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That's definitely an understandable explanation for it, but it's also still using the minimum amount of effort to make the VEATs work. Which, given development constraints and wanting to put time in for making 'actually new things' rather than just a 'modified version of something that already exists and functions perfectly well for the concept' I totally get. It's that kind of 'This does what we need it to do, don't need to go further' type thing. I mean, given that the entire archetype is based around 'Being a playable version of this group of NPCs' it does make sense to just use the attacks that already exist... but it's also still lazy compared to making something whole cloth like the HEATs. Not in a judgmental sense but just a relatable, productive sort of laziness, the 'only go far enough to make it work and move on because we've got a TIME LIMIT' kind that I don't begrudge them at all for. Also, as fun as they are to play I still find it odd that 'Arachnos Minion' was the epic villain archetype of choice given just how many folks took issue with how often CoV already put player characters under Arachnos' thumb. 'Players don't like being reminded that Arachnos rules everything about Reside and want more independent villainous content that's not contracting out to them.' 'I know! Let's make the epic archetype's concept as the player directly working for them!' That said I suppose there weren't too many other options for Redside factions to play around with that would allow for that much customization, and it does still fit the epic AT design scheme of 'signature faction for the player to join' (given Kheldians on Blueside, and the Devoured/Clockwork PEATs that never got off the ground).

Agreed! I'm all for patterns being opened up wherever possible on items that previously didn't have/allow for them. Moar costume options is moar costume options.

... This should 100% be a thing. A Monkey Fight Club mode where each participant randomly gets assigned to be Banananator, Thing-Kong, etc. Bonus points if it actually takes place in the Pocket D cage so folks can watch.

... shoot, you're totally right. I completely forgot, but yeah, that's what makes fighting the signature characters in RV so obnoxious. xD Thinking about it, if the PvP tweaks did actually apply to the enemy mobs it might make PvP content have a few less issues. Then again, that might also make the mob fighting parts of PvP too easy/not worth any reward as a result...

How would the PvP effect work? Does the event just toggle on 'PvP Mode' when it starts, automatically flagging players and adjusting the powers of everyone who enters the zone? Does it level lock the zone in-question or is it an 'all levels allowed' free for all? Also, this is happening in a PvE zone - it'd have to tweak every NPC spawn on the map as well, in-addition to the Nemesis mobs that spawned in. Or does it not even make the PvP power adjustments in the first place, and leave all the number values at their PvE settings? How would teaming work while the event is running? What divisions, if any, would the alignment system cause - could heroes only team with vigilantes and rogues with villains? What about folks running missions/task forces (or heaven forbid, hunt missions) in that zone? Would team still remain together while the event was running, or would it force them to fight each other until they went into an instance map? After all, if it's a zone-wide confusion effect, why wouldn't it work like confuse already does? There's a ton of hurdles to manage with this, in order to implement a mandatory PvP event that requires non-participants to leave a PvE content zone entirely. That's a heck of a jump from just going to a safe spot or rushing through, like you can do when wanting to skip the Rikti/Zombie invasions. Rikti ships and zombies can be obnoxious enough to dodge when just trying to focus on getting to missions - getting ganked by another player or one of your own teammates? That would be even worse. All that said, I enjoy the story concept behind this. I just think it'd work a lot better as a big Arena RP-PvP event, rather than something that actually gets put into the overworld.

