Chris24601

In terms of new classes; I’d rather see a stretch of existing concepts instead. So, for example, people have long requested a melee/support (or support/melee) AT, but rather than some completely new AT; what if you made some melee sets (or hybrid melee/ranged sets) for defenders and corruptors that they could choose instead of the existing ranged sets? There’d then be no need to balance an entire new AT and come up with new inherent mechanics; just to balance the melee power set’s performance with the ranged sets for the AT. I got the idea from the realization that one reason a Sentinel feels a bit gimped is that claws or kinetic melee scrappers with the blaze or mu mastery can pull off a competent ranged/armor build with a full ranged attack chain (40’ ranged high damage, 80’ ranged, ranged cone, ranged AoE, ranged hold and either a snipe or ranged immobilize) and a solid AT inherent without having to sacrifice damage like a Sentinel does to get its ranged attacks. It made me wonder if a Sentinel rework shouldn’t just be a slightly variant scrapper in terms of actual numbers and if the Sentinel shouldn’t have really just been some more close range-focused sets for the scrapper (ex. an assault rifle set that included a stock strike and bayonet attack plus build-up and confront, then some 40-60’ ranged attacks including a ranged cone or two). It’s a little late to go back on the Sentinel AT (other than to fix its numbers in relation to the performance of, say, a claws scrapper with thd mu epic), but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the experience with the Sentinel and not make the same mistake with other ATs that might not need to be a whole new thing, but just stretching the concept of an existing AT a bit.

Given that he uses the same facial texture and has a similar occupation (undercover operative for Longbow/Ministry of Intelligence) and level range (15-19 in WWs arc vs. contact handing out missions in thd 8-15 range) I suspect that this is actually the intention. And being named Chance instead of Ace is less strange than the Fusion/Jane Temblor double gender swap that happens in Praetoria. The net result is you’re down to Ashley, her dad Alister and Ace as either her brother or cousin (they mention he’s got certain skills that might actually be very subtle magic) which is much more reasonable... no more tricky than States, Miss and Ms. Liberty anyway.

I generally do; 1) Main costume: whatever I mostly run around in. 2) Hood-down/Mask-off variant: for when you’re chilling among you fellow heroes but plan to go back on duty. 3) Dress-uniform: the main uniform, but spruced up a bit. Notably, this is the only hero costume I use capes for (The Incredibles had a lasting influence). 4) Street-clothes: what your character would wear to the grocery store. 5) Club-clothes: what your character would wear to Pocket-D 6) Work-clothes: what your character would wear at their day job. 7) Formal-clothes: for guys this is their “burying and marrying” suit. For ladies this is what they’d wear to a high-society event. 8 ) Beach-wear: because someone will hold another beach rave event. 9) Evil-twin: because my hero would NEVER turn villain just to get a patron power pool. It was their evil twin and my hero’s powers just happen to match my evil twin’s (otherwise they wouldn’t be an evil twin). 10) Full-incarnate: brighter and overly elaborate costume parts, cosmic auras, wings of fire... reserved for when I wanna look over the top on an iTrial.

I don’t know that it needs a full tutorial, so much as it just needs a note that if you don’t know what to spend merits on; here’s a list (converters, catalysts, boosters) of what sells consistently well at Wentworth’s/the Black Market. I double-checked the invention tutorial and the final stage with the guidance counselor includes reading a Wentworth’s pamphlet that covers which zones it’s found in and that you can buy and sell there and a representative there can walk you through the system. The WW information rep covers bidding, what can be bought/sold, fees and that items on the AH will be lost if you’re inactive for more than 60 days. It doesn’t give you the super-easy slash command, but this is about new players gaining basic functionality, not necessarily super-efficiency. For all its ease, /ah essentially removes one of the communal hubs of the game. Sure all the auras could be annoying, but there was no doubt that the game felt more alive due to the conflux of players. Maybe all that’s actually needed is to put the following on the bottom of the WW pamphlet; ”Enhancement converters, catalysts and boosters are always hot sellers. See your local Merit vendor to acquire some you can sell with us.” True. I hadn’t considered that in my suggestions. Making the IO tutorial contact automatic again and a list of the good sellers though should solve a lot of it. As to finding the P2W vendor. How hard would it be to make them an automatic contact? They’ve already got their short introductory speech and answering various questions. Just make it a super-short mission to speak with them and that’s accomplished. Overall, I approve of the direction.

