Chris24601

I’ve played Montegue’s arc enough at different levels to know that the reason there are no higher level Lost is the eventually transition into full Rikti. Another point in the Skull’s power up favor is that their leaders actually turn up as part of an objective in New Praetorians arc (you have to destroy an artifact that makes them invulnerable so other Praetorians can take them down somewhere else). That arc was originally 35-40 in the open beta just before the original run got shuttered (bumped to 35-50 on Homecoming), but the point stands that the leaders were tough enough to give named NPCs from incarnate tier content trouble. An easy explanation would be that since the power they have is essentially feeding on death (so sorta mini-Mots) maybe they could have had some ritual to absorb all the deaths that occurred in the fall of Praetoria. And that’s also why you don’t see them at all from low levels until the levels when the Praetorian War start happening. They needed all that death to get the power-up.

Honestly? I’d settle for just letting custom AE opponents scale up to Minotaur/Cyclops scale… having had to do some art with even relatively small giants (c. 9-10 feet tall), it’s interesting how little extra height is needed to make someone feel massive compared to a normal person. For reference, 10 feet vs. 6 feet is proportional to a full grown adult and a four year old child. Add some extra bulk to the 10 foot humanoid and it’s pretty easy to have them be ten times the volume of an adult human (and weighing nearly a ton). I don’t think you’d need to go all the way to Great Monster size to achieve the feeling of massiveness the OP desires. Just 12-15 feet tall would make even the largest player model feel like a hobbit.

To be fair, insider trading and maybe a good ponzy scheme would be way more villainous than half the stuff you get up to Red-side.

Not just you. It’s here, so I consider it a capstone for my toons to at least get the Alpha slot level shift, but if it had my druthers I’d have left it at the 50 cap and just added the Incarnate missions as just fun content to play.

Honestly, ever since Dragon Age: Origins and the SWTOR mmo I just find it fun to have a companion NPC/sidekick along. Comics are rife with sidekicks; heck, in universe most of Ms. Liberty’s Vindicators are sidekicks. So long as the sidekick doesn’t exceed the value of an equivalent power(s) the only difficulty I see with this would be in getting the costuming to work. I know another server managed custom costumes for MM pets at the cost of costume slots. That approach was largely deemed too costly (you needed six slots), but might be revisitible for an APP that required only one (and did not necessarily even lock you out of that one… the power customization option would just be for which costume slot to reference). Along a similar vein for selling the concept; what if the summon was literally a weaker mirror self, akin to the clones and doppelgängers introduced in some mid-20’s arcs and showing up in some of the morality missions? The default APP would be pulling an alternate you from another dimension. Power Customization would be for which costume slot to use (default is your current costume) so that those who want to can make them look completely different if they want, but those who want every costume slot aren’t put out. This would have a practical limit of the mirror self always using a subset of your powers, but that’s a fairly common comic trope anyway. Robin isn’t a mutant with fire powers, Kid Flash isn’t a super strong brute, Supergirl isn’t a psychokinetic puddle of pink protoplasm (at least not since that weird time in the 90’s we all ignore). It wouldn’t do everything the OP wants, but I think that would be an easier sell… particularly if, instead of a power pool, it was associated with a Portal Corps-related badge or accolade (existing or new) you could earn.

So, in terms of refunds… isn’t this just a back door to allowing intra-account shifting of Incarnate stuff? Respec it down to as many Emps as possible, mail those to another of your toons and rebuild whatever powers you want without having to go through earning the Emps on that toon. I already have enough Emps banked from the toons I enjoy doing incarnate stuff on that I can get at least all my T3s on any toon as soon as I unlock each slot. All this would do is mean I could yoink even more Emps from toons that are basically parked and get my active toons T4’d even faster.

Of note, we already semi- have an AT with a similar concept of melee/range mix + armor; Peacebringers (and Warshades to a slightly lesser degree) so looking at their strengths and weaknesses would provide some insights into what this AT would need.

That said, I do want to see something other than the existing zone events simply because my connection can’t keep up with more than a league’s worth of players spamming massive FX porn in a concentrated area. If I don’t have a toon with a PBAoE like Spin to accidentally hit something and thereby give me a target, everything dies before my Internet will even let me target anything. Some sort of events where you have to spread out more would be greatly appreciated.

I was around for it. Ragdolling almost feels like it was a fad given I don’t see it in newer MMOs (ex. SWTOR) and wouldn’t mind at all it they just went back to the old fixed death animations. The number of times that would look weird (ex. dies on a slope) is dwarfed by the number of times the ragdoll rolls into some horrible shape that could only be explained by all PCs having the super power of turning skeletons to jelly. Also notable are the mobs who expressly don’t ragdoll (players and the Croatoa natives most memorably) and look absolutely fine. So yeah, I think the look of the game would be overall improved if ragdolling were just turned off entirely.

Honestly, if the damage didn’t fall off so extremely at level 10 they’d be fine as is.

Euraka! That’s the justification for the damage aura (which needs to be toxic). But the kicker is… it damages your allies not enemies. Regeneration - so bad it kills your allies too.

Not everyone wants to be proc-ing damage on everything around us all the time. That’s why we pick sets that don’t do that.

To refine this a bit, I think expanding on the pick three of four free START vendor weapons would be a nice QoL option. Tuned appropriately there’d be nothing wrong with more options there. Some immediate thoughts that spring to my mind are the Rune spell and Iron Sword from the Croatoa arcs and the temp power weapons from the Zig Breakout zone event in Brickstown.

“Half the game” but only 10-20% of the players though. I generally only touch the Warden content in Praetoria, so actually pretty heroic in a “Le Resistance” sorta way (they don’t generally try to kill anyone, a lot of stealthable missions, and a lot of rescues). Similarly, Red-side I play Rogues, have a list of “no play” missions/contacts I will not do because I find it too abhorrent, and operate under the “try not to kill anyone because you can only rob a dead man once*” rule. * yes, my rogue goes through the pockets of everyone they defeat before they get mediported out… yes, even the superheroes. A Rogue’s gotta get their infamy somewhere.

Here’s an example of using the font correctly. Note the improvement in legibility. It’s still not the best format for a forum post, but at least it isn’t a crime against humanity anymore.