Chris24601

I kinda liked this idea. As it was explained in the AMA it would have technically been two separate zones; the normal 8-15 level zone with some of the forest maze cleared out would still be there, but there’d also be a level 50+ floating outdoor Orenbegan city floating high above it. Heck, in terms of geometry, we technically already have at least part of such a city in the form of the map used for the conclusion of Scirocco’s Mallus Mundi arc. Place it high up in the sky (above the ceiling so you can’t actually reach it directly) so it can been seen, but not reached from Perez Park. Then add “Orenbegan Embassy” to the TUNNEL portals and make it a separate zone with some DA-style mission portals scattered around the Orenbegan city (you could put one at each ritual sight in the Mallus Mundi mission) and some level 50 contacts with story arcs/repeatable missions nearby those and you’ve got yourself a whole new zone to put missions in that would fit with those original plans. Alternately, use that outdoors Orenbegan map and the “visit the Nemesis base in the Shadow Shard” map as part of a Shadow Shard revamp so you can actually visit the bases that the CoT and Nemesis are using for their Shadow Shard incursions. Swap out the generic soldiers in Firebase Zulu for Vanguard troops and make the Shadow Shard accessible to both factions through the existing Vanguard depot portals as a co-op zone. While you’re at it, add click portals/doors between the main islands to make travel easier for the non-flyers. Add some new contacts with story arcs, relocate/revamp the repeating mission contacts, give the existing Shadow Shard TFs the Positron treatment, and maybe even make Cathedral of Pain accessable via a contact/portal in Firebase Zulu and you’d have yourself a Shadow Shard update.

Honestly, one of the biggest turnoffs Red-side for me is when an arc/mission goes and assumes your motivations. For example, the “extended tutorial” arcs with Dr. Graves make all sorts of assumptions that you’re just a brutal thug who’s perfectly okay with betraying your fellow outlaws and people willing to be your lackey. The mission where you have no option in giving that Skull who wants to be your lackey over to the sadistic serial-killer Crosscut after he’s been nothing but helpful to you rubs me raw and is a prime example of how Red-side’s assumptions of motivation can drive people off. I literally re-rolled one of my few Red-Side toons the first time I finished that mission because my concept was an honorable thief type... not someone willing to throw people to serial killers for their own gain. Having to research missions on a wiki so you don’t end up with your lovable Rogue concept crossing the moral event horizon into a complete monster because you started the wrong arc just make Red-side a lot more work than playing Blue-side, where you never have to worry about an arc turning you into a mass murderer Frankly, the number of “leave no witnesses” missions you’ll find just dropped in the middle of random arcs Red-side is rather obnoxious. It’s bad enough that the only toon on HC I’ve actually kept Red-side past about level 20 (typically I only roll Red-side to play through the villain-to-rogue-to-hero tip/alignment missions for a “rocky-start rogue who becomes a hero” concept) has subsisted on virtually nothing but double XP, very select contacts (ex. Bane Spider Reuben, Dean MacArthur/Leonard, Hardcase, First/Night Ward, Vanguard), defeat other villain newspaper missions and rogue tip/alignment missions. Hell, the only reason I even rolled that one was to help out a real life friend who I’ve introduced to the game and wanted to try Red-side. If not for their sticking out on Red-side I’d have already turned my Rogue Widow to Blue-side and not looked back. That’s largely because the further up the levels you go, the more often the Red-side missions assume outright degenerate villainy as your character’s motivation. If you’re in that 90% who prefer classical plot construction (and I’m actually so far into this category I honestly can’t even pretend to appreciate the artistic merits of non-classically plotted stories... they’re garbage storytelling from my PoV) then those sort of missions just sap your desire to continue playing a Red-side toon. Seriously, I’m to the point with the Rogue I’m using to assist my friend where I’m seriously considering running the rogue-to-hero tip missions and then use Null to go vigilante-in-name-only so I can solo Blue-side hero content and still team with my friend. All because of Red-side’s rather odious habit of presuming actively malicious motivations for characters on Red-side even though Rogues are also present.