I agree. I think a lot of people are so used to the game that they don’t realize how unintuitive and hidden certain elements of the game are to total newcomers. For example; people mention the IO system tutorial... but if you haven’t noticed there’s no longer a contact or notice or anything that sends a new player TO that tutorial. Left to their own devices a new player would have to happen upon the university interior and then explore to find the starting contact. I’ve become a LOT more aware of this recently precisely because I’ve been introducing my friend to the game for the first time and there is no readily obvious tutorial for either how to spend merits, use the auction house and no “find contact” directing you to the IO system tutorial. All of which are systems being claimed as essential to playing the game. Hell, the game still does a piss poor job at explaining you can add more than one of an enhancement to the same power and what they need to be slotting from the vendor to not make your character basically unplayable. I thank God that I told him to run Outbreak or Breakout first instead of Galaxy City or it would have been even worse. There are some easy things that would definitely help though; - Add dialogue to the level 3 training about the basics of slotting enhancements... the importance of accuracy and endurance reduction and that you can slot more than one of the same type, but that more than 3 of the same will largely be wasted. Even better, add a contact who’s basically just a conversation to convey this information in a more step by step approach instead of being part of a single dialogue window. - Put a couple of Merit Vendors; the kind in a purple/gold suit; out in the Atlas Plaza near the basic enhancement vendors so they’re not hidden away inside City Hall a place you’re currently only sent if you decide to do the Shining Stars arc. - Those who buy converters on the auction house will complain, but add a bright shiny INFLUENCE tab to the list of Merit Vendor options. Don’t hide it under one of the existing categories. Give it a convert 1, 10 and 50 option that gives 200k influence per merit. - Add the IO tutorial back into the automatic contacts as its at least twice as important as the Shining Stars arcs are, and, though it’s been a long time since I’ve done it, I recall it actually being a useful tutorial. - If its not not in it already add a buying/selling on the auction house to the IO tutorial. Also add a section on what converters, boosters and catalysts actual do and that they’re obtained using merits and sell well on the auction house. - Re-add the initial origin contacts to the character’s starting list. It’s not the most exciting new content, but it introduces players to the beginnings of the branching content chains where a contract introduces a couple of additional contacts. Alternately, have Habashy when you see him at the close of Thiery’s arc, introduce you to a standard contact. Right now all the initial contacts you’re given; Habashy through Thiery, Shauna Stockwell/Eagle Eye and Twinshot are all self contained... they never introduce you to anyone outside their particular chain. If you haven’t figured out the find contact button on your own, you’re sorta out of luck. These would go a LONG way towards helping new players navigate the game more effectively.

If TO/DO drops are indeed intended to be vendor trash going forward, they really need to either unslottable so a new player doesn’t actually do so -or- more usefully, they need to dropped from the loot tables entirely and drop rate for SOs tweaked so that the vendoring value remains similar. Example (I don’t know the specific rates, but this’ll do); let’s say the current drop rate is 10% chance of a TO (inf x1), 5% for a DO (inf x2) and 2.5% of an SO (inf x4). That’s an average influence value for the drops of 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 = x0.3 per mob. The equivalent using only SOs would be a 7.5% chance to drop an SO and you never have to worry about a new player accidentally slotting a TO or DO because it was a drop and they didn’t realize it was supposed to be vendor trash.

I’ll second loving the suggestion for a BAB TF to close out the KR content and I think it practically writes itself as a level 10-20 TF. You’ve got Deadlock, Atta and the Lords of Death (for good measure the TW brother should be broken out of prison for the final showdown) as boss fights for each of three missions. So mission one is hitting Deadlock before he can flee Paragon after his attack on BABs; removing him from the board so he can’t hit you from behind. I’m thinking the sewers to Faultline map used at the end of Jim Temblor’s arc would work well. Giving Deadlock some mobility a la Marauder in the Lambda Sector trial so the fight moves from A to B at 75%, B to C at 50% and then back to A at 25%. I’m also thinking air dropping Merc henchmen (at level 10-20 their S/L isn’t quite as gimped) as support when he relocates. Second mission is shutting down Atta, who’s starting buying their supply from the Lords of Death; might be a chance to bring back the Supa’Trolls as part of the mission mechanics. Boulders falling from the ceiling throughout the fight wouldn’t be horrible either. Final mission is assaulting the stronghold of the Lords of Death and take them down once and for all. Perhaps the final battle involving tag-team mechanics; start with two of the three, when one hits 50% they tap out and the third one steps in. Once a second is at 50% the one who taps out returns and all three fight together. Maybe tie in some death ritual the Lords have tied into their version of Superadine; using the life forces of its addicts to fuel a portal to the Netherworld they intend to use to empower themselves or let something they worship out of the Netherworld.