I think the issue here is due to Hover's pose effect overriding the default Fly animation. It's almost like Hover was an early example of the 'Stance Run' powers like Ninja/Beast Run - toggling on Fly changes your default stance only until you began to move, while Hover effectively locks the character into that floaty posture the whole time (unless they do another emote, like /e yoga). You can kind of see the effect if you toggle on Hover while running forward; the character starts to go into the default Fly animation, then adjusts to required Hover-pose. Add to that the /flypose emotes flat out not being allowed to activate while Hover-pose is active (likely as not because the motions they do were designed to work from the standard horizontal flight animation) and it ends up that having Hover-pose on at all means that pose, along with all the emote limitations it has, takes over everything flying related. That's why the No Pose Hover actually allows the emotes to work - with the pose-lock removed, there's nothing keeping the emotes from activating. Whether or not that pose-shift could be applied to Fly itself as an alternate option... I've got no idea. As is, looks like the only way to keep the normal animations for both is to just switch between them. Because Hover-pose is weird. x.x

Yeah, mezzes used to shut off most toggles prior to Issue 13's rebalancing. Now they only shut off things that directly affect enemies (like Blazing Aura and the like) while suppressing player/team-buff toggles. Part of the big PvE/PvP power revamps/QoL changes the live devs did. Also, I can't really agree with the idea of making stun effects even better by giving all of them automatic -Fly. That'd make getting mezzed as a squishy even worse than it already is (and it can be pretty rough sometimes x.x) plus it'd make -Fly that much more easily chained provided the right circumstances.

Definitely enjoying what they've got so far!

Resummoning is basically rezzing MM pets at this point, yeah. Likely as not faster too, since you can just click and spawn them whenever. Besides, even if rez powers were modified to affect MM pets... that'd just make Howling Twilight leagues better than every other MM Secondary rez in the game (not that it isn't already super good). Plus, how would it work? Does the MM get inundated with multiple rez prompts and have to click on each of them? Does it just automatically bring back whatever minion gets hit with it? Also, if rez powers not cast by the Mastermind don't even work on their pets, what's the point of the change? Say the MM does rez a pet via their rez power - what happens when a teammate dies and the MM's already used their rez power to bring back their minions, instead of just resummoning? Defender/Corruptor/Medicine Pool rez powers don't make any difference, and the MM's benefit to their team just got cut into... for a button that effectively does something they can already do. Too many fiddly bits for a benefit that resummoning already provides. That said, I could get behind MM pets being targetable for post-defeat 'target corpse' effects like Fallout or Dark Extraction. That'd be neat.

Stone Armor for Sentinels (along with Seismic Blast) is pretty heavily expected to be in Page 4 given that profileration was one of the things that didn't make the cut for the last update. Not to say it's a guarantee, but it seems likely given it's a 'Devs are aware of/working on it' thing. xD

Actually, thinking about it... There are enough whip animations from Demon Summoning that combining them with a few tweaked Fiery Assault animations could make for a solid Demonic Assault set. I'm pretty sure some of the Demon MM pets have their own variant animations already for 'demonic fire' ranged attacks, too. Still not a full 'whip' set - or a martial/weapon-based Assault set - but it's probably the closest we could possibly get.

As fun as a full Whip-based powerset would be (seriously, I've got multiple concepts for one), there's a reason the Live devs only made a few powers for it in Demon Summoning; the game engine doesn't really support 'flexible' animations like that. That's why the whip itself is just Fire particle effects, rather than an actual wielded weapon. The coiling/uncoiling and the dynamic motion of an actual whip isn't something CoH's engine can do - same with stretching powers and grappling sets. It'd take an excessively massive number of tweaks and kludges (or an outright complete overhaul) to even get the engine in a place to support making that set, let alone the time to actually develope/implement it. x.x

Oh yeah, there's definitely some heavy 'Red Scare' theming with the Rikti. A hostile invading force, presumably once reasonable people twisted by ideology into a (literally) godless hive society that seeks to infiltrate, usurp, and/or destroy the true way of doing things? Complete with foreign weaponry, numerous internal warring factions vying for succession, and a funny accent? Really, the 'Earth is for humans. Let's keep it that way.' billboards are just the icing on that cake. It's like The Manchurian Candidate crossed with Independence Day. That said, I do think the comic book aspect of it being a literal, objective alien invasion against the entire planet rather than a geopolitical/cultural conflict between two nations makes the reaction more understandable in-context. It's not just a 'We think the Rikti might supplant us, so we have to have an edge' thing so much as 'The Rikti nearly did wipe out all human life on our planet' thing. Those kind of 'facing the possible end of humanity against a worldwide threat' stories always tend to go that route. >.> Also, corny or not, calling the new Lost faction 'The Found' is fantastic and I am 100% here for it.

