Rigged

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.

I am going to give a benefit of a doubt and assume that everyone here is being as nice as poss and that they aren't just trying to deprive other people of things. Which is why I put forward my suggestion above: Have a special badge and a special nameplate color for those who decline to get all the free costumes in favor of earning them via challenges, and let the rest of us just make the costumes we want. This is imho a superb best-of-both-worlds-have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too solution, which is effectively making a new "hardcore" setting and yet letting everyone play together anyway. In fact, I myself would probably choose this option for my main character, the one I play most often! That way I can just make the costumes for my alts the way I like, and do the silly challenges just once on my main character and then strut around Atlas Park in my shiny nameplate.

First of all, it's three hours of AE, maybe four. Basically less time than soloing a Dr Q TF. The rest of the time is me playing the market on my lunch break over the week. 4-5 hours is a very high estimate, assuming I have more competition than average in my usual niche. That's to get the billion inf for the IOs. And yes, I already said, I would very much prefer to just skip it all with a click of a button, but I didn't suggest it, I was merely saying "Okay!" to someone else who did. That's my point: I don't want to do the grind at all, but since I have to for now, I do, because the alternative suuuuuucks. Look, I already offered an awesome compromise right above. You can have all the tasks and the challenge and whatever to unlock your hat or costume or gloves or whatever as long as there is a button to unlock it without that stupid requirement. If the challenge or grind or whatever is entirely opt-in, then I am all for it. You can have your content to earn your costume piece, and I can enjoy the new costume piece while doing that content. Win-win!

I have already given what I feel is the best of both worlds: I said I have no objection to adding in systems to earn costume parts as long as there is a button that let's you skip it and get the costume part anyway. Tell ya what, let's flesh it out a little. We can put back all of the silly grinding, earning the witch hat from Katie Hannon, having to grind a pile of Vanguard merits to get your lightsaber, etc. And we can add new challenges with new costume rewards. At the start if the game you automatically get a badge called "Pride and Accomplishment". It has a button, like the old buttons on badges to claim rewards. Click the button and you lose the badge, forever - but you get all of the costume pieces for free. Now you have a shiny badge that you can show off to let people know you did it "the hard way". Heck, let's go further. If you have the badge you can activate a special mode that changes your nameplate color to say, gold or something (the way RP mode turns your nameplate pink). This way everyone can see this. Now you can have your prestige, you can have your grind and challenge and it won't affect the rest of us who think that is flaming stupid.

You know what is a much, much better way than not PLing a toon to find out whether I like them? PLing them. Seriously, levelling the slow way to 32 or 38 to get build-defining powers - or better yet, to 50 and then grinding out an IO build - only to finally discover that you do not fundamentally like the character: that would really suck. My method only wastes about 4 hours of my time, 8 including the IOs. If I were to level a toon to 22 by running missions and then going on the appropriate archetype forums to complain how not-fun it is, literally the first thing they would say would be to the effect of "GET TO MAX LEVEL FIRST BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU *********ING *********ED ****" I should ask you that question. There are tons of servers that do retain the i23 style of earning costume pieces. Not gatekeeping costumes is a part of Homecoming, our server. Note: I didn't suggest removing the level grind, you did - as a facetious extrapolation of my point that grinding sucks. My reply was to the effect of, "Okie dokes". All I did after that is to explain how little I care for it. To answer your question more directly (and less antagonisticly?), my objection to the existing grind for levels is significantly lower than my objection to adding gatekeeping for costumes. I play this server because it has the least amount of nonsense grinding while still having a decent-sized community (what I actually am here for - I do TFs and itrials for fun, not rewards), specifically the RP community (and no, I don't do the ERP thing, either.) You know what is even less interesting? Running maps that I did dozens of times almost fifteen years ago, especially blue caves and council hideouts, searching for single stragglers to finish a clear all mission. I did that once already when I came back to homecoming. No more, and if I had my way not ever. They're still there, you know. No one is stopping you from doing them.

You're right. I don't. I want Homecoming, which is way better. Skipping grinds would make it even better.

To put this in perspective, every time I make a new character, I spend twenty minutes a day for two to four days earning a billion inf by playing the market. Then I load up my rad/fire brute on my alternate account and level the new character to 50 in about 3 or 4 hours. Total playtime, less than 8 hours. To get full incarnates I spend a day doing Heather Townsend and then another day getting the accolades. And this is only if I like the result at 50. Very few characters of line have more than about a day or so playtime. I would skip all of it if I could. This is how little I care for the grind or the "sense of accomplishment". Accomplishment is for real life.

I am completely in support of this.

You can get a sense if accomplishment without denying costume parts to people who didn't do your accomplishment. Also, you have a badge for that. Tell you what, I would be okay with putting a challenge for a costume part if there was ALSO a button that granted the costume part without doing the challenge. Let people opt in.