If it needs a buff, expand the current resistance numbers to all damage types and/or increase them a bit. Done. No need to radically change what it does. It’s simplicity is a part of its charm. I like it because I don’t have to think about it. It’s just there soaking up a little damage and carrying the two resist damage +3% defense procs. Nothing to toggle or worry about a lucky Sapper hit knocking off. It also fits my all natural archer concept better than something that takes endurance to keep on. Also, saying that sustains remove all endurance issues is just incorrect. They help. But unless you’re running super low endurance sets (ex. Archery/Tac Arrow) there’s still additional work needed to mitigate your endurance issues; particularly with high endurance sets and to-hit based recovery mechanics. Sometimes using a passive power like body armor over a toggle that’s pulling 0.21/second is just the better option for some builds.

Meanwhile, I’m running on the same Win7 machine I was running at shutdown (the registry even still remembered my default settings the first time it booted up). The only difference is that the 64-bit client now lets me run the maximum settings like butter; whereas I had lagginess issues in 32-bit mode without turning the settings down to where I used to keep them. I have zero issues with First/Night Ward and didn’t even realize there was an issue people were having with Kallisti Wharf until I read about it here. Out of curiosity and to seek a pattern; are the people with issues there running the 64 or 32 bit clients? Because I suspect the issue might be that the 32-bit version just can’t handle the load while the 64-bit architecture allows more threads at a time and so can take it.

Regarding “permanent” Holloween; would it be possible to rig the event so that Trick-or-Treating was possible in every zone, but only during the times when it’s natural night (i.e. leave the day/night cycle on... trick or treat runs from sundown to sunrise... sorta like that certain hunt for Vampyri on Striga Island)? That would avoid the hated 30-days of night (after last October, I now appreciate how the live devs limited it to a couple of weeks) while still enabling trick or treating in all zones.

My opinion? 1) Make Hasten’s recharge timer immune to all buffs and enhancements. 2) give the LotG recharge buff the same name as the other +7.5% recharge buffs. 3) ??? 4) Profit! Alternately... reduce all recharge timers by a third, then remove Hasten from the game. Option 3... make Hasten an Auto power in line with the various “reaction time” powers found in certain powersets (ex. Tac arrow or Night Widow training); ie. +20% recharge, +X% run speed. This would actually be in line with the philosophy of pool powers not exceeding the capacity of primary/secondary set powers that do similar things. ~~~~~~ The thing is... once the carrot of making the horribly overpowered Hasten permanent becomes impossible, a lot of the meta for pushing the +recharge you need to achieve permanent Hasten will melt away. That said; I suspect 90% of the playbase wouldn’t even notice because they aren’t optimization-builders who tweak their pre-planned builds on Pines to eke out every ounce of recharge in pursuit of some platonic ideal of recharge. Honestly, I suspect if the devs just removed recharge from the t1 attacks so it could spammed to the limits of endurance; roughly half the playerbase would just spam that attack and be done with it.

