El D

Bit late but the game is up - I was able to log in normally. Usually when I have that issue I either have caps lock on accidentally or mistyped part of my password.

Considering that, Captain Dietrich taking on a director mantle for an arc overseeing Longbow's personnel revision in-light of everything with Vanguard and the Praetorian War would make a lot of sense. Integrating Praetorian refugees, diplomacy with Rikti Traditionalists, and keeping a sharp eye out for Nemesis automatons on top of the normal hurdles of managing a vast paramilitary organization that already has Arachnos to contend with would be a fantastic place to pick up with this kind of arc. They have to account for the comic book-level fracturing (clones, time travel nonsense, robot replacement, super spies, etc) as well as general disillusionment and moral compromise. It'd even work with Dietrich's own arc through the Vanguard content, and how she'd have to confront her own desires for strict morality and righteous justice vs wondering when she herself would be crossing a line. 'Sometimes I think about what Sefu would choose.' Alternately (spoilers) Ms. Liberty can't be a teenage girl via the game's original lifespan alone. Longbow first showed up in 2005 and she'd been an established hero well before then working with Statesman and founding the Vindicators. The game ran until 2012 - even if Libby was 18 on launch (and we accept that she did all of that 'before the game' stuff while literally in high school) she'd be at least 26 by the end. Ms. Liberty was probably a nebulous 'mid/late-20s' for most of the game's lifespan and is at least in her late 30s if not early 40s by now. Of course not all of her dialogue or writing reflects that, but well, see the prior comments about the Red Widow arc. Libby could be written so much better if things focused on her being a competent superhero trained by Statesman and actually effective at organizing people rather than seeming to stick with 'she's a blonde' and valley girl nonsense packaged with 'I'm idealistic so I don't need logistics or pragmatism or any of the actual aspects of my job.'

Biggest quibble I can see with this was the reception to Hard Mode content (and Incarnate content, back on live). Many players already take umbrage with increased challenge/difficulty even at the highest tiers of the game where they have the most options to alleviate it. Adding it in deliberately across all levels by baking it in for entire powersets (and thusly exacerbating it even further in the end game for anyone who plays those sets or teams with a player who uses them) probably wouldn't be the right move. Also it's still easy enough to make the game more difficult just by slotting powers inefficiently - or deliberately, like using SOs over an IO build. Power creep is important to consider when making new sets, certainly, but dialing effectiveness so that it ends up lower than a general baseline just means nobody will want to play the set (looking at you, Kinetic Melee). For Fun options should be relegated to customization, I think. If someone wants to play a serious, deadly ninja assassin with a katana or a goofy super-clown with a balloon sword, that should be a costume creator issue not a mechanics one. Also on that note, the Toy Bat should be a weapon skin for all the melee weapon sets.

You know, this could actually be an interesting path for an subversion of that whole 'an entire faction splits off from the main one for X reason' story arc plot that CoH has already done multiple times over. Having instances like this crop up in Longbow but the organization addresses them promptly - with the requisite player involvement of course - would be a way to include this aspect while still maintaining Longbow as the 'top shelf reputation' hero group, emphasizing that they actually take accountability for it rather than letting it fester (when they can). Given the example of Lt. Harris it's already canon that Longbow isn't immune to such issues, but this would also account for Longbow not being plagued by broad in-fighting as some of the other groups have been. They have bad eggs but not nearly as many, so why not let the player get involved as to why? In-retrospect your assessment was more nuanced than I realized and my prior post was overly dismissive, so for that I apologize.

Longbow isn't real though. Neither is the setting of CoH, despite how much actual world history and influences it might mirror. It's all a narrative construct, and within that narrative construct we already have multiple organizations that fulfill the 'group that does questionable actions and slides along the scale of heroism' niche. Wyvern, Vanguard, the PPD, the Resistance, even Malta at the extreme end of the 'fully abandoned even the pretense of morality' spectrum (not that they had any to start with). I'm not opposed to an arc where Longbow takes accountability for their questionable agents and actions from prior content - that could actually be a fun way to progress the faction, honestly - but the catch that they absolutely can't be paragons of morality because 'those doesn't exist in the real world' is an odd restraint to keep in a game where superpowered weirdos in spandex have dance parties in interdimensional nightclubs.

