Doc_Scorpion

Two doors, one of which is deep inside a maze. And there's lvl 35 Council almost invariably lurking about on the street and at the entrance to the maze.

Yeah, my f/f Brute is seeing runners when using Burn... Not as bad as previously on Live, but they're still there. Probably about as bad as the first round of fixes on the Test Center.

Ah... memories and Stockholm Syndrome of The Hollows back in the day...

UO had mounts (the common one were useable by anyone), and they were useful and MUCH faster than walking or running on your own. But where UO really shined for travel powers was the Recall and Gate spells - both of which let you teleport directly from pretty much any arbitrary point to any pre-marked point. Many players maintained a library of rune books in their house filled with desireable pre-marked points. (You didn't even need to have your own library, every shard had at least one player maintained public library.) Most players had a runebook in their backpack with their most used pre-marked points. (Their home, the entrance to their favorite dungeon(s), favorite vendor houses, near a bank...) All it took was 10 points (out of 600 available) in your Magic skill and you were set. They could also be used for griefing (inducing a player to teleport into a PvP zone or a dangerous area), so eventually the dev's set it up so that the runes were colored by the type of destination.

Frankly, I came to this game (originally) after playing UO and YPP!... and then I happened to see the original trailer, and when the guy flew I knew this was the game for me. Superheroes were certainly part of the draw but mostly I wanted to fly. (I wouldn't end up getting into anime until after the Snap.)

Seen as I was approaching some Warriors in KR... "Attack the hero! And remember, move like water not like stupid!"

My one character who is inspired by any media is actually anime inspired...

Came up with a name/concept, don't really care for it, someone else may find it useful if it isn't already taken: Teenrager - turns out teen hormones and a super soldier serums aren't really a good mix.

Miss Mechanism was born when I saw one of those "feel good" news items you always see floating about the net... About a girl, born with a withered arm, who'd built an robot arm for a school science fair project and hoped to go into robotics research. For some reason, the phrase "first she built an arm, next she built an army" popped into my head. Originally a Praetorian, she's been re-created a pure hero on Homecoming. One day I'll figure out what kind of character (and a name) fits her sister and she'll join Amanda in game. The powers concept is based (very loosely) on an anime... Her bio is a mash up/modification of two characters from a different anime. (I've posted her elsewhere, but never mentioned the latter before. A plate of virtual cookies to the person who can identify the anime _and characters_ her bio comes from.)

The basic problem with balancing the Scrapper<->Brute<->Tanker spectrum is... that you can't really. And Brutes can be cast as the entire cause of the problem. Why? Because of design decisions made a very long time ago. The original spectrum, much easier to balance, was Scrapper <-> Tanker blueside. When Brutes were introduced, they were isolated redside and their "neither fish nor fowl" design made sense. (Redside was to some degree better balanced around solo play.) Going Rogue/Issue 18 irrevocably broke that balance by allowing all three onto the same playing field, a condition which they had never been designed for. Every discussion about Brutes (and Scrappers and Tankers) needs to take this into account. Trying to "balance" the three archetypes and give them unique niches is trying to unscrew the inscrutable. A fool's errand. (And we just spent months over in the Beta forums going around in this circle.) Another issue with unique niches is that the whole concept is (at best) obsolescent if not all but obsolete. Unique niches originated in the era of tactical gameplay... When "No AT was required, but every AT could play a role". Power creep has all but destroyed that concept. (To the point where people openly laugh if you try to create what would have been considered a "balanced" team back in the OG days.) Adding to the problem is the fact that player distribution on Homecoming is sharply skewed... We don't really have a bathtub curve anymore. A higher proportion of the playerbase are experienced veterans resulting in a distribution that looks like a yeast growth curve. This is especially bad at the upper levels where people have enough slots to be fully IO'ed out (and even Blasters can be reinforced to the point that they're practically tanks).

You're absolutely correct, the login screen tells you the server load - but that's only loosely related to the server population. A hundred people standing around Ms. Liberty is a lower load on the server than the same hundred people being scattered in twenty instances. That's why you have to refer to a different place to get the required information.

Look at the top of every forum page, there's a Server Status link which gives tells you how many players are currently online.

Exactly why, when I want mindless fun, I take out my rad/rad defender or fire/fire blaster.

Rad/Rad defender... Set your heal on auto fire and blast away (applying -DEF to the target) with your secondary.

Pretty much this... hard to discern if it's actually a hidden request for MOAR POWAH or not.

Did a quick run with my fire/fire tank, and there were no untoward sounds... (And the mobs stuck like glue during Burn.)

How many are so incredibly desperate for a half hour of double XP that they can't wait until the end of the trial? Learn to plan ahead and keep track. The information you need is only a couple of clicks away.

No. The vast majority of Magical Girls have two forms, their normal human form and their Mahou Shoujo form. (Which is also basically true of Cutie Honey.) It's not unusual for a Magical Girl to receive a powered-up form, but it's generally either a replacement for the original Magical Girl form or requires an additional henshin or Power Up sequence to attain from the base or previous form. Few Magical Girls can simply transform into or between multiple forms on a whim.

Help channel, Paragon Wiki (though it's slightly incorrect in spots), these forums, Discord. There's plenty of help available for basic stuff, we just need to get the word out and people to actually get off their lazy [censored] and actually use them.

Fire/Fire brute, zoned in with all toggles on - and the mobs stuck to me like they were superglued.

Yup. None of the people complaining are among the three people who have tested the latest patch and reported their results. (And before you ask, yes, I am one of those three.)

That's a PEBKAC class problem, and nothing any changes to the game will ever fix. I build my tanks around a mix of melee damage and holding aggro, I do just fine no matter how many other tankers there are on the team.

Took my fire/fire brute into a MA mission with all toggles on. Had about a quarter to a third or less runners than currently on Live. Unlike Live, they all came back in short order. (10-20 seconds max? Some less than that. My time sense goes wonky in combat.) At the end, the map was essentially clear - I only had to chase down one straggler. (I was impatient and didn't wait to see if he would come back.) Took him street sweeping in Bricks and PI, same result. A small number of runners, if they could find a path back to me they came back pretty quickly.

IIRC, the splash screen art actually predates the full design of CoH and in particular the final designs of many of the characters. Just to the right of the early version Statesman (no cape as he wears, or wore, ingame) is an early version of or either Miss Liberty or Ms Liberty. IIRC, the gentleman just to the right of her is an early version of Synapse. The character with the dreadlocks is an early version of Back Alley Brawler.

The first question to ask is whether or not the HC dev team even has the original LRSF code.