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It was almost like a pet snake more than a critter that evolves into a violent murder machine. Also, immediately being able to establish that kind of connection has some extremely disturbing implications (in-particular as a synth and not something a xenomorph might view as a host/prey). Doubly so when combined with the 'I'm going to be a mother' scene and the constant through-line of familial bonds... though, it's not like motherhood is an unexplored concept in this series. Hell, that's practically the strongest constant theme from the initial run of films. There's also growing parallels between the xenomorphs as 'evolved new life adapted from the original host' and the 'new synths given better forms adapted from the dying' along with the whole creation process for both, which I certainly hope they explore further. This fourth episode really crystalized a lot of the dynamics and weaved the plot points together in ways that thoroughly vanquished my prior skepticism.

It's not 'people on the forums' suggesting it, it's the overall story of the game stating 'this is what happened.' That a player can choose to ignore that doesn't mean the game's progression won't keep running with it, or that the players who continue to ignore a choice the game requires be made consequently remain locked out of content they can't reach without making it. Someone can choose to never run Who Will Die but that won't change Statesman having canonically been dead since 2012. Though to touch on the idea of 'adding Praetorian level 50 content' - Homecoming actually has. Recently, in fact. It's in Kallisti Wharf, where every instance of Praetorian mobs are all post-iTrial and post-refugee status. Hell, they have the UPA in there. That group doesn't even exist properly without the timeline and progression being exactly what everyone else has been saying it is. For direct credence, here's Calvin Scott's bio. That Homecoming allows a minor avenue to grind to 50 Goldside doesn't mean it's actually the course the game and storyline are going with. It's not a sign that there's some secret, alternate story path or hint at dev approval for future content. The fact that doing so locks that character out of participating in many other aspects of the game should be enough to make 'this is not the intended path' clear. If someone found a way to hit level 50 without leaving Outbreak, the devs wouldn't entertain requests of 'make co-op zones accessible from the tutorial' either, though they'd probably want to know what exploit the player used.

Already replied earlier in this thread, but to bring up more points. CoH 2 won't happen for three main reasons. NCSoft will never invest in it or divest themselves of the IP, MMOs as a genre have died down and aged out in-favor of live service FPS games, and the general perception of 'superhero fatigue.' CoH existed at a time when MMOs were booming and superhero franchises were ramping up massively, but rather than advertise the game - say in theaters playing Marvel and DC films - NCSoft pulled the plug in 2012. Immediately after, the MCU proceeded to explode even further in popularity leading up to Infinity War/Endgame along with hefty amount of very popular superhero games entering the scene (like the bulk of Batman Arkham series). The exact time-frame when popular culture was dominated by well-received superhero media and MMOs were still going strong was the prime opportunity to go 'And we have a game where you can Be Your Own Superhero!' except CoH spent that entire period dead. Years later Homecoming performs a resurrection, except now superhero media is on a downturn and having to rebuild, there's issues of perceived quality, a lot more vocal (and disingenuous) critics, and also broader types of superhero games. 2-D fighting games, retro arcade style games, Marvel Rivals, even more big budget single-player franchise games like the Spider-Man series. There's less room, less money, and less positive reception. Though honestly, that initial business decision is probably the biggest constraint to it. NCSoft 'cutting their costs' right before what could have very easily turned CoH from 'self-sustaining with enough profit to keep running and pay the devs' into 'this prints money' is a colossal missed opportunity. Any reinvestment at this much shakier point is basically pinning that failure to the chest of CoH 2 and kicking them out into a far less friendly market. Homecoming's license doesn't require any overhead or investment from NCSoft so it's basically a freebie bit of goodwill at no expense, which is why it's the closest thing we'll get at this point unless a number of things change pretty drastically.

I know @Steampunkette has mentioned this multiple times so far, but it is a very fair point - especially given the context of 'first time going full mask off' with the dialogue. A lot of the NPC writing in CoH can be threatening or provocative, but overall has never been a direct one-to-one for real harassment players might actually have had thrown at them (at least hopefully not, given what some other NPCs have to say...). Back in the day if you wanted that kind of dialogue, you had to go into PvP zones or the PWNZ forum. Not meant a knock on the writer - if anything that's a sign of how real it is - just emphasizes the point made. A content warning in those cases would be a fair QoL feature for players, I think. The writer gets to write what they intend and any prospective player has enough of an inkling to make an informed choice knowing 'X is Directly Addressed Here.' If someone prefers to avoid the arc for triggering reasons then they can and if someone wants to play the arc for cathartic reasons, they can do that too. Also avoid it if they think the writing might be bad, I suppose, but that's entirely subjective. For example, I still think the dialogue works given the nature of the 5th Column. Specifically in how they'd recruit the rank and file. The dude is exactly the kind of blowhard who'd join the literal nazis out of insecurity. Despite being mad science'd into becoming an 'idealized' overly muscled man-mountain with the skills of Bruce Lee combined with The Terminator, he's still an insecure loser. That didn't change because that's the core of who the guy is, what drove him to that in the first place. A supersoldier who looks like Broly in leather pants talking about 'biological essentialism' nonsense, much less as if he's actually any kind of example, and still getting beat down anyway is directly highlighting how lame the guys who'd do that stuff are. Even in a space where these jerks actually can embody their warped, hypocritical ideals, they're still pathetic.

