Rigged

I am being totally serious here: Clown Mastermind. I was actually one of those who requested this on live only to be shut down by the revelation of Positron's coulrophobia. I love clowns but no so much that I was willing to make the lead dev terrified of playing their own creation.

I think a certain group of players on Everlasting would be very grateful for Owl heads. Or at least Owl masks.

This has been requested since the dawn of the game. The voices amplified dramatically every time there was a major nerf, especially the first City of Blasters nerf. It has never been seriously considered, and one of the reasons actually is that it might be technically very difficult to implement. Whether an AT/Powerset respec should be available is controversial, but the debate is rather quashed by the very real possibility that it might simply can't be available. The Live devs actually discussed this I think, looooong ago. Basically your character's AT and powersets are supposedly kind of really hard to edit without possibly causing a major issue. I understand how this sounds weird, but an interesting parallel is a case in Red Dead Online where a GM tried to solve a player's problem by deleting their knife and re-granting it. But this bugged out their character in a way that was impossible to fix: all interactions with the knife (skinning animals, etc) were disabled even though they had one in inventory. The case was escalated through CS and even the devs looked at it, only for them all to say "We're not even sure how to fix it". Knowing this, however, the COH devs provided a whole bunch of compromises, including the normal power respec and the ability to respec your body shape and gender. Basically you can now respec almost everything that they can allow you to, from a technical perspective. As suggested, there are some workarounds we, the community, have to prevent the case you are discussing. The Test server will let you try out a full build with very little time investment. You can powerlevel a new character. Or in the worst case scenario, you can re-level and experience the magic of the game from scratch.

Totally understand this, which is why I am asking on the background and info on how hard it is to edit the game. I want to know about the experiences of those who have tried. Yes I agree on not removing the old faces. I would simply like to have an additional upscaled face as an option. My favorite faces are those from the early issues or the vanilla release, but they are very low-res, especially compared to the costume pieces that came later which I am very fond of. But also, several of the tights patterns are low-res enough to show right through even the simple geometric designs; the pixelation is that obvious. If it is merely a matter of editing the pattern textures with a higher-res version, I think I could even do that myself (not an proper artist, but I have experience in and can do texture editing and AI upscaling). But I suspect it is not so simple to put into the game, otherwise one of the servers would probably have done it already.

How difficult is modelling for this game? I'm asking because it seems that our devs have available pretty decent programmers but not as many artists. Which is a little odd considering modding communities for other games tend to have the opposite problem: lots of 3d artists making visual mods but relatively few actual programmers messing with the nuts and bolts. It feels to me that 3d art is one of the roles where manpower is more scalable - more programmers does not scale that well due to bugs and interactions with existing code, but more costume parts, etc does not interfere with each other. Is the HC team really short on 3d art volunteers and the few art guys they have a crazy overstretched? At the same time, I am wondering on the feasibility of improving some of the face textures, especially the oldest ones which were made for computers in 2004. Near the end of the game's life they added several new faces that have much higher resolution. Could we feasibly update the other faces and low-rez character textures using AI upscaling? Am asking for a little background, since I am not familiar with this myself. Please do enlighten me.

Actually I think it is already one of the best powers in an APP and it alone pushes the entire set to the top or second best. I think rather than just telling you your idea is bad I should explain in detail. Please consider the following: IW is an epic power pool power, which usually have longer cooldowns (double or more) than equivalent powers in primaries and secondaries. You cannot expect it to perma just from SOs. Compare similar buffs like Soul Drain in Soul Mastery. It completely closes a major weakness while active which is normally impossible for the AT without incarnates. Normally you need to use Clarion Destiny to get mez protection, giving up Ageless. Even without IO sets, it gives 50% uptime purely with two +5 recharge IOs. This is very good for an APP buff that closes your lack of Mez protection. This is even more so since it is a controller APP, meaning you can use your primary mezzes to proactively prevent your enemies from mezzing you. The practical limits of recharge are in the +250% to +300% range, using Hasten and sets. With a 90 second duration and 360 second base recharge, It is entirely feasible to have IW perma or very close to perma by putting two +5 recharge IOs in it and getting 150%-200% global recharge from IO sets. This is made easier by the fact that several Controller secondaries have +recharge buffs, such as Time, Kinetics, and Rad. By taking IW you can take Ageless Destiny instead of Clarion, which will reduce its cooldown even further. Considering this, IW is amazing. I am serious. Psionic Mastery is one of the best APPs. If you draw too much attention to it, the HC devs are more likely to nerf it than buff it. Most click buffs in the APPs are impossible to perma, or very weak if they are, or have ridiculous END costs. For an APP click buff to be usable all the time is relatively uncommon.

