DoctorDitko

IIRC, Tips were one of the last bits added right before the Snap. I like how they change it up, playing with your expectations for a typical radio-style mish, then hit you with something off-beat!

HT is a favorite for certain! An auto-hit stun and regen debuff that's AOE and incidently rezzes any dead teammates? What's not to like?

Not the greatest card in the world, but certainly well capable of running CoH at Ultra quality. ISP looks good. Is your local wifi crowded? I have seen some severely lagged wifi when I lived in the city. If you can run an Ethernet cable to your router, you can eliminate that issue. Are you running a heavy-handed security suite, perhaps? Something like Trend Micro, that's know to be a piggish package? Good luck, I hope someone else has a better idea to help you.

Agreed. Concept wins. I took the Phantasm pets so I can have the old-school Dormammu's Demons-style ghosties as well as the newfangled "Clone me, Doctor Memory" self-duplicates.

Also, how's your Internet connection? What kind and who is your ISP? Are you wired, or on wifi? Just askin': Most of my issues running CoH stem from effing Verizon Wireless. And that can definitely include slideshow mode, even with just one instance. Good luck in any event!

You asked who else was guilty of creating alliterative character names. Jerry Shuster & Joe Seigel: Clark Kent (sound not spelling), Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor Gardner Fox: Zatanna Zatara, probably a million others (Guy was as prolific as Asimov; seriously, check his Wikipedia page!) Jack Kirby: Buddy Blank, Bruce Banner, Granny Goodness Stan Lee: Peter Parker, Scott Summers, Reed Richards, Doctor Doom, Matt Murdock, many more Steve Ditko: Stephen Strange, Dread Dormammu As I said, you're in excellent company!

Jerry Shuster, Joe Seigel, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko... You're in good company, enjoy your alliterative alter egos!

Not only balanced, but organic and consistent as well! Organic in the sense that you could describe real-world creatures in Champs terms. Fiddler Crab? He bought down one claw and spent the points on his other one. Consistent in that 5 Hero points bought you a die's worth of effect in just about any power. You could almost write code in it! For a low-level espionage-focused campaign, I defined a power that was technically a worm in the computer sense. Telepathy linked with a Transformation attack (cumulative) that turns non-telepaths into telepaths. All bought with Invisible power effects and paid for with a Hunted by a group that hunts Telepaths. The result was a Keith Laumer-style telepathy. You could read a person's thoughts with it, but every time you did there was a growing chance of popping the little door open in their mind that made them telepathic, too! Do THAT in any other superhero game!

Team TP is still one of my favorite powers that no one takes. On Live I had PUG teammates absolutely freaking out: "WTF is happening!?!" "Relax, we're almost at the mission." "WHAT R U Doing to me!?!" "You know there is a toggle, right? 'Prompt for teleport?' You turned it off. Did you read it first?" Oh, how we laughed. Good times. Also, it could be seriously useful. TT and Howling Twilight was THE greatest way to recover from a team faceplant. Now we have ATT, which I also enjoy. But you don't get to watch along as your teammates are dragged through the map, 100 meters/yards at a time. I would absolutely love to get that for free on my Warshade. Especially with the new "Hover long enough to be actually useful" changes. I haven't had a single TP death due to plummeting into peril since the patch!

I used to love Champs so very much! It was the absolute greatest way to build exactly the hero you wanted. Which I did. Kind of a lot. Running the damn thing, though, was way too CPU intensive. Roll a bucketful of dice, screech the game to a halt while you count all the sixes, subtract all the ones... Then the GM rolls his bucketful... A single fight could take all evening. Which is fine for "teh Ultimate Battle," but not great if it's the equivalent of a Bank mish. I've bought Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate, read some of it, but haven't had a chance to play. It's not too expensive on Drive-Thru RPG. And supposedly includes similar flexibility with less friction in gameplay. Anyway, cheers for bringing back some memories!

I build my own, but my monster is mostly used to process videos and play CoH. Simultaneously, of course! CoH seems to make use of 2-4 cores max. So if you're shopping around, any more is gravy. I would suggest, though, that you plan on an SSD. It really helps with the multitude of tiny files the game uses. And if you are into serious bindfiles, you can go crazy with binds-that-load-binds and the like without any noticeable lag. Even more than a beefy graphics card, IMHO, an SSD raises the fun level considerably. And even runs on my effing Verizon Wireless connection. It's... faster than dialup.

