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.

I’d agree. You can, however, use a font incorrectly. I know, I work with them and directing customers in their font choices daily. The offending font in this case was designed with elaborate capital letters and simpler lowercase ones. The intended use is with proper capitalization so the capital at the start of a sentence or in a proper name is highlighted and stylized. The capital letters of that font were never intended to go next to each other; it makes the font nearly illegible. If that poster could just write in normal grammatical form instead of ALL CAPS the legibility of the font would drastically increase.

I dunno. Ask the three who downvoted up above to a single upvote on the opening post. I just know it’s consistent. If a fix to PBs gets proposed it gets tons of downvotes. So, yeah, I’m at the point of just proposing radical things just to what the heck will actually move the needle a bit. Right now it’s make Human-only viable via PB-based power sets for the other ATs (with a melee set with some 40’ attacks like Claws plus an armor set being probably the ideal… because I’m old enough to remember when PB blasts only had a 40’ range in human form)… but at this point I’ll back nearly anything for PBs.

At this point, I almost feel like the only thing that can ever “fix” PBs and WSs would be to create new PB/WS themed power sets for the other ATs because the degree of pushback on making any changes that would actually fix the ATs proper makes them impossible to fix. You’re never going to appease the human-only, bi-form, and tri-form players at the same time and balancing the AT between the differences in output between those three styles is nigh impossible. At least if you stripped the Human-form concept out so it could be better expressed by a scrapper, tank, sentinel, or blaster, etc. then you’d only need to worry about balancing for bi- and tri- style play with “human only” being the equivalent of a playing a petless mastermind. I dunno… I’m just getting tired of pretty much every proposed change to try and fix the ATs gets a mountain of downvotes so why don’t I try suggesting something completely different.

I’ll have you know I only use MAGIC fire. Your body is fine. Your soul on the other hand… 😈

I always RP that my archer’s arrows all have mediporter tracking chips in them. That said I do wish the rag doll physics was turned down a bit overall… some of the ways heads and spines bend and pancake should not be possible in a still living person. I also would like it if the Arachnos Tarantulas (you know, the ones that are actually power armor with a human grafted inside) didn’t sometimes EXPLODE. I’m sorry, even I can’t RP a human surviving their body literally exploding as “they’re fine. They went to live in the penitentiary upstate… forever.” I’d honestly be quite happy if they went a little backwards on things and just had the human-shaped villains use the player death animations. I’ve been doing a fair bit of Croatoa and the Fir Bolg, Tuatha, Ghosts and Red Caps all use an animated defeat instead of rag dolling and they look absolutely fine… honestly better than most mobs in defeat if you asked me.

It depends on what you’re doing. If you’re not using XP boosters and have only done the Habashy originated mission chain (if you’re new you’re likely unaware of Death from Below) then you’re probably about level 6 when that wraps and after your level 5 level up you get a pop-up (which if you’re new you’re much less likely to ‘x’ out of without reading) for it. The first arc covers locations, the tram, and trainers. The second arc starts at level 10 and starts in King’s Row, which is also where your next popup contact has you running missions. Level 10 is when your starter accuracy buff and the damage of your origin temp power starts to fall off and the first mission discusses keeping your enhancements up to date… level 10 is about the time that starts to matter. Similarly, level 15 is when DOs used to start figuring into things and an important step of the arc that starts at 15 is going to what used to be the DO enhancement shops. That seems like it’s running right on schedule for the state of the game when it was added. Now, sure, if you immediately pop a double XP booster and start running Death From Belows you’ll outlevel the starter zones before you know it… but that’s a playstyle choice and not exactly an intuitive one if you’re actually new. Likewise, nuking TOs, while making DOs and SOs available from the get go from basic vendors does make some of the tutorial come off as too late/unnecessary. But that’s been Homecoming’s MO for a while now under the rubric of QoL improvements that ultimately amount to “get earlier access to things than on live.” But at the same time, if you’re genuinely new, drinking from the firehose isn’t how you want to be introduced to all of CoH’s multitude of systems… so a slower approach is generally a better idea. If people figure it out via other means that’s okay too, but a default route for newbies seems like a wise course.

It is long. But it’s also doing double duty as the extended tutorial a new player really needs provided they choose the Galaxy City tutorial (which covers only the most basic of basic tasks like moving, jumping, targeting, attacking, a moral choice, leveling up, and a zone event. Matt Habashy and the subsequent Atlas Park arcs cover a few more things like contacts, calling contacts, dialogue trees, glowies, door missions, etc. But it’s really the Shining Stars job to give newbies their sea legs if no one is there to help them… a lot of the “too long” parts involve traveling to various places and getting context clues about various game elements… here’s the trainer, here’s the hospital, the trams, here’s another trainer (“ah, so there’s one in every zone” says the newbie), Wentworths (yes, we have /ah now, but live didn’t and a newbie can access the market via Wentworths without ever knowing the slash command). Further in you get bits on making sure your enhancements are up to date, the contacts for changing difficulty (we have a menu item, live didn’t, and a newbie can use the guy), the costume shop, the specialty enhancement shops (which used to matter on live), sidekicking, etc. Maybe it could use SOME trimming with all the QoL things Homecoming has added, but overall, I think it still serves a purpose in showing new players where to find various parts of the game and at least start asking questions about parts of it.

Alternative suggestion for using the term Saga Mode. Saga to me implies a story. I also see this suggestion as a way for Homecoming to put its best foot forward. In terms of setup, the Devs would select what they feel are the best quality story arcs and missions sufficient to bring a character all the way from level 1 through 50. When you select Saga Mode the contacts would automatically be granted with call access and automatically granting the next contact in the selected chain. Finally, the Saga mode missions never level out… you just autoexemp down to the max level for each mission. That’s it. Just the ability to play through what the devs feel is the best content Homecoming has to offer without needing to search it out or accidentally miss it entirely.

My Widow has in her background that most of her marks in training were subpar, but they passed her because she excelled at running and jumping in 6” heels.

It said it didn’t post, but it lied.