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Yes, the evergreen nature of early CoH content, containing such amaranthine concepts as the timely context of Operation: World Wide Red, the repeated use of 'ex-Soviet Union' mad scientists, and Freakshow l33tsp34k. Or references to gang leader NPCs like Frostfire and Tub Ci having been active in the 70s and 80s or Back Alley Brawler spearheading the Regulators in the perennial War on Drugs. The game wasn't even 'evergreen' through the first year of it being live, much less over its entire original lifetime. Every new event, zone, story arc, and task force after launch progressed the timeline when they were added. Also, First Ward was literally a lead-in to the finale of the Praetorian War storyline. It was put in the game in the middle of the then on-going Incarnate content and introduced concepts and plot points that directly linked into subsequent Incarnate trials and arcs that capped off Praetoria. Regarding OP's post - if I understand the gist right, I agree. More options for the existing Incarnate powers to fill concept gaps (more Judgements types, Lore pet options, etc.) would be fine additions. Higher tiers of powers or more level shifts though, no.

If Rage were to get a rework, I think it should reflect the intentions of the existing ATs better. Spitballing various ideas, Tanker and Brute Rage could increase the effect of taunts and available aggro limit while active. Give greater damage boosts to the lower tier attacks and proc effects to Knockout Blow and Foostomp rather than just flat +damage across the board. -Resistance/-Defense could work, the classic 'I put my back in it this time' of hitting harder to break through the opponent's protection. The more you hit, the harder you hit the next time. Works with Fury as a mechanic and with Gauntlet. Hell, maybe even tie it into the inherent powers - Brute Rage builds in-conjunction with Fury for even higher damage numbers and enemies affected by Gauntlet while Tanker Rage is up have their Resistance debuffed. Brute spends Fury to negate the lessened damage of the crash and keep punching, while Tankers - even with the -damage - can still be the center of the mob and dole out debuffs. Bonus points, having AT bespoke Rage seems like it would make it easier to proliferate to Scrappers and Stalkers. Maybe call their variant Frenzy or Rampage to illustrate the difference. Have it boost accuracy and damage but also offer crit chance effects. Greater crit chances for lower tier attacks, proc options for Knockout Blow/Hurl/Foostomp. Scrapper could proc additional effects like holds or immobs while Stalker could proc Hide. Hit someone so hard they just recoil in pain for a moment or lose all track of where the opponent is. Thematically the idea of 'precisely applied' Super Strength feels more fitting for those ATs than Rage as is.

This. It's incredibly easy to make boatloads of influence already, to the point where any even moderately played 50 is capable of fully financing other alts. Hell, if someone engages in AE via door-sitting or AFK farming it's possible to make boatloads of influence by not even playing the game at all. The whole 'it's just a repeated grind over and over' comments earlier in this thread never actually account for the fact that A) the game asking players to commit to playing once is fully reasonable and B) doing 'the grind' once already means the effort needed the second time is immediately halved by the sheer amount of rewards earned. Subsequent alts similarly reduce the amount of effort needed. Influence gain is practically geometric growth in CoH. It balloons extremely quickly under practically all circumstances and any amount gained increases the amounts gained later. The barrier of entry posed by inf is, essentially, 'did you bother to log in' and I'd rather not have the game 'win' itself before I even accessed my account.

You absolutely can transfer character concepts, redux builds, and recreate established characters with new powersets/archetypes. I've remade established characters at numerous different points, especially when new, more fitting powersets were dropped or proliferated. My original main from 2004 was a Fire/Fire Blaster who became a Fire/Fire Scrapper in Issue 12, which was a full retcon of his identity up until that point for a more fitting concept. Another character was an Energy Blast/Ninjitsu Sentinel who was deliberately rerolled as Water Blast/Ninjitsu when the right story milestone was hit for unlocking their true powers and things carried forward from there. I've got a character who spent three years with his identify defined by being an Electric Melee/Energy Aura Scrapper and now has a 'depowered' Katana/Willpower variant due to plot reasons. Both versions exist simultaneously and are canonically the same guy - just armed with different abilities depending on if he's using magic or not. So to answer your question yeah, you absolutely can. Also given the usage of the name 'Barbie' for Kendo Barbie, you probably should. As a forewarning, if that character is what the name implies (blonde woman in a pink outfit armed with a samurai sword, may or may not be from Malibu and possibly lives in a dreamhouse dream dojo) that's skirting an IP line Homecoming has limited tolerance for.

