fly power.)

Actually, wouldn't that be a simple problem to address? We already have powers that cannot be used against ally NPCs. Look at Mystic Fortune. You can try to use it on a Mastermind pet all you want, but the pet keeps coming up as an invalid target. Why couldn't the pop up power @Wavicle proposed also be coded to have the same Target: Player (Alive) setting?

MM pet Super Jump grants them +2,780% jump height, +249% jump speed, +4,000% movement control, +4,000% movement friction, and +35% running speed for all the bots. However, I see you are correct in that it is a different super jump. Since players get +2,780% jump height, +249% jump speed, +165% max jump speed, +1,000% movement control, +200% movement friction, and 100% chance of a 100% chance global chance mod which I am guessing is the Double Jump toggle power.

It is a popup tray power. I don't think pets can use those. For instance, a Robotics MM's pets have Super Jump, but I've never seen them use the Double Jump power that appears in the popup tray when that power gets used to keep up with my MMs.

That's actually a very elegant solution....

And I am asking to not implement random male/female minions. My Thugs MM is already lamenting being ignored by me specifically because the T1s keep changing every time I summon replacements. The last thing I want is to have anything like that applied to my other MM pets. When I summon Bob da Crusher or Tankitron 48, I want Bob da Crusher or Tankitron 48 to show up, not Priscilla the Pulverizer or Gynoid 15 pretending they are Bob da Crusher or Tankitron 48. Now, if it was an option players have to opt in to in order to get it? Sure. The OP isn't asking for an option though.

After the jet packs became available for purchase, the calls for Group Fly and Team Teleport progressively went away. Now everyone can have a travel power, even flight, without having to devote a power pick to it. That's at least part of the reason why the Taxibot SG fell apart. No one needed them any more to help them get around zones like the Hollows since they could just buy a jet pack and be done. After the ease of non-power pick travels availability, the only use I ever see for Group Fly and Team Teleport are the MMs to get their pets around. So yes, Group Fly predates MMs by a lot, but the current circumstances render that point moot. And just like I tell others on these forums, they don't get to impose their preference on you. If after you tell them how they can be never affected by Group Fly ever again they still choose to remain there and be affected, that's on them. The only consideration I give for that is a Hami' raid because of the high probability of the zone filling while they are doing so. In which case, just move out of affective range from them.

... Again, this would end any remaining call for Group Fly. Aside from finding out you forgot to enable that option when you arrive for a Hami' raid and racing to Null is likely to get you locked out of the zone, is it really that much of a problem to go "Whoops, I forgot to talk to Null about that", pop in to Pocket D, have Null give your character the hidden power, and then rejoin your team?

Why so many elevators in missions? There are some maps that you take an elevator to get to a floor with 3 elevators, I think 1 of which also has an elevator. Or why make a mission that spans multiple areas at once when you can instead make them each their own mission with separate, larger maps, with their own tasks assigned to them, dragging out the TF more than it needs to be? (Edit: It's been a while since I did it, but I think it is the Synapse TF that does this. Has way more missions than it needs or should have, with at least 3 of them all being the same mission just with a different boss name at the end. Makes the TF rather unpleasant.)

Yeah, it would be nice if being on a TF/SF didn't lock you out of talking to him, but I also get why it does because of the other things he can do.

This would remove the reason for Group Fly and Team Teleport. They are meant to affect your team, and your pets are part of your team. They just happen to be team members you don't need to recruit. I don't know any non-MMs that still take Group Fly or Team Teleport, not even Controllers or Dominators, because other PCs take some form of travel power. Even if that travel power is a START purchased jet pack or other type. Bear in mind, MMs do not need to take Group Fly or Team Teleport either, and their pets will still (more or less) keep up with them as they race across the zone. Because that takes away the main purpose of Group Fly. It is there so that Player A can provide the other players on the team with the ability to get around the zone if they lack it. So it is an opt out rather than an opt in.