Yes, the timeless CoH stories like the politics of World Wide Red - perfectly reflective of 2025 just as it was in 2004. Same with the timeless nature of 'secret American agency super spies you can totally trust' like Crimson and Indigo. There's also the timeless 'literal former Soviet agents' like Boris the Russian and Dimitri Krylov with dialogue stolen straight from the bad guys in Rocky and Bullwinkle. Or the amaranthine, eternally relevant l33tsp34k for the Freakshow. I really want to understand where this fascination with 'Yeah, we can depict militant fascists - but only if they all sound cool and persuasive!' comes from. Especially when the game already has a canon arc where the other major fascist organization talks about their super soldier serum being strawberry flavored. Also it's not like the game doesn't have plenty of 5th Column and Council villains that it already takes seriously. Requiem and the Center aren't forum-posting modern recruits who talk like alt-right film critic videos, but for an arc directly dealing with someone that, shouldn't we expect the character involved to be depicted that way? Heck, that's not even new to the game. The Warriors had that 'He-Man Women Hater's Club' stuff as part their gimmick since they showed up. The Freakshow too, with the whole 'disaffected, rage-filled young men' thing. It's only odd because this is the first time it's actually been depicted directly in-game, rather than just motioned at in bio sections and then ignored outside of the villain groups coincidentally being entirely male.

This prompted me to poke around the community hub and the interactions from their dev team - at least the only dev I see active - are not promising. Making a 'temper your expectations, our promotions don't actually mean the level of creativity or content we're implying' post the day before your 'make the superhero of your dreams! IN SPAAAAAACE!' game is supposed to release is not the best omen. On a certain creative level I kind of respect them for actually sticking to their guns design-wise (if that's what this is rather than 'we took years and years to make what limited content we have, we won't get non-human items functional in under a decade' thing), but dang if my glimpses here don't give me early CoH forums Statesman flashbacks. Complete with apparently removing and ignoring criticism. At least Jack actually had his games go live when they were supposed to, which imo earns more 'you don't see the creative vision' points to spend versus this nonsense.

By assessing the amount of interest for per route and going where the largest interest is. A lot of posters want Synapse either improved or re-done (especially given the history of this topic) and it's not a controversial statement that the majority of players on Homecoming overall prefer quicker content. The game's pace has sped up a lot since 2004, and some players preferring older content doesn't change the fact that design-wise much of said older content is bloated and repetitive and made for a game that - mechanically - CoH hasn't been for over a decade. That said, it's just why a revamp would be the favored choice, not a argument that older content to be shelved or removed for it. If the Synapse TF does get a full re-work, have the original Ouro version also count for the WST when it crops up. The amount of merits earned is already going to be adjusted to fit the difficulty/time investment needed, so I see no quality of life reason not to keep both options.

The creative choices in this series feel very much like a double-edged sword. Some of them cleave very close to the tones and concepts of the original films in very interesting new ways that still feel like they make sense, while others are... let's say bold expansions in much less expected directions. The inclusions and references to Disney and Fox's library of IPs, along with the needle drops, feel almost like it's trying too hard to say 'This is our Earth, just in a weird alternate future!' but at least they're trying to work them in diegetically which I appreciate. The tone jumps are a bit jarring at times too, with some scenes coming across more like the Fifth Element than a standard Alien entry. It's almost like the show saw how close to the chest(burster) Alien: Romulus played things and opted to make much bigger swings. TL;DR - When it's on-beat it's very on-beat and when it's off-beat it's very off-beat. Which, to be fair, so were the comics and video games at times, so maybe it'll tie together better in the rest of the episodes.

The way Gun Interactive handled the Friday the 13th & Texas Chainsaw Massacre games does not bode well here, but perhaps they'll shape up. Beyond having the rights to Mikey, I mean.