That's a very interesting point. The original mission map designs feel a lot more like FPS maps of that era than MMO maps, much less anything like the map designs CoH got later or that MMOs institute now. Travel powers being accessed much earlier - and the overall cranking up of gameplay speed - definitely adjusted how open and free-roaming mission maps became. Though, remembering the original map progression, by the time players had travel powers a lot of those big 'area of city zone/destroyed zone/forest' maps were more available around then too, so there was some semblance of player-related progression there. A lot of the endgame maps back then were also the giant open-air ones. Also I'll echo some earlier posters - the massive Oranbega maps with all the little side rooms and buildings to explore is a fantastic set piece, but a major pain on any character taller than the default height. My main for a long time was an 8'+ tall demon man and he'd end up getting caught on every one of those green crystal chandeliers. I imagine its even worse if your character is a Huge player model. I have friends whose mains use the Huge model with near max height and body sliders and I don't see how they've managed all these years.

The Homecoming wiki is a quicker source than scouting through the forums. The pages for the newer Issues detail which arcs and contacts were added in which Page. Issue 26, Issue 27, & Issue 28. Edit - if you are in the right level range for them, hitting the Find Contact button in-game does point to newer content first, so that is also an option.

Golden Girl's project was Heroes & Villains. Basically been entirely dead for at least the last 5 years or so and made a bunch of claims that never went anywhere. Which, remembering her from the original forums... tracks. Valiance Online and City of Titans were the other two. City of Titans/The Phoenix Project had a kickstarter that was successful (got twice as much funding as they asked for at the time) but have been incredibly slow-going. I was briefly an assistant proofreader/lore editor at the start of their volunteer efforts, then bailed when the progress and administrative oversight stalled out even that early on. Valiance Online apparently cancelled their kickstarter some time ago, no idea what they're doing now. Seeing the Ship of Heroes trailer and the content from their Steam page... I applaud them for actually getting something made but that is rough. It looks like an AI filter applied to early CoH beta footage. It'd look dated for the 2010s, much less for something intending to be a 'new and exciting' MMO in the year 2025. I understand the need to pay the bills but that's not a finished product, much less one worth charging a box price and an on-going subscription for. Especially when the competition - the professionally made game they're cribbing off of with 10+ years of fully developed content and an actual community - has a 'just sign up and make an account!' policy.

The general why is already addressed in the current Kallisti Wharf content and lore write-ups - the pre-existing PPD division was corrupt and got ousted, and Blackwing was brought in to manage Kallisti Wharf in their place. Given the co-op. nature of the zone it actually makes more sense frankly. The PPD wouldn't permit villains or rogues, same with Longbow or Wyvern, and allowing an organization like Crey or any out-and-out villain group to take over Paragon City's shipping port was never going to happen. This is also the first major zone showing the post-Praetorian War influx along with the morality-shifting and plot evolution of older factions from past arcs. Having a new organization not tied to any of the old ones by previous conflicts makes Blackwing a perfect neutral party to all of them. Vanguard theoretically could have worked, but they're an actual military organization who I expect still have their hands full managing the fallout of the Rikti War and the Praetorian War (plus keeping watch for any future threats). Also, while a bit more meta, the overall usage of neutral mobs in Kallisti Wharf is a way for the game mechanics to reflect that Blackwing is actually doing a pretty good job. All these divergent elements are mostly playing nice with each other (at least on the surface). Hence why the story arcs are put in for player characters to dig into things more deeply.