The film was #45 the year it was released; falling behind the Parent Trap remake (44) and the widely panned Matthew Brodderick Godzilla (43). It likely only got that high off its reputation for some very steamy sex scenes (relative to what else was available with an R rating at the time). Also, as a caveat, all the people killed and framed in the film were actually co-conspirators... which puts their deaths more into the “just desserts” category than my example (innocent wife and intern killed). I think It almost proves my point; the number of stories that can successfully pull off “the unrepentant villain gets away with it” is vanishingly small. By contrast, heist and similar films where the criminals are sympathetic and the target is deserving of a comeuppance are reasonably common. In CoV terms, a story where you work with some Scrapyarders to rob Cage Consortium and everyone walks away with a share (even if your own share is “most of it”) is one I suspect would be broadly popular. It should be noted that the popular Dean and Leonard arcs mostly involve stealing from the Nazis/5th Column... the epitome of “acceptable targets.” Bane Spider Reuben; another popular red-side arc; involves Longbow using mind control on villains to try and take over the Rogue Isles and ends with you setting the villains loose on a roaring rampage of revenge against those who used them. I think the biggest mistake made in terms of setting up City of Villains to capture a larger portion of the market was to not realize the difference between villains as they appear in superhero stories (often unrepentant complete monsters) with how villains are portrayed when given their own titles/mini-series (nuanced with better justifications for their actions against more acceptable targets). The best CoV content captures the villain as protagonist of their own story. The worst has them act as complete monsters for no reason other than “for the evulz.” The worst of the worst is where it isn’t even your own plan... you’re just the hired thug of some guy doing it “for the evulz.” Frankly, Westin Phipps is the sorta worst of the worst scumbag a traditional “villain as protagonist” story would use as its antagonist; the guy who’s so much worse than you that when you burn down his house, steal his ill-gotten gains for yourself and organize the homeless to beat him to death in the street you STILL look like a good guy administering some brand of justice despite having just committed arson, grand theat and conspiracy to commit first degree murder. Instead CoV has you work FOR him and do his dirty work ruining other people’s lives just because he gets off on crushing the hopes and dreams of others. And the original devs wondered why redside never took off? Side-bar: If there was ever a Rogue mission put in that let you do that to Westin Phipps, half my heroes would go rogue just to play it. I rarely experience such a level of vitriolic hatred for a fictional character... but that man seriously needs to die in a manner where he gets to realize that all his work crushing hopes is being undone... like a post-script where it’s revealed that his brain and eyes were saved and he is forced to watch unblinking from a secret compartment as acts of mercy and kindness improve the lives of those he’s hurt.