That's a very good point and I'd be all for it. Even better if the redone version is shifted forward in the timeline. The idea of a Redux Red Widow arc being canon post-Praetorian War and years after the SSAs makes the general concept work a lot better. Despite maintaining control over the Isles Arachnos has stagnated and the world has moved on after Statesman's death, forming a context where Libby's attempt becomes deliberate rather than desperate. Now, she's had both time and motivation to investigate methods to resurrect others - perhaps having tried and failed for Statesman - and uses that for the best avenue she can think of via following his idea of redeeming Recluse, but doing so her own way. Revise the ritual used and nix the Cupid's bow angle, ideally in favor of Red Widow actually wanting to be with Recluse but perhaps having mellowed out in the afterlife, and there's a solid story there. Hell, have Red Widow be part of planning it herself, cooperating with Libby via 'speak with dead' magic or tech or whatever. Give Red Widow her own initiative in this, rather than just relegating her to being a literal plot device. The real layup here is nixing Arbiter Hawk as the opposing contact and making Justin Sinclair the counterpart. He still follows a parallel story arc (having been spying on Libby's progress and doing his own) but his goal is to resurrect Sister Psyche. Everyone gets their redhead psychic girlfriend back and this way both arcs can actually be canon.

The Red Widow arc might take the cake in this regard, not just from the sheer amount of assumptions it makes about the player character and deliberate, extreme levels of ignorance it forces upon them and the contacts, but from the context of when it was added to the game. Arbiter Hawk at least has a somewhat plausible set up for the arc via 'Fortunatas said it'd be good for Arachnos' but the pretense of Ms. Liberty resurrecting Recluse's former girlfriend he willingly left dead for decades because 'he'll care more about her than being a super villain' is mind-bendingly asinine. Even worse though is the fact that this arc was put in shortly after Statesman's death in Who Will Die? and was active when Sister Psyche died in the follow up SSA arc. Forget helping out the Phalanx, Libby's too busy recruiting randos in Pocket D for this nonsense rather than using literal resurrection magic for her own grandfather who just got murdered. Which, really, feels like a solid intro to the fustercluck that is the writing in the Red Widow arc. The whole bit about the number of obols feels like an obnoxious 'look how clever I am!' from the author and the conceit of the player using their own blood and the recursive curse happening without any awareness from Libby, Hawk, or the player character is railroading stupidity to an incredible degree. The post-mission blurb about 'well I'm glad Red Widow didn't just kill you, maybe she was grateful?' is insulting and on that note there's Red Widow psychotically trying to murder Recluse - despite presumably knowing how powerful he is and knowing she'd never actually be able to do that much less get past his patrons - just so the arc can pull the 'if she dies you die, so now you have to care and keep going' thing. Then, any remaining moral compunctions be damned, the only option for the player character to resolve this is to literally warp the mind of the resurrected assassin so she's forced to be in love with Recluse. As if 'she might've loved him once, before Recluse left her for dead and moved on' somehow justifies that. No room for the player character's potential expertise or resources, no preparation from the contacts for 'if this doesn't work,' just 'here's this massive screw up that the plot required none of the characters involved thus far be able to avoid or have the slightest awareness of, now permanently brainwash this deadly assassin with a literal love potion because her presence might make the guy who inadvertently killed her and left her for dead less of a dick.' It's a massive pile of horrifically bad decisions and awfully executed comic tropes wrapped in a 'because I said so!' bow. Before Homecoming rewrote bits of it the arc was even worse and I appreciate what HC did with what they had, but man, I'd actively excise this arc from the game's canon if I could.

Fully seconded on wanting more Hawkgirl. Isabela Merced killed the few scenes she had. Given the variant they're going with, my hope is that they'll lean hard into Kendra's archeology aspects and have her interact with Wonder Woman once that gets going. If they keep the whole 'immortal reincarnated Ancient Egyptian warrior-woman' angle (and they damn well should) there's a huge connection between ancient Greece and ancient Egypt to work with there. Hell, Diana could have known one of Kendra's past lives. So much room to build with in a way that doesn't just rehash the Diana/Steve fish out of water dynamic of the prior films. My sole gripe for Hawkgirl is with the eyes on the helmet. Give her white combat lenses that slide down when she fights, dang it! It worked great for Mr. Terrific, let Hawkgirl's mask also be comic accurate sometimes and actor friendly other times.

There were a handful of Giant Monster tweaks in the last major update that made them all more challenging. I think Lusca's tentacles were also modified in an earlier patch, but I can't recall exactly off the top of my head. So yeah, she's tougher to fight now.