I note that powers you cast on friendly targets - Resist, Defense, Movespeed, Endmod, and Heal - do not have purples. They sometimes do have PVP IOs, with normal IO scaling. VR sets generally occur in sets you use on enemies - the four damage categories and mezzes. Pet damage is a bit of a gray area, but I believe the devs added those in fairness to Masterminds, who would be severely lacking in places to stick VR sets if they didn't. Obviously not all the set categories that you use on enemies have a VR set, but it seems the OG devs assigned them to categories which are common across specific ATs. I think that VR set categories were chosen so that each AT would have a more-or-less equally varied range of VRs to choose from. Mezzes had to be included because controllers had very few proper attacks.

EDIT: Scratch this. It has been pointed out to me that Athletic Regulation was hugely nerfed last year, while I was away from the game. I would also like to point out that a /bio sentinel (and only the sentinel) has Athletic Regulation, which, with Offensive Adaptation (from the same pool, and you will want to use it anyway), Swift and Sprint will put you at the normal (non-super speed) runspeed cap and it is insuppressible. You can in fact do a Synapse-like character with elec blast/Bio (or "blazing fast" and be Fire/Bio) and run around at top speed while in combat. Bonus: If you use the "No FX" option in /bio the only FX you will have is lightning-like tendrils over your arms. Unlike Kinetics, you don't even need to recast because Sprint is a toggle and Athletic Regulation is an Auto power. The downside is that you won't be a melee, which might dampen your fun, but you could also just take Flurry for fun.

Homecoming Devs, please consider a Minimum FX option for all armor powers. The VFX is very nice and cool, but the problem is that it turns a character into a ridiculous lightshow. This is fine if this is in the character concept, but not every Rad Armor guy, for instance, might like the idea of their radiation visibly leaking out of their body when they just wanted the bonus from Alpha Barrier. Please let me protect myself without giving all my friends cancer. Look in the comics. The entire Justice League, except for Firestorm, does not have auras. And even then, Firestorm has one aura, his flaming head. He doesn't have three different flaming auras from Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Burning Aura. Similarly, ice armor, while there is already a minimum FX option, still shows little ice crystals. It's cool, don't get me wrong, but I might not want that effect if my character idea is a person with a sheet of ice skin like Iceman. Iceman does not have protruding ice crystals. Please let us express our powers through our costumes rather than our power auras. This is especially grating on the epic power pool armors, for which the selection is highly limited. Some powersets have no equivalent epic armor, and we're forced to use one of the options available. Please let me turn off my Dominator's Frozen Armor graphic. Please also add a version of Scorpion Shield without the vibration effect. I know it's called the Minimum FX version, but that's still a lot of FX. Ideally, this would also apply to damage auras (barring the ring effect showing the power radius), but I could understand if there is some reason the devs would insist on a visible representation of a damage power. Of course, I am not advocating the removal of the option to display the legacy auras. If people want to look like a Christmas tree that should be their prerogative. But I would like the option of turning them off in the power customization screen for my character. Additionally, I don't believe that this would require significant onerous graphic work, because the exact same "No FX" option can be copy/pasted onto a whole bunch of different powers. Homecoming devs, please consider my suggestion. I love making costumes, and I would very much like not to have them obscured by power auras.

Hi Devs, please consider this. Eyebeams are a very common power for energy-emitter-style supers. At the same time, they are not universal. Example characters include Superman, Martian Manhunter, Darkseid, the cartoon iteration of Starfire, Cyclops, Thanos, and a number of cosmic-level characters. The game already has eyebeams, but I would like a larger pool (highly limited right now) and it would be nice to use the Beam Weapons animations that the Praetorian Olympians do. Alternatively, it would be nice to have alternate animations for the Energy APP that are entirely eyebeams.