One of the things that REALLY shows in a lot of the last year of live content was the shift of focus from “story arc as story” to “story arc as advertising.” You all know what I’m talking about; story arcs where whole sections are centered on an overbuffed mob (sometimes even a boss when you have bosses turned off) who gets to show off one of the power sets or costumes that could only be accessed by spending real money/Paragon Points. Regardless of what you thought the theme of those arcs was, their actual message was painfully transparent; “Look how tough it was to take on the guy with Staff-Fighting/Titan Weapons/Beam Rifle... you could have this power too, for the right price.” In retrospect, it’s just NOT a pretty look. Some, like the Laura Lockhart arc (particularly with the Oroboros chaser) are good enough on their own to overcome it. Others, particularly the “Justice Hammers” and “Void Sanction” arcs need a complete revamp to add some real personality and depth to them (in those two cases though I am willing to chalk some of it up to it being beta content SCoRE pushed live “as is” and so, had it not been shuttered would have been better developed so that each mission wasn’t six repetitions of “meet X, then defeat Y with overpowered version of featured powerset Z.”). * * * * I’m not really going to discuss Blueside much just because it IS so much easier to write for. As reactive forces the specifics of a heroes’ inner life and motives aren’t as relevant to mission design. To quote Batman Begins, “It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” The only two points I’ll mention about Blueside are; A) Vigilante tip missions require way too much idiotball holding. You are always either massively overreacting to or outright ignoring evil schemes in order to rack up a body count. Vigilante tips are so bad that even Arrow in season one (i.e. the season that practically defines vigilante and didn’t shy away from the negative aspects) would have to choose the hero tips because even though his focus was putting down bad guys permanently, he didn’t endanger innocents to do it. B) Each of the Twinshot/Graves tutorial arcs need to be dropped by 5 levels and made intro contacts alongside the post Galaxy ones. Twinshot’s arc could use a little dialogue cleanup and perhaps a little more obvious reference to its various members not just representing certain power origins, but also lampooning particular PLAYER types common at the time (ex. Grym is that tabletop RPG player who rolled up his toon from that game on Virtue and always speaks in character... Vampire LARPers were a HUGE part of the Virtue RP scene back in the day). Their dialogue and certain actions are a lot more bearable when you can recognize what they’re meant to parody. Grave’s arc just needs any reference to your interior motivations scrubbed. The fact that you are a complete newbie level 1 villain and therefore unknown and underestimated takes care of a lot of the other problems, though a few scare quotes to indicate your character understands more than they’re letting on at times (ex. using ‘mind bomb’ instead of mind bomb implies you suspect what’s really going on but have decided to play along for your own reasons... you may act the dolt, as you do with the arbiters who talk to you about leveling up, but ‘act’ is the operative word). * * * * Now to Redside. The worst missions for me are redside arcs that don’t give sufficient clues to the need for really heinous villainy to complete them or lack means of otherwise undermining said villainy by deliberate failure (ex. Kelly Uqua’s final mission). I’ll play a rogue. Longbow’s just shady enough in its methods I can send them on a trip through the mediporter system pretty guilt free, but I preferred the days of invulnerable civilians on Mayhem Missions (which means it actually takes work to avoid civilian casualties if you’re playing in the rogue-ish “tries to avoid unnecessary violence” style). I can’t stomach the outright villainous though so I HATE it when I only discover the arc is going to require more than robbing some rich person/organization of their money/doodad AFTER that little book has locked you into the mission chain. Someone previously mentioned attaching the Rogue and Villain alignment terms to various contacts based one what they have you do. I wholeheartedly approve of this. In that vein, I’d also like to see a tweak to the Lt. Harris arc that closes out the revamped Mercy Island content. It requires just a little too much idiotball holding to not have figured out what’s really going on with him before the final mission even begins and being forced to side against a woman being revenge stalked and murdered by a psychopath is too dark for even a lot of villains (and pretty much anyone who’s planning to go Rogue at the earliest opportunity). So an option to instead fight Lt. Harris instead and then send the wounded Lt. Page and the rest of Longbow packing (“Mission Accomplished for Arachnos. Does it really matter HOW I did it?”) would be GREATLY appreciated. In terms of top-notch missions I think redside the Dean and Leonard clone arcs are some of my favorites simply because they don’t presume a particular motivation and also because there’s a real degree of choice involved in how it ends up. I remembered liking them on live, but started to cringe when the “kidnap scientists” mission came up as to whether I’d just remembered it wrong. I the actually stopped and breathed a sigh of relief when the first scientist I reached responded with “Ooh, a science project! I want in!” Willing minions work regardless of your particular level of misanthropy so it was an excellent choice to allow maximum possible character motivation interpretation. Then there’s your choices of what to do about your clone (whether to save them at all, whether to let them go live their own life... with options ranging from sadistic to selfish to almost heroic) and whether or not to actually rob bank (admittedly it’s funnier if you DO, but that doesn’t fit every concept) that made it feel like it was your choice throughout. I also want to give high marks to the HC exclusive Rogue arc for its multiple paths and outcomes and, depending on how you play it you can range from a misanthrope to a gentleman thief (up to and including that you can “beat” the main threat by paying attention to a few clues and then striking a win-win deal with them). It is often remarked that Redside is vastly less populated than Blueside and the default solution I’ve always heard echoed is “create more truly villainous content.” My comment there is that that’s a load of bunk. There’s a simple fact of storytelling that they teach everyone going into Screenwriting 101... and that’s that 90% of mankind only enjoys classic plot structure (this is not to discourage other types of plot structure, but to teach you to manage expectations and budgets accordingly). Outright unrepentant villainous motivations alienate general audiences. Hurting others because you enjoy tormenting them is seen as sick. The hard villainous content that is asked for holds appeal to only that small 10% who flies in the face of classic plots because one of the hallmarks of classic plot is “protagonists generally get what they deserve.” Imagine a movie where we follow a senator who plots his wife’s murder, frames his intern for it and the movie ends with his intern’s execution for the crime while the senator sips martinis with the mistress he’d been cheating on his wife with and is adored by the public for having the strength to carry on after the betrayal of his intern and the tragic murder of his wife. That’s a CoV Villainous arc in a nutshell. You do horrible things for wicked reasons, often to those weaker than yourself and are rewarded for it. The end. It takes classical construction and turns it on it’s head. A movie with that plot would also flop outside of the indie film scene. By contrast, successful films with villain protagonists; ex. Ocean’s 11, John Wyck, Deadpool; set the villain up as having relatable motivations (ex. revenge, crushing debt, saving a loved one directly or indirectly) for their actions and those actions are directed at someone more powerful and/or more wicked (ex. the ones who wronged him, some faceless institution seen as screwing over little guys in general; multi-national corporations/banks and governments being common legitimate targets) such that the target being hurt feels like its earned that hurt as payback. One reason the Dean and Leonard arcs work really well in this regard is they set up a similar dynamic. It stats with a relatable motivation; make some cash on a basic jewelry heist and trying to knock a rampaging superhero down a peg. Only you run into a double of yourself who’s already committed the robbery and the hero actually IS indestructible. You now have very personal motivations... you’re going to be blamed and you don’t even get the money for it (more wicked) and you still need to knock the invulnerable guy down a peg (more powerful). Dean gets more sympathetic when you learn how the system in Paragon wronged him and his family. The clone angle leads to punching literal nazis to gain a cloning facility for yourself. You eventually work out a solution to knock the invulnerable hero out of the picture and make everyone’s life easier. The Leonard half of the arc gives you a Big Bad in Protean who wrecks your original plans (whatever they might be) for the cloning facility, a chance to be a little heroic or not in rescuing your clone. Twist the knife on the guy who wrecked things, possibly settle things with your clone... oh, and possibly finally getting around to robbing a place because comedic sociopathy is always an option. You’re rewarded for your efforts that punished someone more wicked and the scales of karma feel properly weighed to most people. The point is... the good villain content doesn’t just set a crime in motion, it sets up WHY the target deserves what it gets (and therefore why you deserve to profit from it).