If anything, there's that two-handed over-head smash from Crushing Blow in Titan Weapons. Given the hand positions for that animation, it might work. Briefly two-hand the Battle Axe/War Mace for the Assassin's Slash/Smash/Crush/[insert verb here].

Alternately, the sword set animations would make it look like it does even more damage. Stabbing someone through the chest with a hammer?

I can't imagine that Vanguard would allow a community of peaceful Lost - not because peaceful Lost can't happen, but more because the Lost by their nature isn't so much a community as a movement (Become Rikti) that is taking advantage of a community (Paragon's homeless population). Vanguard's entire purpose of 'stop the Rikti by any means necessary' runs pretty directly counter to that. Also, for a 'Lost Community' to exist there'd need to be a method of consistently producing the mutagenic drugs that create them. After all they aren't born, so they'd have to replenish their numbers via continued transformations of new members. If it was just a special, insular group of Lost who refused to change, didn't recruit more, and wanted to use their powers for good/against the Rikti? That I could see Vanguard taking advantage of, given their previously established recruitment policies of 'we'll take anyone who will fight the Rikti and do what we tell them.' That said, Vanguard does have the Herald as a public relations branch run by Incandescent. I could easily see them operating shelters or programs for the Lost or former-Lost - perhaps partnered with the Midnight Club, given their involvement in crafting the Lost Cure in the first place. It could definitely make for an interesting arc!

Right? That'd be hilarious. For a mini-event, it doesn't seem like it'd be too bad - not worse than the zombie or Rikti invasions, at least. xD

After the Anniversary stuff/Nemesis Invasions, there's not really any seasonal events until Halloween starts. It could be an interesting opportunity to add a new one, though. Something summer-y - beach invasions by swimsuit-clad villains? Random Lusca spawns in various bodies of water throughout the city? Maybe the Lord of Winter has a Lord of Summer counterpart, whose heatwave inducing fire minions could invade the streets. Heck, some unique rewards or alternate missions for the Summer Blockbuster could work.

It is odd that Stalkers never got Battle Axe - or War Mace, for that matter. One of those 'proliferation backburner' things that never received attention during the Live days due to the continued stream of bigger things. It'd require animation work for Assassin's Strike, but for the most-part the conversion seems like it'd be more straight-forward than most (like hopping sets over to Sentinels, for example - not that that's any way a begrudging remark against Sents or the work the HC devs to port stuff! ^_^).

As far as I understand, part of the Rage rework was specifically to counter the fact that folks were constantly multi-stacking it - which was pretty busted. Continuing to do that now, when there's an actual cost when Rage crashes, is a choice players make at their own detriment. They had to balance against the benefits of the power somehow.

Given that Homecoming now allows streaming, this seems like a pretty solid addition. There's no real way to 'force' someone to toggle it on AFAIK so it would rely on the honor system, but that's true for how a lot of things work in-game already anyway - especially when it comes to community interactions. As for not wanting to show up on streams hosted by other people... Much as I understand it, that's a reality of online gaming in 2022. You willingly log in to a game that allows streamers, that's accepting a chance you'll be on-camera. At least as far as Homecoming goes that's an awfully slim chance, especially compared to stuff like FortNite or Overwatch or whatever. Beyond that if you just team with friends/private groups the risk is basically nil - but so long as Homecoming allows streaming, it can't be completely negated. That's not to say streaming doesn't have the possibility to be invasive or cause harassment (that's another reality of online gaming in 2022...) but that's what the report function is for.