Yes please, devs. Please give us a Super Strength alternative. Please consider this: The current iteration of SS, with Rage and double-stacked Rage, has sentimental value for a lot of players and there will inevitably be a LOT of opposition to change it. This iteration is generally considered to be overpowered for scrappers due to Rage stacking and the fact that the crash is less punishing to a non-tanking class, whereas it's generally considered okayish (if problematic) for brutes/tankers. Rage sucks as a mechanic which the entire set has to be balanced around, especially double-stacked Rage. This means that without Rage the set is severely underpowered (Seriously, the DPA on Jab for instance is atrocious) It also means that Rage applies a disproportionately high bonus to epic power pools which are not balanced around Rage. A new powerset can have all the base damage buffed so that people with SUPER STRENGTH do not hit like wet noodles when Rage is off. Seriously, legacy Super Strength is more like Rage Melee. This would be much better for inexperienced players who may not understand how the set is balanced and just want to be Superman. Therefore the best solution is to create a new powerset, the same way the Live devs created Willpower (and later Bio Armor) to sidestep the sentimental value of Regen and the needed changes to scaling. A new powerset can have its own balance (attacks, attack speeds, more/different AOEs) and make use of the newer animations, such as the amazing Atom Smasher animation in Rad Melee. Please consider adding this as a alternate animation for Footstomp regardless. A new powerset can change non-Rage fundamental aspects of Super Strength's balance, such as the possibility of making Hand Clap a damage power A new powerset can be used as an alternative to Super Strength for Tankers and Brutes, adding even more to the game, whereas rebalancing Super Strength will not add anything new to Tankers and Brutes and likely will annoy a whole chunk of them regardless of how well done it is. I proposed, ages ago, a new Epic (Praetorian) Archetype based on Statesman/Tyrant for the benefit of all of us who want to play Superman/Shazam/Black Adam without the stupid Rage mechanic. I am aware that such an archetype may be prohibitively difficult to program, so a next-best solution is a new powerset. I think that your set would be easier to program (to accomplish this, the devs would have to program in a conditional stun into every attack in the game) and would be just as fun without the additional stun in BU. Perhaps shorten the stun duration on Hand Clap (ie, make it a secondary effect) and turn it into a damage power.

While I respect your desire to slow down and keep Hover speed with Evasive Maneuvers on, I would like to say that I very much do NOT want the +fly removed from Evasive Maneuvers while in Hover. You can Null the Gull it away if you like, but *I* pile every +fly on Hover that I can and consider the +fly on Evasive Maneuvers to be a valid buff that I do not want removed especially considering the alternative, to run the power Fly in combat, is stupidly END-heavy. This is very much not ideal for me. Changes you want to accommodate your niche playstyle (with respect, it is niche even though I consider your perspective valid) should not affect the rest of us.

1) Yes, and yet it is still more useful than the VEAT inherent. 2) VEAT and Khelds are indeed the least played ATs but individual powersets within other ATs are played less, and those powersets get tweaks all the time. Issue 27 Page 1 buffed a bunch of near-unused blaster secondaries and energy melee. At the same time, Kheldians have received consistent attention while VEATs have received next to none. Every time kheldians are affected by across-the-board changes, they are similarly buffed (flight changes) while Omega Maneuver didn't get an update with the nuke changes nor Bane Spiders/widows with the Assassin's strike changes. With the Tanker update, Tankers are starting to do similar damage to VEATs!

I think, if they merely moved part of the buff to lower levels, the fact that lvl 50s can benefit from that too will result in equal performance before changes. Scrappers are already top-tier (if not outright number one) at lvl 50 max IOs, so we don't want to buff that tier any more.

Hi Homecoming devs, please please do a balance pass at least for VEATs. I will admit I am personally invested due to my main being a Crab. But the crab spider is the VEAT with the largest number of issues easily. I cannot objectively comment on issues for widows, fortunatas and banes, but allow me to list the main issues I have with my character. I would welcome other's comments on their VEATs. 1) The custom crab backpack has a greenish shine inherited from the non-custom one. Please give us a matte option or change the shader to be less green - not all of us want to be green. Also, this doesn't affect me since I LOVE it, but I believe lots of people want to remove the crab backpack. Also, alternate crab backpacks (from NPCs) would be appreciated, even though I would understand if this is very low priority due to difficulty in implementation (Isn't the Crab Backpack just a fancy weapon, though? I don't know how it works) 2) Omega Maneuver is incredibly weak even though it is a t9, to the point where most builds skip it. Please consider making it more useful 3) Crab attacks are almost always weaker than the equivalent Wolf spider attack due to animations. Please consider speeding up the animations because there's a lot of pausing, aiming etc. 4) Please, please let us customize the attacks. At the very least, please let us recolor the energy blasts, and Serum. 5) The AT inherent is practically nonexistent. Even Khelds have a more useful inherent. 6) Without controls or buffs, the Crab basically has no way to keep pets alive in high-end content. They die almost instantly. Having them is nice for pylon testing but their practical use is very low. Please consider raising the priority on the VEATs. I understand that powerset revamps and balances are important, but VEATs are an entire AT, while powersets are largely subsets of ATs, and yet we receive very, very little attention except as part of other sweeping changes.