Nebulous real-world influences aside, I wouldn't mind Longbow - and Ms. Liberty - to get some more earnest portrayal. In-fighting amongst the 'good guy' organizations is a classic plot device and can work, but CoX has plenty of those arcs at the moment. Let Longbow and Arachnos get back to the G.I. Joe vs Cobra arrangement that the game overall painted them with, and for the love of all things comic book don't have Libby do anything like The Widow in Red again. Given their edits to that arc HC seems pretty solidly conscious of that but man, it still irks me. Having the player character come in to solve the problem is necessary for there to be content, but the writing doesn't have to go out of its way to make the contact dangerously incompetent. Frankly that feels like it tracks for a lot of the issues players have with Longbow - most of them can be chalked up to poor writing or antithetical portrayal. Akin to how some comic characters act differently when appearing in other books (like Captain America in X-Men runs...). Longbow's actions in the Isles are emphasized as much more violent and brutish, but that's also from the perspective of a villain. It also could be that the Isles just does that to anyone who stays there long enough, though that's melding alignment restrictions and game mechanics into lore at that point. Tweaking their NPC comments to be aimed at the player villains/rogues or the villain groups of the Isles and explicitly not the citizens could help things. Heck, add in an arc where Longbow is legit helping the citizens of the Isles with supplies and safety against the villains and the player villain goes to shut that down. More independent, actually villainous Redside arcs and better Longbow portrayal all in one.

A Staff Assault set would be at least partially doable given Staff Fighting exists to pull melee powers from. The difficult part is the ranged options. A spear/staff throw using the Cimeroran Pilum power as a base could work for one, though there wouldn't be any rope or recall animation for it. Rope physics isn't something the game engine can even do AFAIK - it'd just look like a png image file stretched out and back (that's why the Demon Summoning whip animations are very specific power FXs and not actual weapons). Some Staff animations that launch kinetic or qi energy could fit the bill, though. Guarded Spin firing a targeted AoE bast, Serpent's Reach with an attached snipe attack. Add in an adjusted version of Staff Mastery more suited for Dominators and there's definitely something there.

Played it way back when it first launched as Dungeons and Dragons Online Stormreach. It was fun enough, especially if you enjoy the 3.5 edition of D&D. I remember the puzzles and mechanics of the dungeons being interesting and emphasizing exploration and investigation to find everything (though a lot of my memories are from the very early game). It seems they've gone into a F2P model with a cash shop and a number of expansions since then, so being locked out of content is something to keep in-mind - not that most live MMOs don't utilize that sort of arrangement these days.

The biggest hurdle with any implementation of a personal base per each individual character is that bases are loaded up every time someone enters them. They aren't persistent, they only exist when a character goes into them. That's why the Auction House and Architect Entertainment aren't accessible in bases. If they were, every time someone would use AH or AE in a base, the server would have to load the entire system of AE or AH solely for that specific instance of that specific base. Which would then end once everyone left and need to be reloaded again the next time. Personal bases for individual characters, even using those existing base restrictions, would potentially add a ton of instances that require constant loading and reloading. Literally an extra possible instance per every character that currently exists across all the servers and any future characters that get made. I'm not a hardware guy nor do I know much of anything about the specifics of HC's servers (or servers in-general, really) but that sounds like a lot. Not that every player would be on every character they have all at one time, of course, but the existing system of just making a single SG base for yourself and altinviting your other characters to it at least has more of a self-imposed cap on that. This isn't to say I'm not a fan if the idea - I think it'd be fun and as someone who likes making bases I'm down for anything that gives me more reason to use the editor - I just don't think it's likely unless some adjustments are made to how the servers would handle it. Alternately, maybe my understanding is outdated and the servers are robust enough for this to just work. HC did do some changes and upgrading a while back, after all.

That's all the difference needed though, since no one can actually prove any particular inspiration was taken in the creation of Manticore (or any other signature character). OP did this openly and in public, so for better or worse the arc will now always be 'My version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.' At that point what they change matters less when the GMs already know it's explicitly based on someone else's IP. No amount of separation negates that admission. A GM might be able to allow wiggle room with character that could possibly be inspired by Magneto, but there's less room to work with 'So I made Magneto, and Toad, and Quicksilver, and Blob, and then changed X, Y, and Z to not get in trouble with the rules.' OP might be a fantastic writer whose AE arc for this concept could be amazing - as an X-Men fan myself I probably would enjoy playing it! - but if HC is operating under enhanced scrutiny and wants to put a better foot forward regarding these things, at a certain point someone was going to catch their attention. I will totally agree with the prior point that such threads and characters should be handled similarly and fairly going forward, though. Which may very well just be 'Hey, don't state it outright and we're all golden.'