What @Cancrusher said. This is a really cool concept for a system and something that would be fun for Homecoming to have... if it wasn't being managed by a tiny team of volunteer developers. 😕 There's also the issue of being able to either approximate or eclipse these benefits via existing gameplay. As far as custom NPC sidekicks go, players can make as many missions in AE as they like with them in it - offering more powerful versions that'd stick around the whole mission (assuming they aren't defeated). Alternately, just having a friend make the sidekick as an actual character and team with them. If a Defender is lacking damage, they don't reach for NPCs first, they invite a Brute/Scrapper/Blaster to team with them. Same with Brutes if they need more support - they just invite a Defender, Controller, or Corruptor.

Having been in Homecoming's Discord server for a while, CoH's community mostly uses it as an extension of the forums - advertising for events, interacting with the dev team/mods, or hosting content that can't be run in-game (like long-term costume contests, scavenger hunts, supplying base building resources, etc.). It's more of a 'game-adjacent hangout' than an active recruiting tool, though there are a number of supergroups that post recruiting things there. I'm sure there are times when groups have formed via Discord (there's been more than enough folks spotted in voice chat for it not to never have happened) but for the most part actively forming content is a thing that happens in the in-game chat channels. The closest thing you might find for what you want is by joining a specific supergroup and their Discord server. My SG uses our Discord server to poke folks for task forces and urge them to get in-game, so I have to imagine others do the same - just not in the broad channels where it'd get either drowned out or skipped over.

Entirely possible, when the game says that is what's taking place. As an example, it's certainly true in the Penelope Yin Task Force. The Freakshow mobs state they're there to kill PPD officers in the first mission, then in the end they get arrested/incapacitated along with Clamor. In CoH, the narrative is the arbiter of reality - what the game says happens is what happens. Back on Longbow, to run with an example given - in the real world, they'd absolutely face consequences for invading a sovereign nation, yes. However, in the real world there are no sovereign nations run by superhuman spider-dictators who run psychic eugenics programs, possess time travel portals, and regularly got into fistfights with an expy of Superman. Plucking them entirely out of their fictional context, when said context is the baseline for the actions they take in the first place, to apply real world consequences doesn't really leave a lot of room for a hypothetical discussion. They do all these 'would be horrific in the real world' things in the first place because comic books. If you remove 'because comic books' then of course they're all terrible people. Just about every entity in CoH aside from the civilians would be. <.< ... Actually, the civilians too. Some of them can really pushy/judgmental. Now, talking about Longbow's leadership structure and the decisions Longbow has made at the behest of Ms. Liberty?... Oof. As far as that part goes, they absolutely deserve some lambasting. xD At minimum for the Red Widow arc alone.

'Enemy mobs having or not having meidporters' actually being an issue really depends on which side of the game folks are playing on. If the character is aligned as a Hero, it doesn't apply; the game's ruling is that Heroes are not killing anyone in the first place, and the mobs are always arrested/incapacitated unless the story states otherwise. The descriptions have always been 'the hero has defeated X' and then discussed about how 'X was captured/imprisoned' after the fact unless the plot specifies something else happens to them. You're correct that most enemy mobs don't have mediporters, but when the game's innate ruling is that Heroes aren't murdering them in the first place, that doesn't matter. In those contexts, the explanations aren't a justification to avoid killing - the game's blanket rule of 'Heroes Don't Kill' already does that - but a narrative set up for future arcs. 'Hero arrested X when they were level Y, then when the hero got to level Z, they meet/fight X again.' Because comic books. Now for Vigilante content or Redside stuff? Totally murdering people. The game makes that abundantly and explicitly clear multiple times over. The only time mobs survive is through mediporters (or whatever weird lore equivalent their enemy group has) and even then, it's only the signature heroes/villains and plot important folks, like you said. Some Family boss in a newspaper mission? Totally merc'd. One of the Arachnos patrons? Beaten up, but not dead. Well, aside from Ghost Widow, but she was like that when we got here. <.<