People who play regen over WP and then complain it sucks are too attached to the powerset name. History lesson here: Regen was not supposed to ever be changed. It is not supposed to have additional mitigation. It is not supposed to be buffed. The reason is why we have willpower. Regen was one of the most controversial powersets because of the binary nature of its mitigation. Either your regen exceeds incoming damage or it doesn't; if it does you are unkillable and if it doesn't you die pretty much instantly. So Cryptic (and later Paragon) nerfed and buffed regen over and over. But tons of people didn't want change, especially those who got used to the clickies. So instead, they made a new set, with a complete rework, giving it scaling regen (to combat the binary problem), resists and defense. And to add to the number of "natural" sets they called it Willpower. Willpower is what regen would look like if it were properly reworked, which is why both sets are so similar. Willpower is the Regen that works. Regen is supposed to be sort of a legacy set, and hence is not supposed to be changed. In fact, they added a new version of regen, Bio Armour, which is regen but with more adaptability. You can play that instead if you want. What people need to do is get off this obsession with the powerset names, and just pick Bio or Willpower. You are no less Wolverine or Deadpool (be honest here, most regen players are trying to be one of those two, often with the costume and knockoff name) just because you went claws/willpower instead of claws/regen. in fact by asking for a rework you will be screwing over the few who still like regen the way it is.

I do believe that sentinel master brawler piggybacks on the code that locks out the similar powers for VEAT Crab Spiders. Taking frag or venom grenade will lock out the equivalent counterpart across the huntsman/crab sets. However, the Homecoming devs apparently really dislike this code and have said they will avoid it going forward.

I have an extension of this idea that will not require the exemplar code be changed. Why not a daily Giant Monster? Every day we get a call to hunt down a GM. GMs autoscale to level, they can be fought by loads of people, and they are in the open world, which allows the community gathering thing you have in mind. Most are also in hazard zones, so there's also the fact that we can gather in a formerly empty zone. EDIT: Rather than award progress to a daily badge, perhaps a good alternative would be to award say an empyreal merit for the daily? This is just additional loot, which you get in addition to the merit reward (only the first time each day, if course). This would have the benefit of letting people get their incarnates another way or let them convert it to regular merits for loot.

I for one would totally vote to make Ascendant (with the "A") the new leader of the Freedom Phalanx. I cry a little every time I see him in Steel Canyon.

I would totally approve of base trophies. Right now bases are free, so everyone pretty much either makes their very own or doesn't care enough. I would be tickled to be able to put Lord Recluse's helmet from the 4th patron arc, for instance, as a display trophy. Kinda like a prize in a glass case.

And you know, I do understand that perspective. But I am also telling you that it actually will not work well for our game. To begin with, it is contrary to the genre (superheroing) and the setting (modern, with all the fashion design/self-invention/manufacturing power thereof). In real life, a cosplayer can duplicate any costume or part without having to beat up dozens of people first. As a matter of fact there was sooooo much objection to the IO system simply because it was actual loot instead of some nebulous concept of self-improvement (SOs) or social power (inf). The other thing is that there are in fact other systems for what you want. Badges is the one I quoted, but the incarnate system, while simplified in Homecoming, still requires work to achieve. This is in addition to the fact that gate keeping cosmetics, as I mentioned, is actually bad at providing the Skinner Box rush unless the gate is extremely onerous, like a Guild Wars 2 legendary (for those unfamiliar, these require arbitrarily large amounts of high value items - such as 250 of every top tier crafting material, and this is just for about 1/4 of the requirement. At the end you just dump it all into a pool and a genie gives you the weapon you want. This is not a joke). Think about this. If every hat was only about half an hour long, unless there were hundreds of hats you would be done in about a week. Would you grind those hats that you do not intend to wear on every alt? They would just be another kind of badge to you. What you want is a kind of progression - and at the time of Live's end the devs were providing one - the incarnate system. It came with the double whammy of cooperative raiding and story content, which is why it went over surprisingly smoothly with CoH's usually resistant-to-any-kind-of-gameplay-shift player base. I can't help but think we should be giving suggestions to revive this, even in a form appropriate to the tiny dev team we have now, rather than pursuing cosmetic rewards.

The best way to remove money from the system is actually not through static purchases but by increasing taxation - specifically by raising the AH cut. A lot of the transactions in game already run through the AH (because of the magic pooling mechanic) and raising the AH cut to say, 15% would be far more effective in the long run than putting in things that the ultra rich can buy. Yes I get it's more boring.

