El D

Fitness was made inherent because just about every player took it as a power pool as it was, and making it inherent meant players could boost those core aspects (HP/End Recovery) without compromising 'an actual power pick.' Going back to it being another 'waste of a power pool' on top of doubling up on the same powers would not solve any of those issues, just reintroduce one that was already solved and exacerbate poor build-planning. Running out of slots is just part of making a character. They aren't going to have space for literally everything you want to put in and managing that is part of playing the game. I always toss at least one or two chance for +end procs on my characters, which is a deliberate choice to spend them there to solve the 'no blue bar' instances. As that can already be solved with the right investment, lack of further recovery in power pools isn't an issue. In times when it becomes more direct, like when fighting Carnies or Malta, that's a game mechanic and what teaming up with other players for buffs or having some blue inspirations is for. Also as far as thematics go, if you absolutely want to use a pool to represent that there's already Physical Perfection in the Body Mastery ancillary pool. Proliferating that ancillary options to other ATs would be good (as would more Epic proliferation and Epics in-general), but making Fitness again but with the old, clunky implementations isn't the way to go.

Undefined Mode is the green blobby model from the original character creator. This one. It's also got a Silver variant that's the version from the modern costume creator.

There is no Gadgetry set - there is a Traps secondary, which seems to be what you're referencing. As for them being 'complete sets' both Devices and Traps are complete sets already. They're meant to occupy the same theme, concept-wise, but are deliberately focused on different mechanics and powers because of the archetypes they're made to work with. Traps has the force field generator, the acid mortar, and the triage beacon because it's designed to be a debuff/buff set for team support. Devices, on the other hand, is designed more for solo support via shorting up the Blaster's weaknesses and offering some team utility. They're different powersets for a reason. As far as some of it seeming technological and some of it seeming magical, that's up to the individual player's perception of the FX. Even then, the glorious thing is you can ignore the description blurbs of powers and explain them however you want that makes sense for your character. However, if it's just a matter of 'I don't want this character to have the forcefield drone at all' your options are either don't pick that power while playing Traps (which is a really bad decision, mechanically) or just play a different powerset that you like better.

Hero 1's 'tomb' is actually a time capsule commemorating the entire Omega Team from the Rikti War that occurred in 2002 (it just happens to use his cape symbol because A) he was the leader and B) the live devs already had that Union Jack texture made, so why make a new asset?). Lorewise, he was declared dead due to events that happened before the game even launched, since he led the Omega Team in a sneak assault on the Rikti portal base, got sent to the Rikti homeworld, and was presumed lost. Primal Earth didn't actually know if he was dead or not, but in classic superhero comicbook fashion 'You get lost on another world and the only route back explodes'... you get presumed dead. Wasn't until the Lady Grey Task Force that he shows up again as The Honoree, revealing that he wasn't ever dead he just got Rikti'fied. As of shutdown, Vanguard was still working on a way to restore him to his old self (and given his status as an empowered Incarnate, that could make for a fun continuation of other storylines too). War Witch's story is a bit more complicated, given that she existed solely in the Blue King Studios comics run along with Apex and Horus (which are great and deserve a read) before being put in-game years later. Her status as a ghost in Croatoa is a direct result of that run - War Witch dies fighting Requiem, but due to her mystical magical powers, manifests as a spirit to continue mentoring new heroes. Then, many issues later with the progression of the Praetorian arcs in Night Ward, the Praetorian version of War Witch shows up - Sorceress Serene. She was taken in by the Furies and works against Tyrant due to backstory drama with Diabolique. It gets revealed that she's also been secretly working against the Furies and wants to steal the the power of their goddess (Lamashtu) for herself, but our ghostly version of War Witch finishes the ritual Serene is using to do that first. As a result, the Primal Earth ghost ends up possessing her evil Praetorian version's body. Shutdown happened soon after that, so we never got an official follow-up or reunion between her and Ajax where they go to kick Requiem's ass, but lots of folks are still holding out hope. As for the War Witch in Pocket D, she's an alternate dimension version that never died and is pretty much there as a cameo reflection of the 'interdimensional club with portals to everywhere' gimmick of the zone (and the fact that the live devs made a model for her, but had to slap a ghost filter on it for Croatoa so 'Why not use the 'real' one somewhere?').