'She can get a job' - that's not how Marvel characters work. Heck, that's not how comic book superheroes work with money in-general. They're either self-funded billionaires where money is of no consequence, government/secret society agents whose blatantly excessive funding is never actually addressed, have extraterrestrial or magical means to just ignore the issue (usually 'being an alien/wizard/alien wizard' is their job), or are constantly broke. Also, her having a job like that robs the show of its focus. It's the same core issue with the 'Batman would accomplish more if he invested his time and money in civic improvement and proper rehabilitation' argument. Sure it's the 'logical & real' choice, but the point is to watch him be Batman. Riri having to go through questionable means to acquire funding and resources after the legitimate paths are closed to her is both a practical means to get to her being Ironheart and a narrative means establish an on-going test of character. 'Our hero has a nice, well-paying job that allows them to safely moonlight as a gundam on weekends with no moral quandaries or ethical questions' does not possess nor allow for the same level of drama. Will she gain effective employment as an Avenger or with some other faction by the end of the series? Possibly, but that will be a result of her arc as a superhero, not as plot-miring starting point that prevents her from being one in the first place. Listing out the 10+ years of feature-length film progression and accomplishments against the brand new origin series is going to be one-sided, yes.

I just ran through the zone and had no issues with any of them outside of the 'spawn as hostile' mobs. Do you have a taunt aura active? Anything that pings against NPCs will provoke the neutral mobs into attacking the player.

This is a really good point. The Shining Stars/Hearts of Darkness arcs do a lot to intro the game's mechanics both new and old but they're also easily skipped by doing other starting arcs, joining trials, or the ever present AE farms. Using zone trainers for something like this is a good idea, but I'd go a step further and also have it be a constantly accessible 'assistance hotline' in the players' contacts. Perhaps a Hero Corps thing, to restore a bit of the function the Field Analysts used to have. That way if there's a specific problem during a mission or something, new players can readily look up a solution or how a particular mechanic works. Bonus points if it can detect possible issues with a character's slotted enhancements or chosen powers based on what problem they select. 'My powers keep missing!' -> 'You have not slotted any Accuracy boosting enhancements in X, Y, and Z' or something to that effect. That'd probably be a lot more intensive to set up than just a static string of suggested solutions though.

I was writing out an entire other post when I saw this thread get updated, so I'll just respond to this instead. Willpower. That description is Willpower. Mechanically, that's exactly what the set does. To make it work for the initial concept, just set it to minimal/no FX in power customization and use a few costume slots to show different levels of worn equipment. Works for any sort of armor that's meant just to be armor - steampunk, platemail, samurai, cybertech military gear, etc. - rather than high tech or magical or stuff like that. It's the 'I'm just a tough son-of-a-gun' option precisely to fulfill that particular niche.

The problem of this thread is that's fundamentally impossible to 'agree to disagree' a core mechanic. Endurance is factored into every aspect of gameplay for CoH - every power that provides some measurable effect on the outcome of combat has an endurance cost that is factored against everything else it does; damage, recharge time, stat boosts or debuffs, everything. If there is no endurance cost, such as the case with auto-powers or inherents, the effects and detriments are adjusted to account for that. Endurance is literally one of the core pillars upon which players engage with the game world and powers are designed around. Saying 'I hope some day they'll do a massive rework for endurance or remove it entirely' is akin to suggesting 'they should remove the dice rolling from D&D and replace it with something else.' The HC devs can't just do a 'find and replace' with a whole separate mechanic without possibly breaking how the game functions and bricking every character in it. Even if removing endurance and forging a suitable replacement mechanic was somehow successful, that'd still require every player to do respecs for every character they have across every account. The forums already get inundated with gripe threads when specific sets get bespoke reworks - removing endurance would be Homecoming nuking the playerbase from orbit with the force of a thousand exploding Enhancement Diversifications. Also, to reiterate, the game was built with endurance being a core mechanic in-mind. That is why it offers players so many ways to manage it (as many others in this thread have already pointed out). It is entirely possible to build any character in this game to function continuously in active combat outside of fighting enemies that use endurance drain/-recovery. My go-to while leveling is two Endurance Reduction in every attack/control power and armor toggle, at least one in any teammate buffs, and one in every travel power/sprint/etc. Add in a 'chance for +Endurance' proc in Stamina and Health and then coast to 50 without any issues. Always slot end. reduction first at lower levels and toss in accuracy/damage or defense/resistance as you get more slots. It gets even easier if a character's build uses lower level IO sets, as the set bonuses can build up as they progress.