Hate to break it to you buddy, but CoH has never been anything like those games. In fact, there actually were very very few cosmetic options that you could earn. They experimented with them in Katie Hannon and the response at the time was just as negative as this thread. They avoided it in general except for specific weapon options, the TF Commander epaulets, and I do believe the vanguard and ascension sets. What Homecoming actually unlocked by and large were the costumes locked behind pay walls, not challenges. The response from the community has always, always been rather negative towards this, but most were willing to tolerate it for the purpose of keeping the game afloat.

OK I hate to do this, but I am gonna raise a point in favour of the OP. The concept of a game having challenge and reward is not wrong. Look, I am well aware of the MMO Skinner Box and how it is abused to make us pay money. But look, we don't all play games for the same reason. Most of us here feel the way we do on the topic because for most of us we have full time jobs, less than 4 hours a day available to play, and we don't use those 4 hours for play most of the time. We get our fulfilment from real life, not a video game. All we want is to log in at the end of a day and beat up some Skulls or Malta or Crey (damn those corporations). But not everyone is like us. Games are meant to provide a substitute for a real life urge, even if for most people that urge is just to beat up some jerk or whatever. Some people use games as a substitute for fulfilment, and to be honest, lots of people don't have a real life option. Real life suuuuuuuucks. Some people are, whether by misfortune or poor decision-making, stuck in a dead end job with no future and honestly, wasting time on a video game is one of the less self-destructive outlets for them. Having a system with reward and bragging rights is good for a game. That said, the direction this thread has taken is almost entirely towards cosmetics, and to that I will always strenuously disagree, because it is in fact a crappy way of handling the Skinner box. As I mentioned earlier, it penalises the people most likely to appreciate costumes and is poorly effective on those people most likely to appreciate the challenges. This is because creative costumers rarely use anything close to a full costume set - that is the antithesis of creativity - and usually only want one piece (for instance, my main uses exactly one piece of Vanguard armour and one piece of Ascension). Power gamers will breeze through your challenge and render it worthless, making your costume cheap to them. This is why game companies have shifted to monetisation instead for cosmetics, even the Live CoH devs. It may not be obvious, but even GW2 mocks such prestige farming with ridiculously gaudy costume rewards for months of work (I concede that I did go get the rainbow unicorn bow because FFS IT IS A BOW THAT FIRES RAINBOW UNICORNS). Here's the thing, though. The badge system actually does the job waaaaaaaaay better than cosmetics ever did, and the evidence was apparent during live! People did tons of content, and still do, just for the badge. Heck *I* still make it a point to do a whole bunch of useless accolades on every character I end up liking. As a matter of fact I soloed the Dr Q TF during the bonus week mostly for the badge, because it was apparent that it would be waaaaaay quicker to just solo Heather Townsend ten times. Whereas I cannot ever recall people doing crap for a cosmetic part except in the first month after it is released. Now I get it, the OP and those who support him may specifically find badges to be no motivator. But that, honestly, is not a majority view and I think it would have a net negative impact on our game. More challenges is fine, just no cosmetics behind them!

Honestly I think that even for the purposes you want, putting cosmetics behind a challenge wall will not actually extend the interest in the game. Guild Wars 2 manages a cosmetic endgame by putting them behind extremely onerous and extended grinds, taking months for a weapon skin and weeks in some cases for an armour set. This works for them because grind is part of GW2 culture, but our player base is much older and is significantly more interested in community over progression. In contrast, putting the vanguard pieces behind a grind wall in the case of the vanguard armour didn't serve as much if a speed bump to power players and they didn't much appreciate the set anyway, whereas for the extreme roleplayer end who hardly play their character and for whom 35 is a long distance to go, the costumes were out if their reach despite the fact that they were the ones most likely to appreciate it. In fact, the Live devs began moving towards a power progression in the form of Incarnate content. Incarnates are not part of any examplar build, being limited to lvl 45 and up. This makes them an optional extra. I mentioned before that I would be massively in favor of new incarnate trials that were mandatory to unlock new incarnate slots and powers. Since itrials have a complexity that may be out of reach for our volunteer devs, perhaps new task forces might be more appropriate? To help the topic, perhaps another option would be to put in new accolades, without powers (or long cooldown powers like the crey cryo pistol). Alternatively, perhaps the reward of a random purple recipe (an ATO, possibly?) for completion of say, all the task forces in a category, (excepting those in Task Force Commander) or for getting every exploration badge on an entire side (all of Paragon City or Rogue Isles or Praetoria). To all the earlier arguments: what is wrong with making your cosmetic wall opt-in? This would immediately dispel accusations that you want to deny costume parts to other people while still giving you the challenge and goalposts you crave.