This always seemed like it'd be a fun addition. Having each powersets variant of Build Up/Aim offer a unique effect for said set, rather than just the same numerical boost across the board. That way instead of coming across as a generic 'And here's where you get this button, because you're like every other Blast set' it could still play into the specific concept while also offering the same general mechanic. It'd probably be an annoying thing to balance but it'd make the option more fun to take.

You look different from your forum avatar. You aren't catfishing folks with photos from a few centuries ago, are you?

It's definitely not wrong to want to play how you prefer and be with a team where you feel like your presence actually contributes, but that said the whole 'most content being a steamroll' has been a thing ever since IOs got introduced way back on live. The ease at which even moderately built characters on a decently made team can faceroll through most story arcs and task forces isn't exactly new.

The problem with pushing for any revamp of hazard zones to promote street sweeping is that AE is effectively already the king of that kind of 'rush from one mob to the next and kill everything' content. It does the same thing street sweeping does, just faster, always at max level, and for much higher reward per time spent. Making hazard zones always con-even doesn't actually give any draw for players to go there. IMO, I'd rather see hazard zones be adjusted as Co Op zones with repeatable missions that work within their existing level range. Have Crey step into Perez Park with a public works project, contracting superpowered individuals to 'clean up the gangs and Hydra menace' - this would showcase their public image before any of the later corruption arcs and gives the Paragon Protectors a place to shine early outside of Brickstown. Vanguard could enter into Boomtown and establish an early presence as the 'alien opposition' group with a liaison accepting anyone who follows their rules in the raging conflict between the Council and the 5th Column (Nictus invasion seems like something that should be on their radar, anyways). Striga Isle doesn't really need much additional context as it seems like they'd accept anyone willing to take down the Council and the Family, and Crey's Folly could have some room for a Midnight Club attache working against the Rikti and the Devouring Earth. Toss in some new badges and perhaps make the missions tie into the Tip/Alignment system and there's a whole host of reasons for new and old characters to run through the zones that adds to underused in-game mechanics and works with pre-existing lore.

CoH does get name-dropped a surprising amount across other online spaces. Combined with some MMOs jumping too hard into cash shop nonsense (Neverwinter), ended (FireFall, Wildstar, etc.), or long since turned to maintenance mode (The Secret World/Secret World Legends), not to mention the massive exodus from WoW after Blizzard's repeated horrendous fiascos... There definitely seems to be a lot more transient MMO players wandering around nowadays than there were years prior. Plus, I think we've also reached a point where a new crop of superhero fans are arising from the glut of various Marvel and DC properties. So coming across a 'free' superhero MMO with an active user-base that already has years of content and updates and is still actively being worked on seems like a definite draw for some folks. Especially considering 'superhero online game' is still an astonishingly bare market outside of the licensed lootbox cash shop grind-a-thon's like Gotham Knights and Marvel's Avengers. DCUO is apparently doing okay enough and Champions Online is kept afloat by serious die-hards, and aside from those two... There's next to nothing, really. CoH is still routinely considered a better game in most every online poll, and its 'spiritual successors' languished long enough in vaporware that the thing they were intent on replacing just came back around. CoH is, still, a diamond in the rough. There's just been enough MMO erosion and pop culture boosts that more folks can see it now.

The badges that provide +health or +end are called Accolades. Some of them also provide bonus powers and buffs that you can activate. Paragonwiki has a full list of them that shows what content and other badges you must earn to acquire the accolades.

I'm willing to cut some slack for the capes bit since it was a minor in-universe justification of tech requirements at the time, plus like you said that's easily enough ignored nowadays anyway - but yeah, the choice of 'sudden introduction of hard, backstory-limiting lore where none had existed before' was really off-putting. The concepts themselves weren't even inherently terrible, they were just implemented terribly. Like, tying the splitting of the atom to mutants in a general sense would have been fine if Psyche had said something like 'splitting the atom seems to have sparked new varieties of mutants.' That could have easily jived, especially considering the Nuclear 90 existing in-setting, along with the idea that some mutations are just overall more common than others - like say, psionic manifestations. Also, the world population boom in the modern age would mean many more mutants, too. It definitely would have been an improvement over 'I'm the mutant you meet to learn about mutants, except I'm actually not one despite it having been my Origin since the game launched. Also, here's random new lore to limit your backstory and explain why this sudden new information doesn't actually contract my backstory of having been born before 1939 or the fact that there's an ancient Roman version of me leading a group of similarly psychic oracle ladies.'