Also possible! The cape was the only costume piece of Statesman's I couldn't find in Titan Icon, so there's no telling where the live devs hid it. It did get put in when capes were brought into the game though, so maybe it's actually slotted in the right spot.

My immediate thought is that Homecoming didn't have a direct, public agreement with NCSoft before, though I have no idea how many threads like this have been made since the announcement. Homecoming has also had a steady influx of new accounts given the amount of 'X joined the community!' automated messages I've seen, so that's also more incentive to mention that this kind of stuff is not tolerated going forward versus any new players getting the idea that it's acceptable. As for the signature characters, while some might be similar to various other fictional characters - to the point where any possible inspiration may be obvious to anyone familiar with them - the game doesn't go around explicitly stapling that to them or use it to advertise their content. An argument could be made that Manticore took heavy inspiration from certain DC heroes but he doesn't say 'Hi I'm Manticore - think a fusion of Batman and Green Arrow!' when you click on him in-game. Which is the point where OP slipped up. Regardless of how divergent the AE arc became, how much the names/costumes/gender/etc. got shifted around, the core will now always be 'INSPIRED BY MARVEL'S IP (WHICH YOU CAN MAKE IN COH)' because they outright stated that's what they were doing.

With how various NPC costume pieces work, the shoulder section and the cape might very well be a single piece. Statesman's Tights option has its own texture pattern and chest emblem, so the cloak could be a chest or shoulder detail with a special cape attached.

It's not an issue of 'like vs exact copy.' It's the matter of 'players connecting their creations in-game to an outside IP in any fashion is not allowed.' So waving a flag, shouting that they're doing it, and asking other players to help them do it, is a pretty solid recipe for HC staff to bring down the generic bat (or at least motion to it with obvious intent). Privately knowing your character or AE arc is a homage to [insert piece of media here] is fine. Everyone takes inspiration, even the original dev team that made the game did. Publicly posting about the exact IP - to the point of listing specific copyrighted characters and asking for guidance on how they could be made via in-game systems - is asking for trouble. There's no plausibility in the statement of 'Hey, how do I make Magneto?'

What Glacier Peak said, but more specifically - posting an open written record asking other players to deliberately aid in skirting copyright on the official public forum for the game is bad practice. HC doesn't need to invite any problems that might screw with their agreement with NCSoft and intellectual property is a pretty big one, so the HC devs and GMs don't tolerate or encourage any behavior of that sort among the playerbase. Also, some folks need to watch The Wire and learn the proper time and place to take notes.

Given the Valentine's Day tip, it's probably in Sally & Lusca's too.

Also: We need a DJ Lusca! Possible nebulous canon of the Valentine's Day tips aside, with DJ Zero seemingly confirming the accuracy of this and the vigilante ending of the Shauna Braun arc explicitly involving Lusca eating a dude, the idea of Sally being a known danger to the waterways around Paragon City actually has more merit than I thought (even tweaking the interpretation to them eating the tons of fish in the holds rather than the sailors). Though now I want to know how exactly Sally wrote that. Did she use her teeth? Hold a jagged bit of wood or anchor with her flippers? And how did the giant lake monster learn English? Or the giant octopus, for that matter? And why is Sally's writing style that of a teenage valley girl?

Much as the badge mechanics are arranged purely by in-engine constraints (it's a defeat badge, so something must be defeated to track it), Sally's perception in-game is odd in-general. The idea of the lake monster somehow being seen as the real myth in a zone populated with murderous fey, pumpkin men, storm witches, and moss-covered reindeer-wookies all from Celtic mythology feels really strange. Making Sally's badge be reward for vicinity and keeping her an event spawn with a timed route seems like a solid solution. It'd nix any quibbles about hitting her, allow easier badge acquisition for players, and remove a bit of the weird idea that she's somehow the most unbelievable part of Croatoa. 'Yeah, that's Sally. We have weekly sighting excursions planned on the university campus. Sometimes heroes come by and give her snacks.' makes more sense than 'Oh man, you got a picture of the mysterious Sally? After punching her in the face? I'll add this to all the others photo evidence we have and still continue to not believe she exists.' Actually, thinking about that, just make it so using /e cameraphone or /e camera near her gives the badge. That feels like a fun alternative for folks who don't want to smack the peaceful dinosaur.