So the solution to 'there's too many farmers/it's too crowded!' is to make a new AE zone with every service mechanic and aspect in it, such that no character has to even actually leave said zone to sell, upgrade, craft, or progress... and you expect that not to be instantly overfilled? Beyond that, you're suggesting that the devs - who have historically been pretty clear on AE being an overly bloated path of excessive rewards for too long as is - should implement a special zone that makes it more of a be-all, end-all way of playing the game?

@Lunar Ronin made a fair point about the channel usage. I can't recall anything in-game that explicitly mentions that, and it feels like it ought to be pretty immediately understood that the Help channel is for in-game Help, LFG is just for grouping up, etc., but as this is an explicit staff ruling it could be worth emphasizing in-game. If just in a 'hey, we told you to keep it to the right channels' sort of way. I wouldn't expect to see political pundit remarks in General the same way I wouldn't expect to see cake recipes or 'click here for free movie downloads!'

While @Steampunkette already made a collection of excellent points that I wholeheartedly agree with, I must point out there's a pretty big missing component to the OP's post. The Code of Conduct doesn't prohibit discussion of politics or religion. At all. The sole mentions of religion and politics within the Code of Conduct are the following: Hate speech: Hate speech is defined as anything threatening or abusive towards a specific group based on their race, religious beliefs, political affiliation, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity Controversial and adult content, including: Controversial religious content Controversial political content The rules are already pretty clear and the content of the game already reflects that. The Malta Organization directly references the Knights of Malta and the Templars, along with clear ties to post-1930s American politics. Hell, one of their leaders was the head of the CIA and the World Wide Red arc's entire framing is inspired by both the Cold War and the modern (for 2004) politics of America's interactions with Russia and China. Cain Royce, one of the Wheel of Destruction contacts, has explicit writing about the Circle of Thorns and the Banished Pantheon preying upon Paragon City's African American community for decades. The Luddites are directly connected to the French Jesuits who settled in the Rogue Isles and literally used magic powers to fight demons. Angels - biblical, Renaissance art angels - canonically exist, along side a whole buffet of demons, one of the most prominent of which is literally named Baphomet. Expanding the Code of Conduct to a blanket ban would prohibit discussion of actual, in-game content, beyond any player discussions of those topics. Though, to backtrack a step, I find it curious OP didn't provide an example of what they found to be against the Code of Conduct. All the objections were just general 'You know how it is!' comments. If a player actually is breaking any rules or harassing others then that's a problem for the GMs to deal with after reporting them, but currently it sounds more like 'some players are saying things I don't think they should be able to say and they should get in trouble.' Which does seem to jive with the whole 'blanket violation' thing. That said, to OP's remark about ignore slots, I can get behind the idea of an expanded/unlimited ignore list. That's just better player experience curation. Haven't had to ignore anyone in-game for a long while myself and I find the idea that anyone would need to ignore that many other players inherently suspicious, but the greater issue is that players shouldn't have to pick and choose in that context. If a player put someone on ignore it was probably for a reason and since it's their personal ignore list that reason can be whatever they feel like. Seems like it'd resolve this whole thing for the better, really.

Effectively, Homecoming is CoH 2. Officially licensed on-going development of what came before is as close as we are ever going to get to a sequel. Anything beyond that - such as an actual new MMO - is so remotely unlikely as to be impossible. Homecoming would need to explode in popularity and active player counts multiple times over and maintain that level of interest for years, along with a massive boost in development efforts through the same time period, for any large-scale investment to even be conceptually feasible. Much less allow the necessary time to actually make a modern MMO and finance everything needed for that afterword. As for kickstarters... that Ship of Heroes has long since sailed, hit the iceberg, and sank. The fan projects that attempted crowdsource funding have not manifested anything close to half as good as what already exists, and that's only accounting for the projects that have actually manifested anything at all. Hell, none of them have managed anything as good as Champions Online and that game is a literal zombie of an MMO with no active dev team.

I'd expect clowns to be a customizable minion option - either via pre-made skins or fully player customizable minions - before being their own full powerset.

I'd argue there's a core design difference between optional PAP costumes intended to break normal player model access as a high investment reward versus 'this powerset is built around using a specific costume piece for all of its animations.' Especially given that the Freaklok example is one outlier out of multiple dozens, and we only have access to that one because it also happens to work with the vast majority of player animations and is only wonky with one powerset. Same reason we don't have the Snake models as PAP rewards. Though, if this is the route we want to take for this suggestion - that PAP rewards are the approved way to break player model/attack animation fidelity - then an invisible Crab backpack as a low-tier PAP reward totally works like @Talen Lee suggested in the original post. Option is there for folks who want it via a path approved by the devs. Every player would have to earn it individually on every crab they make versus having the option worked into the backpack itself, but hey, it's implementable immediately.