Yep, apparently PFF is opaque to your pets. No Supremacy or buffs for y'all. "Where did the boss go?" "Dunno, he was there a minute ago." "Should we keep doing what he told us to?" "Yeah, but we shouldn't work as hard at it." "At least we don't have to look out for him any more." "Yeah! 'Bout time." Same thing happens if you go fully invisible. There's a workaround for that one, just stack Stealth (Superspeed+Stealth is my favorite) and you're effectively invisible but your damn robots can still tell you are there. Anyone know a workaround for any of the "Affect only self" powers? 'Cause even flying on my Cosmic Frisbee makes them forget about me.

My whole family likes nipples just fine. What's unfriendly here?

Fair enough. I just really liked the PnP Champions. The first dozen or so characters I made on Live were all approximations of my Champs characters. Being able to mix & match powers more freely would definitely scratch that itch. There was an Ultima-esque game on Palm Pilot,* that once you won the game, it unlocked the full game editor the developer used to build it. Taskmaker IIRC? Anyway, I thought that was one of the coolest rewards ever granted on a game completion. So a rules-bendy archetype after 50 would be extremely cool, IMHO! I'd not make any combo available, though, because minimaxing. Just say if someone chooses a HTH attack, "You can choose among one of these three melee attack powers" when you level. * Look it up, kids! It was a smartphone before there were smartphones. It couldn't make phone calls, but half the time my current smartphone can't, either!** ** And who makes phone calls any more?

An option to matchmake Bank/Mayhem missions, with improved rewards. "You can fight NPCs, but if you want a real challenge..." An archnemesis system where you can design your own opponent. Epic Archetypes where you can mix-n-match powersets with more flexibility. As mentioned above, the ability to pick a powerset, then an sfx set. (This was one of the major strengths of paper-and-pencil Champions.) Want a healing Arrow? Go for it!

"And hearing this, the monk was enlightened."

It's also a great adjunct to travel powers in areas with snipers, purples, or PVPers. Get those Explore badges for the Long-Range Teleport power!

So, cognitive dissonance isn't fun? Followers of Eris Esoteric would beg to disagree! "This statement is false."

There are ~7 billion ways to rate fun in games. Mine is, after a game, is everyone sorry it was over? Are we high-fiveing one another and eager for the next session? Or are folks mad at one another? Zero-sum games suck. Kirk voice: "I don't believe in no-win situations." (When I wrote games, I also aimed for "Everybody learned something!" But that may or may not happen here.) More than any MMO I've known, this one did all this. They avoided loot quarrels, shoehorn archetypes, "ultimate" builds, guild mandates (especially after eliminating Prestige). Creativity is rewarded, diversity is respected (if not celebrated, again c.f. Star Trek) and nobody has to spend their first week in game hunting rats. There are other ways to have fun, but this game checks so many boxes for me, If it was VR, it would need to be prescription-only.

Oy! 59 next month. When I think of all the time I've wasted on video games that weren't City of Heroes, I feel sad. Thank the gods it's back! And better than ever!

Darn! I was hoping they could just use the code that makes Incarnate Carnies. Thanks for the info, though. Everything, always, is harder than it looks from outside.

We're in EDT right now. Another reason the whole Daylight Savings thing sucks. Apart from its cost in human lives.

Yup. See Null the Gull on the van at Pocket D. Or do a dozen or so Tips missions when they drop, which is fun and lucrative, but takes a lot longer.

Absolutely! And the hardest part to convey to new players. My ignorance of other MMOs is vast and comprehensive*, is there another we could call out as an example, that emphasizes the journey rather than the destination? * I'm part of the 1%. Yup! You know how Verizon swears up and down they cover 99% of the continental US? I'm the 1% they suck at! I couldn't play CoH if it hadn't been designed with dial-up users in mind. Looking forward to Elon finishing ruining the night sky and selling me a Dishy McDishface!

Me for anything with a giant robot. If only we could fight the giant robot in Hess or ITF. I've tried running them slowly, but the bad guys never seem to get past the design stage and into production. Happens a lot IRL, too, of course. But every once in a while you get: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/15294/the-first-giant-mecha-robot-fight-was-lame-but-this-real-cold-war-era-mecha-wasnt