That’s why that first line I posted is important; /suppressclosefxdist 300 The trick is that, by default, the distance is set to 0 and is based on camera distance from your avatar. So by default suppression will only occur when you’re in first person mode (i.e. camera distance 0). Setting it to 300 allows you to scroll way out without passing the suppression distance (300 units in this case). As long as your camera is closer than the distance all power auras on you, regardless of source, will not be rendered. The in game reason for this feature was to have a way to shut off effects that would make first-person perspective problematic. If there’s still too much going on, the graphics slider you need to turn down is the particle count (under advanced graphics settings); you shouldn’t have to set everything to minumum.

The following takes care of what you're looking for; /suppressCloseFxDist 300 /bind [key A] /suppressCloseFx 1 /bind [key B] /suppressCloseFx 0 Hit key A to turn off all effects centered on your character and key B to turn them back on. I use it all the time for hurricane and similar effects I like to keep on, but find the graphics distracting.

I say add it as a slider underneath the auto-exemplar/sidekick sliders under options with a range of 0-5 grace levels. Completely under the player’s control for those who want it; forced on no one.

I’d be curious what the merit payout of story arcs would be if you averaged it out per mission. Maybe half of that for a non-story arc mission would be reasonable? As a related ballpark... 10 tip missions + 1 alignment mission is worth 40 merits. While you could grind for the tip missions, there’s also a base item that lets you pick specific missions for 1 merit each so you could theoretically farm the 11 missions for 40-11=29 merits per full run (likely more as you’ll earn some tips while running them) or 2.63 merits per mission. By that standard 1 merit per mission (with that amount subtracted from the final award of the existing story arcs) wouldn’t be unreasonable. Alternately, if we wanted to encourage tougher content, say each boss+ mob has a small chance to drop a merit with tougher mob types (ex. Carnie Master Illusionists) having a larger chance than easier ones (ex. Council Cor Leonis Archons). Particularly tough EBs/AVs might automatically drop 1 or more (ex. Silver Mantis). It all depends on what you wish to incentivize.

Textures might be feasible, but there are problems with the mapping I’d love to see addressed before anything else. Case in point, the Widow color patterns don’t actually line up with the mesh on the inner legs on the female figure (they DO line up on the actual mobs though). Things like that are all over the place and I’m not sure whether it’d be faster to remap the base figure or go through and fix all the art files (there’s a lot that’s software and case dependent. I typically only notice the problem when I’m making a costume and just don’t use pieces where the issue is bad enough to bother me and then stop thinking about them; the above bit about the Widow pattern is fresh in my mind because I was trying to build a bog standard Blood Widow and ended up having to go with a Night Widow color scheme because the misaligned patch on the legs bothered me so much). Props though aren’t just a simple port. Most of them would have to be re-scaled, re-positioned and have new “morph targets” applied to them and as someone who works with actual 3d modeling, it can be a major pain in the butt.

This is indeed an issue. You can see it in the AE mob groups where many of what look the same are actually different mobs with distinct level bands because at higher levels they need more powers to stand a chance against players. One of the reasons that Praetoria is so hard is that their mobs are all basically given the powers appropriate to a level 20 mob even when you’re fighting them at level 2 (the ones that turn up again in First and Night Ward content from 20-35 are significantly easier to handle because you now have appropriate tools to handle them).