Much as I am really into the theme and narrative idea behind this, I'd rather have any future ancillary pools expanded without tying them to any story arcs or NPCs. Proliferating the epic pools in-general is already a hefty order given just how many concepts aren't covered across the whole gamut of archetypes - having to also make additional custom sets to fit unique NPCs, along with entire story arcs just to unlock them, would be a lot more work. Not to mention likely prompting a number of forum arguments over which NPCs should or shouldn't have Blueside patron pools. Still definitely want a Scirocco Hero arc to continue his redemption, mind, and would be happy with any arcs where Blueside characters get to team up with signature heroes in patron-esque roles - I'd just rather not have any power stuff gated behind them. That's a game design aspect that can stay back in 2006. EDIT - Also as for the 'go undercover' suggestion... You can already do that by just pretending your character is undercover while doing the existing arcs Redside. Nobody outside of whoever you roleplay with will know or care how you choose to re-contextualize the story arc for your own character.

Agreed. Taunting from the Presence pool got pretty narrowed in scope so as to not to tread on the 'We're the aggro management/herding ATs' niche that Brutes and Tanks are promoted to occupy (and sometimes Scrappers, maybe). Which means it became that much less effective for any other AT who'd actually benefit from taking it and for Brutes and Tanks. It kind of seems like a highlight of the conceptual misalignment of power pools, which seems to have only become more exacerbated as the game has gone on. It's good that Homecoming made many of them more broadly applicable and useful overall and I understand the idea behind not wanting them to eclipse abilities from Primary or Secondary sets, but the powers themselves still need to be good enough to be worth picking up in the first place. With the advent of IOs, set bonuses, and Incarnate powers, if some Controller wants to have a Tanker taunt... Why not? The whole 'there's no set trinity of required options, play what you like' aspect of CoH should be something that power pools enhance, rather than backtrack on via underwhelming imitation.

Totally agree on the stories. More specifically, stories that focus on exploring the setting, organizations, and the other characters - how they all interact and their motivations - to build investment in the player's own narrative, rather than the focus CoH was taking of 'You're becoming the most powerful and competent superpowered being on Primal Earth - just like literally every other Incarnate!' The SSAs were pretty guilty of this too, to the direct detriment of many signature characters. Statesman is an all too fitting example... A story that prompts the player to think about how their character relates to the guy whose face is on the game box, contextualizing what that character means within the setting and what they symbolize, would be a lot more interesting than one where the guy on the box gets jobbed and every player character in the game is catapulted to the exact same 'You succeeded where he failed - you're the best!' spot to show how much better they are. Early CoH stories with Modern CoH mechanics? Yes, more please.

I agree with the general concept behind this idea. Nixing the Well of the Furies as the 'primal source for all superpowered possibilities' is an absolute yes. It was a dumb narrative decision hampered even further by poor explanation in-game, though I get why it works in the context of the Incarnate system (the Live devs wanted a handwave for why every single character concept could be affected by it, so 'quintessence of all superpowers' it was). That said, I'd go a step further and invert the focus on those Origin Exploration missions. Keep the 'Deep Dive into Origins' aspect, but make it the player character seeing how other groups or signature characters of said Origins gain and utilize their powers, rather than any attempt to explain the player character's background or 'next step' for them. This still keeps it grounded within the lore and offers up more story angles to peruse, but keeps the character progression method deliberately nebulous. Was your Natural Origin character inspired to improve by Manticore and Wyvern? Did they push themselves further to combat Malta and the Knives of Artemis? Was it some secret training program from ELITE or Omega Watch? Or was it none of the above, some other idea you had? The arc shouldn't be there to tell a player how their character works, it should show how similar characters fit into the world as inspiration. That was the biggest writing fumble of the Incarnate system, to me. The Origin stuff always should have been specific for setting canon & lore but open-ended for player inspiration - instead it was specific for setting canon & lore, and directly determinant for players. 'It doesn't matter what backstory you wrote, this is the ultimate source of why your character has their powers and the only way you will become stronger.' By the same token, bringing back the FBSA branches as actually important entities in-game and just making origin choice matter more overall. Even if it is just for repeatable missions or similar arcs with branching dialogue options based on player origin, moments where the game gives the player an option to reference 'Yes, I am a Magic origin character in a Magic relevant arc' should definitely be more of a thing. How your character knows what they know or has access to what they do as a result is still up to player decision (or, if it's not fitting, just opting out of that angle in the first place), but it should still be there.