Making the entire backpack invisible probably won't happen because any attack animations without the legs look janky and broken. However, a 'Sheathed' option where the legs fold out when attacks are activated and are curled inside out of combat, similar to how sheathed/holstered weapons currently work, could be a cool way to work in the idea. How easy that would be to do, no idea, but it works pretty nicely for the Praetorian clockwork in the same 'having these attacks locks you into X costume pieces for animation/model functionality' approach.

I've got an Electric/EA Scrapper so slightly different slotting arrangements, but to echo @Black_Assassin using 4 slots of Kinetic Combats will be a big help. Steadfast Protection +Def and Gladiator's Armor +Def uniques for a global +6% boost. Three stacks of Eradication will net +3% Energy/Negative Energy defense per stack, which when combined with pool powers like Maneuvers, Hover, and Combat Jumping, can leave you will really solid type defense for most of the game. I'm sitting on 56% Smashing/Lethal, 45% Fire/Cold, 62% Energy, 52% Negative, and everything else in the 20s to 30s. EDIT: To preface, those numbers are with a fully Incarnate-ed out character, but as a bonus incentive - if you do slot Kinetic Combats it makes exemplaring down a lot more fun due to their level range.

Escort NPCs should just be temporary pets. It maintains the set up of the escort missions while allowing the NPCs to be a lot more functional rather than frustrating. Direct control and immediate ability to monitor them eliminates a lot of the issues with losing track of them or aggro-ing on everything in sight. It also makes it very easy to tell who they're following and it's a lot harder for folks to miss a brand new pet window popping up on their screen and randomly drag escorts into another mob. Can still teleport them as needed, and do so more easily.

Banks already exist. You get a character to level 50, build up inf while doing so, and then dole out that inf to your alts via email. Said alts then build up more and it compounds over time. Even better, there's no interest or repayments necessary. The only requirement is 'playing the game.'

The comparison doesn't account for the fact that a human hunter who shoots deer doesn't commit the full genocide of an entire planet's worth of civilizations every time they make a venison sandwich. Also there's a core disconnect with 'it's just basic survival!' in that as an on-going problem it doesn't jive with Galactus being a deific cosmic entity nor the otherworldly, fairy tale-esque solutions that the Fantastic Four are commonly capable of. They can make any sort of plot-solving nonsense that the story requires except engineering something Galactus can subsist on indefinitely? Nor, apparently, can Galactus himself despite all his own technology, power, apparent lack of antagonism toward those he consumes. Of course, any permanent solution to his hunger would negate Galactus' motivation to spark conflict and effectively excise him from the narrative (at least as an antagonist). Though in that case maybe he ought to have a deeper motivation to warrant ending countless civilizations and treating solar systems like Vegas buffets beyond 'I got space munchies that nothing can solve that despite every other nonsense plot solution apparently being not only plausible, but outright expected from my opponents.' Which, funnily enough, is why this movie took the route it did. The Fantastic Four do have a possible solution to Galactus' eternal hunger, it just happened to be something they were unwilling to give up. That makes the conflict personal for both the Four and Mr. Big Purple and Hungry. It also gives Galactus a reason to keep pursuing them because its the only solution he knows about. He's got a Reason to go after the Four repeatedly now versus just 'welp, guess I'll just eat more worlds despite not especially wanting to.'

To try and keep the spirit of the thread - as a purely perspective-based opinion I'd say 'still probably not a good idea at any level' since influence is, as established in other posts/threads, very easy to gain and double inf. caused issues when it was active. Combined with the prospect of making things more expensive/scarcer, the Haves will become even more Have-y and it'd take even longer for the Have Nots to reach that level. Using double inf. would go from a 'fun option the devs took away' to more and more of an outright necessity just to keep up with the increased cost for all players and those that already have dragon hoard-like stockpiles would be left at an even stronger advantage. The wealthy players would also have decreased incentive to give out inf or other drops via random trade invites or contests, knowing their ability to obtain more going forward was lessened. I totally get wanting an actual, above-board discussion on the forums. Especially given how quickly some other threads can devolve into sniping and bickering. Unfortunately, when the crux of the topic is 'if this was actually implemented, it would suck for everyone' most folks are going to talk about how actually doing it would suck for everyone. Discussion is the first step to implementation, and if folks do not want implementation to happen, they tend to halt discussion as quickly as possible.