Shred Monkey

In all seriousness I think it's all about the community's attitude towards new players. If the community accepts them and genuinely tries to make their experience positive, the game will last. New players will come in and stay, which replaces old players moving on. But if there are too many players who bully new players, the game community turns toxic and shrivels up to nothing (I won't say the community dies, because sometimes you get games where the bullies hang on and hang out for a really long time). Also note, you can replace "new players" with any player who's in a position to be bullied... be it lack of game knowledge/experience or other.

I completely agree with you comments about hooking the next generation. My boys' favorite game is Roblox. Not exactly high end graphics. I think to get the newer generation's interest you just need to get a high profile youtuber playing CoH. Or get a CoH player to become a high profile youtuber. A built-in audio chat system for teams and leagues might be good as long as its very simple to use and reliable. Also... it needs to stay 100% free to play.

That's way more conversation then I see in 80% of the ITF and Tinpex PuGs I join.

I like a lot about stalker MA... it has great attacks for using procs and for building up charges to make assassin's quick strike crit. However, every time I ran the numbers, I got more DPS out of Street Justice. Mostly because Crushing Uppercut just hits so darned hard. I like MA more on a tank, because of the AoE and defense numbers, and it's just fun to do an "all kicks" build. But there's nothing wrong with the stalker version.

Shifting through this thread I see a lot of maths going on, so I'll assume that's all covered. By my personal build philosophy is this. After I calculate my attack chain requirements, I do absolutely everything I can to maximize endurance recovery. You see, I like to leave sprint and infiltration running during a fight, so I want to not only run my attack chain and all my defensive toggles running forever without running out of gas, but I want to have a considerable amount of excess recovery so I fight with my travel powers on as well. I might turn them off if I'm soloing a Carnies, Freakshow, or a bunch of Mu's, but I turn them back on as soon as I can.

I don't think Incarnate powers made the badges much easier. I mean, I'd say 80% of my Khan runs have 0 deaths just because they're so quick and easy that there was no threat. I understand the frustration if you're build counts on ageless destiny to manage endurance issues (for example), but bringing along a kin support toon should cover that gap just fine. And wasn't that the point? The one thing I don't like about what I've seen since the release is that there are fewer people chasing the hard content then I wanted. I think if they had made Aeon just a little shorter it would have gone a long way to making it more attractive. But in general it's added an element to the game that was strongly desired by many and I look forward to seeing more of it. That said, as a general rule I don't like imposing handicaps on characters to add difficulty. I want to take my most powerful build though challenging content, not an artificially weakened version of that build.

I like a crowded server personally, so I'm OK with any successful membership drive. Personally, I think the best thing to do to increase awareness has already been done. Allowing streaming and posting of videos is the biggest thing they can do to attract new players outside of actually running adds (like RAID: Shadow Legends). We also already get articles written about them on Massively (How is it that happens so often, btw? I suspect someone here knows the answer to this... so... umm.. perhaps I should say thank-you?)

I like this idea a lot. Lately, I've been scratching this itch a different way. I took a toon through every arc of Praetoria turning off xp at 9, 14, and 19 so I didn't out-level anything. Then at level 20, I came over to Primal Earth and turned off xp. My plan is to just leave Umbral Dragon Monkey (katana/willpower brute) at level 20 forever. There's a ton of content I can cover at this level.... blue side, red side, yellow side, tip missions, radios/banks in 4 blue side zones and 2? red side zones, Striga is unlocked. Sometimes I just street sweep for exploration badge tips. There's quite a few task forces that get run regularly. I ran DFB 4 times to get those buffs (they're still useful as I'm below level 21). Right out of the box, I stumbled on a few arcs in I never new existed because I always out leveled them before they unlocked (I think). Also, I also haven't taken any P2W teleports so I run and take the train everywhere. All, in all, I'm really enjoying this toon. He's getting most of my playtime lately. Granted, I still end up on a team with high levels exemplared down giving the team a "carried" feel. That's really what I'm trying to avoid. But it doesn't happen very often.

Just adding 1 more comment. Combat Jumping is VERY cheap on endurance. So I often give it two 50+5 generic defense IOs to get it's full defense bonus with just 2 slots. No need to slot for endurance reduction.

Just following the tank, and having a good mix of buffs and leadership toggles is enough survivability for general mobs. In my observation, the things that kill people are not getting out of the exploding enemy radius and/or other types of not yet understanding the fight mechanics. IMHO, build requirements aren't very tight.

Generally, less then 1 hour. There are a few that are longer. Synapse and Dr Quarterfield are the big outliers that take 2 hours or more. Most are about 30 minutes. If you log out or lose your connection, you'll still be in the TF when you come back if they haven't finished it. Note that if you're in a Task Force, you can't join any other teams or enter any other missions. This makes it rather inconvenient to complete them in multiple sessions. People do it sometimes, but it's not common, and shouldn't be expected without prior planning.