One of my characters uses the Vanguard face mask. She is not a member of Vanguard. She did not steal it off a Vanguard member. She just got some metal together and made a mask that looks a lot like the vanguard one. On Live, I did the grind for that mask. I did not care either way. I understood that NCsoft needed me to spend time grinding for it since it made them money. But I never did that grind again. Not because I was boycotting it or anything, but because I didn't need the part. Let people have their costumes. Why should someone win a costume contest just because he grinded more than a newbie? This is in fact a great argument not to have a wall for costume parts, because costume contests are about creativity, and having access to the same pool of parts is exactly what a contest should entail.

Yes! I am glad you understand.

They should have to overthrow Lord Recluse to say they overthrew Lord Recluse. But I should not have to overthrow Lord Recluse to dress up like him. You are mixing two completely different things. I should be able to dress like the President of the United States without actually having to defeat the President of the United States. Once you beat Lord Recluse, you can then SAY your outfit was torn from his lifeless corpse even if it is visually identical to the outfit you were wearing fifteen minutes before. More specifically, if I want that nice furry coat thing I should go to Amazon.com and not look to killing dictators.

Isn't this exactly what badges are for? They exist to give you a challenge and goal set by someone else. And you get a title to go with it, plus most of the badges actually have a unique graphic, unlike many games' achievements. You get a reward and a way to brag that does not affect either cosmetics or power, which is how this should work. What you want to do is to create content that is exclusive, and to that I say no. What else do you want to put behind this wall? Costumes? I would disagree right away, because that is not a good incentive. People who make costumes for their characters don't want to have to jump through hoops at 50 to finally look the part they were supposed to at lvl1. And for someone who cannot use that costume part as a concept the challenge gets no meaning - why get a costume part that woul do break your concept? This is not World of Warcraft, guys. Your costume is not supposed to be for bragging. Powers? Again I would disagree. That is entirely what the incarnate system is for. I would happily endorse a continuation if the incarnate system, especially with new itrials, and the accompanying metaplot, but that looks like a lot of work. Archetypes and powersets? Also no. Do not make me play another archetype I do not want to play just so I can play the archetype that I actually want to other play. Freeing VEATs and Kheldians was one of the best things ever.

I would like to second this as well as expand the suggestion to include all VEATs. I would like my crab to shoot blue or perhaps pink energy bolts from her spider legs. Please give us a minimal FX option for serum. Please let us change our spider pet colours. And whole we're at it, this is off topic but if you could make Omega Maneuver not suck giant chocolate ****s I would be most grateful. Also, please consider letting us use a crab backpack without the greenish shine. Even a matte one would be great as an option.

To clarify, Olympians have two eye beam attacks: the standard Laser Beam Eyes, which looks similar to the radiation blast power, kheldian eye beams, and the Tanker APP power. They also have a frontal beam sweep cone, which I believe is taken from Beam Weapon I used "Kryptonian" in the title, but what an Olympian is really supposed to emulate is Statesman (and his jerky Praetorian counterpart). Whilst it is absolutely true that both are expies of Superman, I am not, for instance, asking for super speed, freezing breath and the ability to throw my chest symbol. Additionally, I have no objection to Super Strength and Rage being changed, but I would like to point out that VEATs are very similar to existing powersets (and Khelds, besides forms, have powers very similar to certain blast and melee sets). What an Olympian can get is some of the new animations and be able to avoid the Tanker/brute ATs, as well as having a proper punchy set not balanced around Rage, sacrificing Punchvoke to get a more generalist powerset. Edit: Also very importantly, the animation and graphic and AoE of Hammer of Justice, Statesman's iconic nuke.

What both Khelds and VEATs both have in common is bring able to fit into one of several different roles in the game. To elaborate: Tank, ranged damage, melee damage, buff (VEATS), pets (Crabs) and control (Warshades). The Olympian has both ranged and melee powers in their primary, and a bunch of invuln-style powers, mixed with flight and possibly leadership, in their secondary. For an inherent may I suggest a reverse version of the Peacebringer inherent: instead of buffing yourself with whatever your teammates are weakest at, you grant them a buff for whatever they are weakest at. (Or perhaps the Warshade one might do as well, enhancing your teammates at what they do best). One other thing I might bring up is that this is also meant to be what many were hoping would be the old Incarnate AT, which the old devs eventually turned into the Incarnate system. But this way we also get to call back to Statesman's powers, especially since he was removed from the game. I don't think the popularity of goldside matters. Right now there's no requirement for Khelds or SoAs, and even if you wanted to put one in, goldsiders will eventually have to migrate to blue or redside. Also, I have no objections to resistance EATs or other Praetorian EATs, but this one is my suggestion.

Reading all the examples of power creep in this thread, I'm honestly thinking that, Crysta, you are wrong, power creep is awesome and we need way more of it. YAY POWER CREEP!