A hero is someone who is admired for their abilities; one of which might be courage. In the case of the mugger, I’d say that Superman and Batman are equally heroic in that they stopped an attack on an innocent person. At best you could argue that Batman was more courageous in that he could actually be hurt in the attempt, but then again, we’ve seen various villains use common crimes and cries for help to draw Superman into a trap that might involve kryptonite or magic or similar things he’s vulnerable to and each call he answers could be one... yet he goes anyway.

I’m of the opinion that HC should consider it’s version of Incarnate powers is complete. There is already a huge disparity in power between a fresh 50 and one with all six incarnate slots with tier-4s. Even outside of incarnate specific content they’ve got; - a level shift - a +22-30% boost to several enhancement categories that ignores ED (and another 11-15% that does but might still add to things that aren’t slotted for that). - a target-cap breaking crashless nuke on a 90 second timer. - a 75% proc and 25% proc on all your attacks. - summoning two pets for two minutes on a five minute timer. - a large AOE buff on a 90 second timer. - a passive and toggle buff (two minutes on a five minute timer). - In incarnate content add another two level shifts. It’s already hard enough to balance the difficulty with incarnates in the level 50 mix. Dropping four more levels of it on top will just make it worse. If the incarnate system needs anything it’s more content where it can be used (if you can figure out a way to balance it between the “just got the alpha slot” and “I’ve got everything slotted with t4’s” incarnates); but that is in competition in terms of development time with more general mission content that can be experienced by more players more often so I don’t expect much of it any time soon.

We DO have numbers. Let's look at them. My source is the "Homecoming Statistics: March 2020" thread in General Discussion; Players have created 1,207,409 characters on Homecoming and there are 115,559 level 50 characters (of which 40,399 are fire aura brutes) if you total up the numbers from the table for number of 50s by AT. That's just 9.6% of all characters created including the farming brutes that are level 50. If you exclude the likely fire-farming brutes the number drops to just 6.2% of all created characters. The number of those 50's with more than the alpha slot (vs. parked shortly after 50 because the Alt-itis is STRONG) is nowhere near 100%. Asking the people who have access to the statistics might be interesting. Reasonably, the number of non-farm judgement+ incarnate characters is less than 5% of the total... right in line with the PvP community numbers back on live. The number with all six slotted with all t4s is probably less than 1%.

I think you're taking pie-in-the-sky dreams and assuming they're the most likely result in the real world. There's a truism in terms of projects; You can only have two of; fast, cheap and high-quality. Meaning, if you want high quality fast, it will not be cheap. If you want to be cheap you either have to accept lower quality or longer delays. Homecoming has already chosen "Cheap" (everyone involved is a volunteer and they've indicated that will not change even if legitimized by NCSoft) and "High Quality" (the reason why they don't have all the flashy content of some of the other servers, but do have the only 64-bit client out there). You presume massive numbers of people will just donate their time to write, design art assets, code and review and test for bugs down the line... and accept oversight over their creative endeavors by the HC team; i.e. the majority of said volunteers won't just quit when the team says their particular ideas aren't as good as they think they are and need to be redone. If you're a paid employee, you suck up the criticism and make the changes because its your job... when its your hobby? The percentage will be MUCH much smaller due to basic human nature. That means new content will not arrive quickly nor in large amounts. Even if you get a slew of writers for content who won't quit at the first non-grammatical edit, that content can't just be uploaded the next day. Its got to be coded, reviewed, tested for bugs and all the other things we've seen throughout HCs various betas of their released updates. There's a lot of coordination that will be needed to produce a finished project when people have different interests. For example, you need an artist willing to use their free time to model art assets for a story arc that might not actually interest or inspire them.