Easier said than done when some posters' ideas of engagement in these discussion threads is to quote the same odious critic's repetitive talking points. Seemingly every time there's a comic book thread made. Makes it a bit hard to have discussion about a piece of media when some participants' only contribution is to dismiss said media entirely via a second-hand opinion from someone whose commentary they know is incredibly polarizing. Regarding Ironheart - having now seen the first three episodes (thank you, day off from work), I think they have a solid start. The show gets the plot moving and motivations going pretty quickly, the practical effects are great (and emphasize the differences in the Ironheart suit vs Tony's), and Riri having to McGuyver the high-tech results from less than ideal resources is a fun way to showcase her intelligence/capabilities as well as her circumstances. It hits on a lot of the ideas from the Iron Man films and also has a sort of Sam Rami Spider-Man/Spider-Man: Homecoming vibe to it as well. The young prodigy hero wants to do good and accomplish great things but life - both superheroic and social - just keeps throwing curve balls. The idea of succession & plagiarism is actually present as a theme of the show too, with some characters saying Riri 'isn't living up to the legacy of Tony Stark' so the set-up for her forging her own identity via inspiration from him is pretty front and center. Other characters delve into that too, though I won't get into spoilers. Also Eric Andre is as funny as I expected him to be, which is always a plus. I understand why this show might not be some fans' particular cup of tea, but it was enjoyable and snappy enough to keep me entertained. Also we've finally gotten to the point where the MCU is fully embracing its own overarching, interconnected setting (which they could have done a lot more with the prior phase) so it feels a bit like catch-up/reminders at times, but also they're making something new with it at the same time. I'm curious to see where it goes, and at minimum wherever that is can't possibly be worse than Thor: Love & Thunder.

Hey, let's give Critical Drinker the benefit of the doubt when it comes to understanding content no one engages with. I expect he's plenty familiar with media nobody likes, considering his alcoholic rantings are far more popular than the novels or comic books he's written under his actual name. Regarding Ironheart, haven't had time to sit down and watch yet but the clips I have seen looked pretty fun. Also the fact that the suit isn't nanotech and is actually a mech suit alone has me more interested than the final iterations of MCU Iron Man. Love ya Tony, but nanotech is still boring to watch. Practical & props > CGI.

Volunteer to cover the full cost of adding and maintaining a Hardcore server, along with the dev time spent setting it up and monitoring it, and Homecoming might take you up on the suggestion. Otherwise? Exercise self-control and choose to play that way on any of the existing shards, where every player is already currently capable of their own hardcore perma-death run. Don't want in-game mail, markets, START venders, trading, or rez powers? Don't use them.

I haven't run any of the Kallisti Wharf arcs yet, but as a follow up to the general conceit of this thread - why isn't the age-old standby of 'headcanon it differently' in play here like it is for every other story arc? If you don't agree with a particular writing choice for a character you're playing, you are entirely free to explain it differently and concoct an alternate context more fitting to your character's involvement. That's aside from the fact that the arc itself apparently already offers branching paths that change how it progresses in ways that can avoid the initial complaint entirely anyway. Maybe the 5th Column are all illusions. Maybe the DE attack was faked via a few plant controller buddies. Maybe this whole thing is a set up against Robert Kogan because he stole the player character's lunch once in sixth grade. Players can literally make up whatever they like - and often do. There was a really well-known long-running thread about a player's OC dating Positron on the original forums (not to discount Samuraiko as just 'a player' but still). If that path doesn't fit your preferred view of 'proper vigilantism' then make something up. Or don't run that path.

