TalynDerre

If I was put in charge of revamping TFs, the three things I'd look at were length, the fact that only the team leader really 'gets' the story, and adding some 'boss mechanics' to keep players on their toes. Length: Penny Yin is too short. All the Shadow Shard ones are too long. I'd argue even that the ASF is too long - it's super cool, but it really feels like it could have been TWO task forces. A TF should take between 45 and 90 minutes - long enough to feel like a real, self-contained story, but short enough that I can actually play it through between when I put my kid to bed and when I need to go to bed. The second part - tell the story NOT through the wall-o-text mission briefings, but in-mission. It doesn't have to be a cutscene. NPC setpieces in maps that explain what they are doing, why you are trying to stop them/assist them, and then adding enough clues and little explanatory text boxes that a person feels like they know why they are here would be enough. The ASF does this pretty well. Even the Incarnate Raids, which I don't otherwise love, does a good job of getting everyone up to speed about what the heck is going on. Finally - boss gimmicks. They are great, I love them. Lucky for us, the newest TFs are already doing this. Posi 1, the Reichsman fights, the Battle Maiden Fight in the Apex TF, and of course the ASF all have fun boss gimmicks. I want to see more of those. The most important thing about them is that they should give players something to do in the boss fights besides 'stand back from the tank and then hit it till it dies.' Secondary targets, telegraphed AoE attacks, environmental hazards, or even just the boss making himself temporarily invulnerable and running to a different room for a different set-piece would all be fun. Here's a possible boss gimmick - let's say that there is a new TF where you have to fight Nano-Malta, Malta Operatives who have been juiced up with Battle Maiden's nanobots. The final boss is against Director 11. The fight takes place in a large, outdoor 'arena' type map. The boss has three stages - the first stage is a standard 'tank and spank', where you have to reduce his AV health bar to zero, while also fighting off the occasional wave of regular Malta bad guys. Basically, think of the Director 11 fight from the Tin Mage TF. Once he hits zero health (or 5%, or whatever), Director 11 activates his failsafe, becomes temporarily invulnerable, and calls down an airstrike on himself. But the airstrike doesn't drop a bomb, or napalm - it drops the blue nanobots from the Battle Maiden fight. The players have to evacuate the bombed-out area before they get eaten by the bots, and then dodge the airstrikes while fighting off Malta drones. Finally, once that stage is done, you go back to fighting Director 11, but now he's piloting a special, nano-tech infused Zeus Titan. The players have to whittle down his health bar again, still dodging the blue goo, but the matter is further complicated by the fact that Malta has now put snipers with nanotech super-rifles on the balconies around the arena. When someone is targets by the sniper, they are given a crosshair warning and have to put a pillar or other obstacle between them and the sniper, otherwise they get hit with a HUGE damage hit that can one-shot anything other than a topped-off Tanker or Brute. The players have to choose between playing 'duck the rifle shot' all throughout the fight or sending one or two damage dealers away from the AV fight so they can take out the snipers. That is, admittedly, a complicated example, but a complex, multi-stage boss fight like that would really make a TF memorable and fun to play. Especially if there are multiple possible paths to success, so it improves the replay value.

Well, let's see: Michael Myers (Halloween) is a Natural Invulnerable / Broad Sword Tanker. Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th) is a Magic Axe / Regeneration Brute. Carrie White (Carrie) is a Natural (or possibly Mutant) Gravity Control / Psionic Assault Dominator. Freddie Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street) is a Magic Claws / Dark Stalker. The Phantom (The Town That Dreaded Sundown) is a Natural Axe / Super Reflexes Stalker. Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is a Natural Titan Weapons / Willpower Brute.

Turn 'em into Hero (or Villain) merits - at a 50 to 1 exchange rate, 10,000 merits converts to 200 Hero Merits. Now you can get up to 10,000 Hero merits, or 5 MILLION merits (mwa ha ha).

I have started playing Overwatch 2 now that it's free to play. It's fun so far, but I don't know how long I'll play it.