This is my thought on it as well - if new Incarnate options are put in, they're going to need even higher tier content to be used in. That's already kind of the route being taken with introduction of Hard Mode, which has definitely expanded the range for incarnate level content a fair amount between boosted versions of older content and outright new stuff. Theoretically it could also allow room for new Incarnate options, but the quibble there is... Hard Mode is also currently balanced around just the five existing Incarnate slots/IO builds. Adding even more on top of it could possibly make it easier than intended, require that existing Hard Mode content be tweaked again every time a new Incarnate power was added, or at the extreme end introduce even more difficult 'Hard Mode+' to keep up. Which just circles back to the beginning of the whole 'iTrials/endgame content is too easy' issue once players unlock the newest powers for the umpteenth time (not to mention the fact that there's going to be a hefty amount of folks who won't ever even play the content or complain that it was made in the first place...). I imagine that's why broadening the options was the focus with Hard Mode - adding it as an expansion of the plateau that is the existing endgame tier with a focus on badges/cosmetic rewards rather than any mechanical boosts was the only way to make new endgame content that didn't reintroduce that 'here's the next level, come back a pay more subscription money!' content spiral that Live was getting into before sunset. Which is a shame, because I bet the Homecoming team would have some pretty cool ideas on what to do with the rest of the Incarnate system. Maybe if another avenue for progression was figured out, though I'm not sure what that would be.

Fair point! Given map and object geometry and scaling of a lot of in-game items, stuff like that is kind of a given really. Add in capes, wings, and tails and any full-body emote is going to get messy/clippy. It actually already is a base NPC emote. Lie on Couch.

110% Agree There's a lot of NPC only emotes like this (such as the various 'sit and talk' emotes) that'd be really great for player use. Granted, a large number of them would also absolutely do wonky things given the collision box around player models and make the text boxes appear in weird spots (like massively high over a character's head), so it's not quite a straightforward 'just enable it' thing. Without trimming down the scale of said collision box or perhaps giving an option to negate player collision (a 'Walk' toggle, but for intangibility?), I'm not sure what else could be done to resolve that issue in implementing them.

This isn't a deviantart page, much less some single-player game where the devs don't care how or why you play it. It's an MMORPG that has had to deal with this literal same issue in the past - which is exactly why that ruling which you are agreeing to every time you log-in is in place. You don't want to abide by Homecoming's rules? Play somewhere else. QFT (...jeeze, haven't done one of those in years) It's pretty telling that OP has written up huge swathes of text in-response to everyone here, but in none of them actually showcased the costume and name of the character that got generic'd. Probably because it was a blatant violation of policy.

As other posters have said, the 'Don't make copyrighted characters' a CYA ruling for Homecoming and the safety of the server. Whether or not it's likely that any IP or copyright holders would go after the server isn't the point - it's to ensure that none of them have any standing to do so in the first place. Also, frankly, the game would be boring as Hell if players were allowed to run around as their favorite characters from comics/movies/video games. The point of CoX is to make your own characters and build a story of your own, not to do online cosplay as someone else's creations. If that's the experience you want, Fortnite has that in spades. 'Change the rules to risk shutdown and legal action so I can play as Superman/Wolverine/Batman/Spider-Man/etc.!' never held water during Live and it doesn't hold water now.

I'm not sure even Ouroboros can go back that far xD

Yeah, parking a marketing alt at an SG portal is really the only avenue for that. I can't provide a link, but I want to say the reason that AH access isn't activated in bases was explained as given the way bases work and load, the game would have to load the entire auction house into that separate instance. It would also need to do that every time someone entered the base, which would become this a massive spiral drawing more and more resources until the base would become unable to even be loaded into at all and the server shard would crash. Same reason we don't have AE access in bases, or AH/AE in instanced missions for that matter.

Issue 5 was August 2005, so you were playing... at 8 years old? Dang, here I thought I started young having been in high school at launch. Also, found a screenshot for this thread!

Mu Mastery is one of the Patron Pools - epic pools that are unlocked when a character earns a badge for running one of the Patron Arcs Redside. Just getting one of the badges will unlock all four options, though the unlock will only activate provided your alignment is Vigilante, Rogue, or Villain. You can switch back to Hero immediately after and still keep them unlocked though, and you get the badge just by being on a team with someone who completes the mission, so it can be unlocked at early levels.