Much as I agree that AE needed stricter handling many years before now to curb it being the end-all be-all fast track, the devs (on Live and now on HC) were never going to cut inf from it. Inf is the game's standard currency. That is its primary function and whatever meta reasoning was given for the name scheme is irrelevant to that. Especially in-regard to design choices and game economy. Deliberately denying players access to the game's standard currency because they chose to engage in a certain type of content would be pouring gasoline on the forums while handing every player a flamethrower (and that'd be on-top of the mountains of vitriol that forumites were already tossing around about AE choices). It's also just a bad precedent to establish. That's not 'we're encouraging players to play the game the right way,' that's 'we don't value this specific content or the time players spend on it as much as other areas of the game.' The whole thing about inf is that since it's the base currency it's incredibly easy to earn across all areas of gameplay. Making AE the single exception to that, even with a 'separate but equal' alternate reward scheme (which itself would be a whole new thing to have to balance and re-balance around), would be adding an unnecessary problem to what was already one of the biggest tangles the game has (and still has) to deal with.

Helps that this take seems to be 'Bond doing Bond Things, he's just younger' rather than 'bumbling amateur agent who becomes James Bond in the final ten minutes' like so many other uses of that trope. It's got the classic superspy feel of the older films but in a contemporary setting, which helps sell 'young Bond' too. If they were going with period setting folks would probably expect an older Bond. 20-something Bond in the 2020s? Okay. 20-something Bond in the 1960s? Weird.

Badge flavor text is an incredibly shaky stance to propose any new content with. This is on top of 'new Goldside content' itself being a near guaranteed nonstarter. The Level 50 Praetorian badge says 'Even Emperor Cole would have to admit you would make a fine Praetor. You can feel the time of reckoning drawing near...' The 'time of reckoning' is the Praetorian War plotline of the iTrials - which have all already happened. They happened over 10 years ago, concluding before the game was shutdown. The end was 'Tyrant is defeated and Praetorian Hamidon consumes the alternate world.' The flavor text is a fun nod to the dedication some players have in relentlessly grinding their Goldside character to level 50 and skipping the game's canonical jumping off point, not a clandestine admission of dev investment. Also, solely by player activity it's just not worth it to make Praetorian-only content or zones. Goldside was dead on Live within a year of releasing and has been dead on HC for as long as I've been playing here. The devs aren't going to spend that kind of work on the least played side of the game, much less for anything that forces most of the playerbase to roll up entirely new characters and level them to 50 just to run. Now, new arcs on Primal Earth that build off of old Goldside content? That's entirely possible. That was the path that the Live devs were taking and HC seems to be continuing it, given that Kallisti Wharf on Beta has post-Praetorian War connections. There's options for various surviving Praetor arcs where they could reference if you worked for them or opposed them, same with the surviving Resistance or Loyalist contacts. New arcs for the New Praetorians supergroup formed by Provost Marchand. All of it just resides in the 'post-Praetorian War' setting of the game's current year.

It looks like someone took League of Legend's K/DA group and made a whole movie out of it. K-pop isn't my usual bag but the music is catchy. The anime-inspired art style works pretty dang well, too. The demons adopting their own band persona to fight the heroine trio is a fun twist and if there are any plot connections to the unhealthy obsessions fans can develop with idol groups, this could actually be pretty interesting.