When you have a small volunteer staff capable of only limited new content, you want that content to be as useful to as broad a segment of the players as possible. The problem with “just make more incarnate content” is that every bit of incarnate exclusive content is content that’s of no use to non-incarnates and non-incarnates are, depending how you count the statistics, well over 90+% of the active characters. Arcs that can be accessed starting in the level 20-30 range can be enjoyed by the entire player base. An incarnate-balanced arc can only be enjoyed by the tiny percentage of incarnate toons.* In essence, while it gets a lot of talk on the forums among the same couple dozen who regularly post on the matter, the incarnate population is really only on par with the PVP community in terms of numbers and needs to be regarded as such in terms of priorities in creating new content and balancing its effects on other content. I remember the days back on live when powers were constantly being changed around because of their effects on PVP (which was 5% or less of the player base at the time) and how it created problems for the PVE players as a result. Ultimately, the live Devs split the mechanics up so they behaved differently in PVP than PVE and allow PVP to be what it needed to be while not continuing to wreak havoc on the rest of the game. This proposal is presented in a similar vein. Incarnate powers were originally created to enable an endgame grind requiring a paid subscription where those with incarnate powers would need to spend the majority of their time grinding out incarnate content to get the next tier of “gear” or to unlock the newest “gear” slot. Due to its low population, SCoRE altered how incarnate powers could be earned, but, also likely due to its low population, didn’t fully account for the effects that gaining incarnate powers through normal content would have on the 45-50 play environment... just as the live devs rarely considered the impact of how their changes for PVP affected the PVE environment. Ultimately, the only viable fix for the issues the tiny chunk that was PVP was inflicting on PVE was to silo it off so that game used an entirely different set of numbers for PVP than PVE. The suggestion here is that a similar siloing for a similarly small percentage of the content (that is unlikely to get significant attention because the return on time invested is so low relative to a new level 20-30 arc) would be healthier for the game. * Side-bar: Dark Astoria also proves there is an additional layer of difficulty in terms of incarnate balancing... what level of incarnate do you balance it for? Alpha slot only? Full level shifted, but not t4’d? Full t4 slotting in all incarnate powers? There’s a MASSIVE difference in performance between an alpha-only with a t1-2 slotted and having all six incarnate powers slotted with t4s. - The Starting Alpha is still level 50 in Dark Astoria and has 33% buff to one enhancement category where 27.55% of that is still subject to ED (i.e. a scrapper slotting the t1 musculature will only increase their damage by 3% or so). - The fully unlocked with all t4s Incarnate is instead level 50+3 in Dark Astoria, has a +20-30% enhancement buff to multiple categories that ignores ED. They also have an extra nuke, summoned pets, a massive aoe buff, an extra proc effect on virtually every hit, and the hybrid toggle and passive buffs. So where will this new incarnate content be balanced? Of the population of incarnates, I guarantee there are more closer to the alpha only end of the spectrum than the fully t4’d variety. That means the further up the scale you get, the smaller the number of players who can actually use the content to the point we’re probably at fractions of 1% at the top end. This is why devising reasonable siloing of incarnate powers for non-incarnate content coupled with story arcs designed for a wide spread of levels instead of the usual 5 (ex. a post-Praetorian War Council arc could be set to be accessible from level 15-50) is probably the most viable path for future content.

Rule 101 of any development work is "don't keep throwing good time and money after bad." At the end of the day, Incarnate powers were always a bad idea. Knowing what we know now of the situation c. 2011-2012, its clear they were added for the express purpose of adding a grind-focused endgame to City of Heroes, most likely at the specific behest of NCSoft who wanted to monetize that grind. They weren't as concerned about how this would unbalance the earlier parts of the game because those were ultimately just the free teaser to induce as many players as possible to buy a sub and start grinding for incarnate powers. Ultimately, Incarnate power was never designed to be sustainable or healthy for the overall game. It was designed to make the game as profitable as possible to keep the lights on for another day. Hell, even Positron said by the time they'd hit the Omega slot they'd probably have to start over with a City of Heroes 2. Just like we've not had a new PVP zone added since I6(?), Incarnates are a thing that breaks more than it fixes because it was never designed to fix a gameplay issue... it was designed to fix a real world cash flow issue. What the Incarnate system really needs is a hard look at how to balance it out with the rest of the game so that as much of the already completed work as possible can be employed without disrupting the core 1-50 part of the game that makes up 99% of the content. Since those powers are generally needed for the actual eight existing incarnate trials (which had the good fortune to have an obvious conclusion in the Magisterium Trial) I'd NOT want to see them nerfed for that content. That's why I feel a "Alpha + pick one" type check-off option for non-incarnate content would be the least disruptive. - It limits each character to, at-most, one incarnate click power so you're not having full teams cycling through 8 Judgements AND 8 Lores AND 8 Destinies. - Because you can check different incarnate slots between missions, it is still worth pursuing those powers for the added flexibility it gives. - It keeps the full suite of powers available for the Incarnate trials content where it is actually needed.