I recently ran through all the Pretoria missions. It's amazing how much better those non-primals are at following. It seemed that the team-up NPCs will chase you across the entire the map. I suspect Emperor Cole built those buildings are also built with kidnapping/arresting in mind.

I have a bunch of stuff bound to my movement and targeting keys so I do a bunch of inspiration conversions and firing of click buffs whenever I move, follow, or change targets.

There's one more thing that I haven't really seen mentioned above directly, that I find matters to me a lot. I have to feel like I'm adding value to the team. I mean, if there's already a tank, I'm not going to want to play a tank because I'm not really making the team better. Sure tanks can do damage. but not as much as other ATs. Similarly, if there's already more support than needed, or nobody is dying, then I don't really enjoy playing a defensive support or control character. Debuffs, aren't particularly much use in fast moving teams in missions with no AVs or hard fights. Even DPS doesn't feel valuable if you're team steamrolling so fast that you spend most of your time corpse blasting. I think this is why I usually end up coming back to my ST DPS stalker and run almost exclusively TFs and +4 content. I have dozens of targeting macros to allow me to focus on the bosses and hard targets of almost any enemy group or Task Force. In kill-all type missions I'm focusing on eliminating the bosses before the LTs and Minions are down. In objective style missions, I'm providing high DPS to the AVs and other hard targets. The only times I don't feel valuable is when we're doing speed runs and someone's always loading in and beating me to the objectives, and I generally (not always) just don't join those types of teams. I also have a few toons parked at levels 12, 20, and 40 for running on teams that aren't overpowering content and my support toons and tanks tend to be of more value. I'm a big fan of content updates like we just got, where we can put our high end toons to the test in more difficult content. It absolutely makes for a better game, in my opinion.

Nerds? You don't know me. Just because we read and post on an online forum about a superhero MMO doesn't mean we're all.... oh... wait... yeah ok, I can see that.. carry on.

For me, it comes down to total and complete destructiveness. If a toon kicks enough s## I'll figure out the name, costume, and other stuff. I make other toons, and I run missions and think, gee, I wish I was playing X because he does this better.... then switch and play X. That keeps happening over and over until X never changes. (Currently X is an energy/energy stalker)

The issues and pages are just the version releases/patches/updates of the game.... they used that nomenclature to mimic a comic book. That said, when I read your question, I immediately thought of the comics that came with the subscription to the original game (I still have mine). Also the signature arcs in the game tell a specific story that explains some changes to the NPCs who give missions and task forces. Some zone changes and additions have mini stories behind them as well.

We can actually perform math with real numbers to determine the chance to hit NPCs of different levels under different scenarios. This is why you're going to get a bunch of snarky answers... because you're 2 scenarios just don't match the math. But even simpler, if you want to see the real numbers, you can look at the combat log to see the actual hit rolls and chance to hit. You can also monitor last hit chance in your combat attributes. The maximum chance to hit something is capped at 95%.

If you find yourself wanting AV/EB/Boss fights to go faster, then -res will help. If you never find yourself in that situation because you're steamrolling, or just not playing that content much, then you probably won't notice much value in this proc.

I've tried playing a resistance based secondary to 50 many times, but I really hate sucking that much.... oh... that's not what you meant?

Yeah... I ran it solo (+0x1) on my energy/energy stalker before teaming just so I could stop and read stuff. It also let me learn the fights rather then blasting through them all so fast I don't know why we won. Final mission was a near stopper. But after sleeping on it overnight I came back with a different set of inspirations and hybrid power and did much better. I like the content, though I've gotten spoiled by the shorter TFs so this one felt like it was 1 or 2 missions too long. The mission with the car felt like an entire TF by itself. I really liked that DE ripple zone. I wanted to get finished so I left as soon as I hit the objectives, but I really wanted to stay and clear it just for fun. Lots of EB's and I think I saw a monster in there. In summery, great job... more please, thanks!

Bigger Hair options... like anime big. Many many many back options.... swords, spines, furs, shells, mechanical, pairs to all the chest details, Many Many more Helmets Also go through all the existing options and give them multiple texture choices so we can match flat/leather/dull metal/shiny metal textures across different sets. +1 on Tattoos

I just assume everyone playing, played on live. I also assume we're all 45+ year old bald men named Chad, and we're not wearing socks.

The Black Knight sword is available to Katana users.

I enjoy my spines stalker... having Assassin's strike makes up for not having as much DPS in the other sets. And all that AoE causes a lot of Assassin's Mark procs.