I think it depends on the particular take for Batman, really. For a more 'serious' version - which most often just means more realistic or grounded, like the Christopher Nolan or Matt Reeves versions - a suit lacking trunks fits the vibe. For more comic accurate or animated takes? Bats needs the trunks. Trunkless Batman is not the Batman that'd team up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example. Much as I'd love to see Robert Pattinson's Batman with David Corenswet's Superman, the Matt Reeves stuff is off in its own bubble. Which is probably for the best overall. Lets the current Batman media keep its more Sopranos/The Wire-eqsue tone and level of success while still allowing for a more earnestly comicbook Bats for the main universe.

The core issue of 'choose your character's weakness' as a mechanical system in an MMO like CoH is that while it's fascinating for player narrative, mathematically it'd be absurdly difficult to balance around and would impact player experience in wonky ways. For the system to even be worth using the weakness would need to be significant enough to impact at least some portion of play, while also offering a significant enough benefit worth taking said weakness for. That's already a balance nightmare between all the ATs and the wide gamut of IOs, then there's the impact on Incarnate and Hard Mode content. There's also the issue of CoH being so readily modular outside of initial character creation - are the weaknesses treated the same way? Could they be swapped out on the fly, like Incarnate powers? Maybe swing by Null the Gull? Or would they require something like a respec trial to change? Are you allowed to change them while running a taskforce, or are characters stuck with them from the creation screen? Making them too easy to change just adds an extra step of busy work to interrupt team progression between each mission and making them too difficult or impossible to change could render wide swathes of content much more difficult (let alone how ramped up weaknesses might be in endgame runs). Any additional system would also exacerbate the instances where bespoke weaknesses are inflicted on characters via story arcs or by enemy groups, like the Vahzilok Wasting Disease or the Curse of Weariness from the RWZ. There's also the interaction of custom weaknesses with other characters and how they work when on a team. If my character has a weakness to magic - say taking more damage when fighting the Circle of Thorns or Banished Pantheon - does that mean buffs from other players are less effective against them too? Or are teammate buffs fully effective and possibly nix the weakness entirely via overwhelming numbers? It doesn't matter that the Ruin Mage hits my character harder than a Council gunman if the Force Field buffs make it so neither of them can land a shot to begin with. I think this overall concept is already better served by the existing framework of AT choices, IO builds, and powerset themes. If you make a Fire/Fire Scrapper who is built for recharge, regen/heal, and resistance, you'll do fantastic melee damage, be somewhat tanky, and heal quickly, but also get hit more often than other characters with higher Defense and have next to no ranged damage or control powers. You'll be great against enemies that deal fire damage, but weak to cold. You might get knocked around more than a Willpower or Invul characters (depending on slotting), but you have greater PBAoE damage by default.

Certainly true! Also that reminded me of another instance I somehow forgot - Jason Momoa is coming back as Lobo for the Supergirl movie. Which seems a much more natural fit for him rather than Aquaman, much as I enjoyed his take on Arthur. Dude is just made to be the Main Man. Agreed on the superspeed thing. I get the 'untethered to normal physics' vibe they were aiming at but that really doesn't sell fast movement, just comes across as really warped, uncontrolled momentum. Portraying it all in slow motion never helped either. IMO the best portrayal of the Flash's style of movement from mainstream movies has been the Sonic films (which is a Hell of a sentence). If the new DC films present Supes racing Flash or any speedster fights like that? It'll be comic-accurate and look good.

It's almost entirely a new universe, yeah. There's a handful of characters carrying over from the tail-end of the former DC cinematic universe - Blue Beetle has the same actor and James Gunn's prior DC projects with The Suicide Squad and the Peacemaker series have carried over - but all the prior mainline films (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Justice League, Aquaman 1/2, Wonder Woman 1/2, The Flash, etc.) have all been nixed. The CW shows (Arrowverse) were all basically off on their own continuity for the most part and ended before the DC film universe proper did AFAIK. So it's mostly a fresh start, with a bit of 'the MCU integrating Netflix' business thrown in.