I, too, am very much looking forward to Ashes of Creation - if it can create even a fraction of what it promises, which is a truly dynamic world where players have genuine agency in shaping the game world, it will be groundbreaking. However, I am also deeply concerned that giving agency in shaping the game world to people on the internet with too much free time (i.e. the people who are most likely to be able to effect meaningful change in an MMO) is going to end up creating a non-fun experience for the rest of us. I would LOVE to join an in-game tent settlement and help it grow into a town. I want to be part of a developing community, where we pool our resources and share and generate wealth. I don't want my contribution to be nullified, griefed, sabotaged or destroyed by someone who can spend twelve hours a day in the game.

Oh man, I loved that webcomic.

I felt the same way, but I was too much of a coward to say it. Thank you for putting it out there.

I'd be interested, but I think you might be overestimating how much interest there would be - especially since, with a global playerbase, there is literally no where in the world you could put this thing that wouldn't require air travel for the vast majority of potential attendees. Perhaps, instead, trying to piggy-back on to an existing comics or video game convention might be more practical? Get a booth at SDCC, or something like that, and then arrange a meet-up and play date for CoX fans who are already there or might be interested in going?

Oh, and on the original topic - I love soloing as a Sentinel. Big missions, little missions, even those pesky defeat-alls - for some reason, it's just more fun to do it as a Sentinel for me.

Oh yeah, I love doing that. ALL of my characters have a 'Vanguard'-themed costume for fighting in the War Zone and a 'Roman'-themed costume for Cimerora. Some, particularly my 'rogue' villains, have either a face-covering or more traditionally 'heroic' outfit for when they go to Paragon. And, of course, all of my Malta and Knives of Artemis toons have at least one costume where they are disguised as a member of a different villain group, for when you need to do something deniable...

Look, man, I'm just thrilled that there is a global Sentinel damage buff, and that they have revamped Mercs. Those were literally the two things I've been begging for (besides more military-themed costume parts, hint, hint) and now I am getting them. Today is a good day.

Revamping hazard zones is definitely one of my pie-in-the-sky hopes for CoX, though honestly I think I'd rather we start converting them into story zones (like Faultline or Dark Astoria) rather than just emphasize the street-sweeping. But I also have literally never done an AE farm, either, so I don't think I'm the kind of person who you are trying to entice with this idea.

Oh, and the Knives of Artemis logo, too. And the Outcast T-Shirt emblems, and the Warriors 'crest' logo. And could you separate logos from the other chest pieces? Longbow minions have the Freedom Corps logo AND a bandolier. Pretty please?

Just following up, as of 9/28/22 this bug is still there.

I have created a few lowbie characters on a second account to be 'extras' for RP purposes. If I recall, I named them Suspicious Character and Nervous Bystander.

So, Redside, I just love the Barracuda one. It's not too long, and then beating up all four of Recluse's top Archvillains, and then the MASSIVE fight with Reichsman and just wave after wave of 5th Column mooks rushing into the room just feels epic. And even with the massive power creep, Reichsman is tough enough that you feel like a stone-cold badass for taking him down. Blueside was a lot harder for me. I ended up picking the Katie Hannon task force, because I like the Croatoa setting and the 10 Times the Victor fight is pretty fun and dynamic. Co-op, I can't believe how few people are picking Apex. The final fight against War Maiden is THE best setpiece fight in the game, bar none.