Agreed! Jon Favreau would also be a very good option, especially given how involved he already is with writing and being an executive producer. Even the weaker aspects of his Star Wars content (certain sections of The Mandalorian and a hefty chunk of The Book of Boba Fett) are solid enough foundations to keep building with and showed how willing he was to work with other directors and performers. He also seems to align with Filoni in the aptitude for bringing in older Expanded Universe content, which is also a major plus.

Speculation is that should she step down then Dave Filoni will take over, possibly with more involvement from Kevin Feige, too. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on personal assessment of the MCU and current Star Wars efforts, which is a pretty fair mixed bag by this point. Filoni certainly seems to capture a strong amount of Lucas' original spirit for the franchise though and at minimum those two wouldn't go into another film trilogy without some kind of overall outline. The Mandalorian movie will probably be the make or break starting off point.

I'd argue that's what the progression of the films have already done. Connery's Bond has scenes that absolutely wouldn't have flown with Brosnan's and Craig's, for example, and that's reflection of 'Well, it's been 30+ years since the first films were made and attitudes changed.' Been the same amount of time since Brosnan now, and likely Craig once Amazon's stuff ever comes out. Though having mentioned it, I wouldn't even mind them going back to the rougher content of Connery's Bond provided they actually contextualize it in the story. Have the woman Bond 'seduces' be in on it from the start, perhaps an informant, and they're both playing a role for the mission rather than Bond having his way with the umpteenth Bond girl because the script says they just can't resist him. Bonus points if it's also to play into the expectations of the antagonists. As far as Amazon changes go, I'm willing to wait and see. Fallout and Reacher are pretty solid, earnest adaptations that don't shy away from more intense content (variances in tone aside). That makes me doubt they'd full on neuter Bond, at least not unless they do Casino Royale again...

A well-adjusted person doesn't react to horrific acts of violence - especially ones they directly caused - with a witty one-liner. It makes him a fantastic spy and action movie protagonist in that he's capable of committing incredible violence when the situation calls for it in a way that entertains the audience, but it's pretty sociopathic. As is reckless behavior, disregard for authority, rampant sexual activity, lack of empathy, likeliness to abuse alcohol, and a disregard for social norms. A lot of which is heavily enabled by MI6 and his work as a spy, certainly, but it's still a pretty solid checklist for Bond's character (really only missing 'English accent, tuxedo, and gun'). Overall that feels like splitting hairs (and not from black to blonde, like when they went from Brosnan to Craig) but I will concede that - at least in-regard to Bond's personal outlook - the distinction is fair enough. He's not a member of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club or some raging incel, but he still has a pretty steady disregard for women, mostly seeing them as sex objects or distractions. Though, that being a reflection of Bond's own MI6 warped perceptions rather than a personal belief would be an interesting avenue to explore. Bond sees himself only as a 'useful weapon' so that's how he comes to view everyone else. The Craig era went into that - Bond himself being disposable for MI6 and what the work takes from the spies - but didn't really delve into that beyond 'And thinking about that makes him quit and retire. Again. It'll stick this time, we're sure.' I don't want them to change Bond or remove these things, I just want them to do more with those aspects by this point. Explore these things in the actual narrative, rather than just go through the motions or gloss them over.

Supposedly Lord Recluse's voice was done by Sean Michael Fish AKA Manticore from the original dev team - though whether this is just for the in-game monologue or also for the trailer I don't know for certain. It definitely sounds similar enough, though. The other guy is Foreshadow. He's got a very different outfit in-game than the one used in the trailer.

If you're in combat and it's gone so badly you're spamming at icons to stay alive to the point where you hit Secondary Mutation for a random 'Save Me!' hope... You were already going to be defeated. If you're hitting it in combat just because you forgot to use it at the start of a mission and get monkey'd, well...

I don't understand how portraying Bond accurately - and thusly having him be a misogynistic sociopath who does terribly violent things in the name of his country - counts as rewriting. That's not rewriting that's just who Bond is. A flawed, dynamic character who is fun to watch but also a vile person who does vile things. Also he's not a hero, he's just the protagonist. Fleming himself never even considered Bond a 'good guy.' He's explicitly a weapon of his government and a distilled product of his era. Which, if Amazon focused on that, could be an improvement. Having the franchise take a step back from modern day adaptations and portray Bond in the time he was written for seems like it'd play better, and would be a marked change from the Daniel Craig era besides. Plus we're far enough away from Austin Powers that more of the spy goofiness from the earlier films could be kept in as well.