So, I have three 'Mains.' One who is exclusively blue side, one who is exclusively red side, and one who does both. My main Hero is Leading Lady, a Technology Invul/Energy Melee Tanker. She was my first 50 on Live, and the first character I recreated on Homecoming. Her backstory was that she was a C-List actress who got kidnapped by a deranged fan and was badly scarred, both physically and emotionally, before she was rescued. She bought a suit of Crey-knockoff Power Armor and swore that she would never be a victim again, and rescue others who needed it. My main Villain is the Dyne Freak, a Science Super Strength/Rad Armor Brute. Back on Live, when City of Villains first came out, I had a 'thing' where I wanted to create Villains that belonged to every pre-existing enemy group in the game. I had a Hellion, a Skull, a Sky Raider, a Family guy, an Outcast, a Warrior... etc. Dyne Freak was one of those, though she was Super Strength/Regen in her first incarnation. I never found a good RP niche for her on live, but she had a fun aesthetic so I recreated her in Homecoming, and now she's probably my most commonly played RP character. Finally, my main Rogue is Unity Black Tango, a Malta Gunslinger. I made two Malta toons on Live, a Blaster (Unity Red Bravo) and a Corruptor (Unity Black Kilo), but neither of them really 'clicked' with me. I love the Malta Group look, though, and when Homecoming came and I got to play a Sentinel, it was absolutely what I wanted. Black Tango is a Tech Dual Pistols/Willpower Sentinel, and yeah, I know Sentinels are underpowered, but MAN if this guy isn't fun to play. He's my absolute favorite for just messing around, he soloes like a champ and I've come up with a fun RP 'hook' for him so I have a blast in groups with him, too.

Yeah, I loved a lot of the changes but that one didn't sit well with me.

Not just trophy girlfriends, but sacriligious trophy girlfriends. Persephone, the one in this picture, is the wife of Hades. There is a Greek myth where Odysseus (and another guy whose name I cannot recall right now) are able to travel to the underworld, and they get the bright idea to try and kidnap Persephone and force her to marry one of them. For obvious God-and-Goddess-of-the-Underworld reasons, that does not work, and they are trapped in Hades for their hubris until Herakles busts them out some time later. Odysseus is hubristically challenging the God of the Dead with that girlfriend's name. I am sure that is not going to come back and bite him some time later...

You could go with E.P. (with the periods). That's 4 letters.

So, it's very weird, I swear that you used to fight the 5th Column right away as Natural origin. I distinctly remember way back in Issue 3 when I first started playing that my Martial Arts/Regen scrapper, my very first character, was super-impressed when the Level 4 Lieutenants did the same martial arts spinning kicks on me that I was using on them. (In my defense, I had just come from EverQuest, where NPC animations were pretty limited.) But once the Council took over from the 5th column, all of a sudden the level 2 Natural contact wasn't giving Council missions any more. Maybe my memory is just playing tricks on me, I don't know.

Following up from my previous post - I just logged into the RWZ to take a look at the suit, and I don't think they could conceivably be piloted, unless the pilots' legs were amputated at the knee. The 'torso' isn't big enough for an adult human to sit in, and the legs are clearly attached to a very small 'hip' that a pilot's legs couldn't fit in. I think they are robots, and 'Suits' is just a misleading term.

If it's a suit, and not a robot, does that imply that the pilots have to stand around all day with their knees bent? Because that sounds very uncomfortable.

A quick review of the Circle of Thorns lore and reading through Magus Mu'Drakhan's arc, it doesn't look like Lilitu was ever human. She's a 'queen of hell' from another dimension and is opposed to both the Mu and the Banished Pantheon. After looking at the Canon Timeline, it seems that she is NOT older than the Banished Pantheon, as I had originally thought, she was summoned as a sort of last-ditch superweapon by the Oranbegans during the first Oranbegan/Mu war. Still, she seems to be the oldest humanoid entity currently in the game by a long shot. Edit: I forgot that you actually fight Hequat bound in a quasi-human form in one of Scirocco's missions as a villain, and have Tielekku as an ally when you fight Mot. Both predate Lilitu.

According to Circle of Thorns canon, Lilitu was around during the FIRST Oranbega/Mu war, which was in 12,000 B.C., i.e. during the Ice Age. Now, she's a goddess / demigoddess / demon, so maybe that doesn't fit OP's criteria, but she seems to be the oldest quasi-human entity that is still kicking around. She might even be older than Mot and the rest of the Banished Pantheon, who are supposedly around 8000 years old (or, at least, the earliest evidence of their worship is about 8000 years ago).