The only reason I ever take a hero redside is because my desire for thematic purity (ex. there is no charge mastery option and nothing about lightning makes it deserve to be villain only) outways my desire for my hero to remain pure. There’s also NOTHING about the patron pools that makes them a power gaming option compared to the ancillary equivalents. Theme is literally the only reason to take one. So take away Mu Mastery from my main after I sullied them with villain missions/badges because my theme was just that important to me and I’ll just be pissed off, stop playing the game for awhile and never touch the character again when I come back... and I’ll never use my Red-side character again just to spite whichever person suggested taking it away to get me to play Red-side. So I agree with you. The ONLY thing that will make Red-side more populated is to give people real character concept reasons to want to stay. I know, for me, I relate a LOT with the backstory of Dean MacArthur. A good cop has a bad day (his father is murdered and the perp gets off on a technicality) and goes too far in the heat of passion (kills his father’s murderer) and then has to go on the run because the cops he served with now see him as a villain (never mind that they looked the other way at Blue Shield beating a teenager to death because the kid’s out of control powers killed a cop). There’s a sense of injustice to what befell him and his claiming that things are “more honest” (and more free) in the Rogue Isles is something several other contacts repeat in the earlier levels that appeals to the romantic notions of noble rebellion against a corrupt authority (bolstered by several earlmissions that show off the corruption in Longbow). In a way, Red-side could easily be recast as the Freedom (good and bad) to Blue-side’s Order (good and bad). The Rogue Isles are a corrupt nation led by authoritarian tyrants (aka Arachnos) and the players are going after the corrupt authorities and power brokers using theft, blackmail, assassinations, etc. for whatever reason you care to invent. Remember, Robin Hood was a criminal. Danny Ocean and his crew were criminals. Batman and the Joker are both criminals in the same corrupt city where the authorities outside of Jim Gordon and a couple of cops are as bad as many villains. The Joker and Batman could both do a mission chain to take down a corrupt businessman. The only difference is motive... Batman is trying to expose the man and force the corrupt authorities to save face by putting him away while the Joker just plans to murder the man because his comic themed demise will be a public spectacle. And Deadpool might do either depending on who’s paying him to do it. A tech-themed villain might do it because the guy’s company has proprietary tech they want. More missions where the motivation is more open to interpretation because the target is sketchy would certainly make Red-side more appealing to more people I think. Your motives could be as selfless as Robin Hood robbing from the corrupt rich to give to the poor... as selfish as just hitting them for a payday... or as villainous as wanting his resources for a bigger evil scheme... or as petty as wanting to inflict pain on someone better off than you are. Basically missions open to villains, rogues and vigilantes where the main differences are a couple bits of dialogue due to your motivation.

I know they’re not films, but the generally linear nature of missions makes them much closer to traditional storytelling than not. That means much of the appeal is playing out the role of protagonist in a story. It’s not an accident that Red-side populations hover at around 15% or less of the total player base... it’s human nature. Human nature is that most of us perceive reality through the lens of being the protagonist of our own stories who actively struggles to overcome external forces (even if its really an internal problem, human nature is to externalize/cast blame outside one’s self) in linear time with a defined beginning and ending and we hope to receive what we feel out our just rewards for our efforts (and that those who wronged us get theirs too). In general, the number of people who don’t ascribe to that worldview and thus find other story structures appealing is around 10% of the population and nothing is going to change that. The reason my professors spent so much time time drilling that into the students was not to say “don’t write that way” but to make you understand that the potential audience for a story with a non-classical plot is much more limited and to budget your project accordingly. Bringing this around to Red-side it means you’ve basically got two, mutually exclusive, options. You can have a larger playerbase (by focusing on writing for the rogues) or you can have your “monsters win” content (by focusing on writing for the villains) But you can’t have both because there’s just not enough of the player base comfortable with playing an outright villain to ever get you past that 10% threshold (the extra 5% Red-side are most likely those running the arcs where they can feel like the villain protagonist, more a rogue, in a classical story construction).

The key thing for me in improving Red-side is understanding the appeal of a villain protagonist and, further, the tropes you need to employ when said stories about a villain protagonist end with their victory (versus one that ends in failure or a pyrrhic victory). As someone who actually took classes on screenwriting, the most important thing you’re ever taught is that stories which don’t employ classical plot structure appeal to less than 10% of the population. This is important because one of the most critical elements of classical plot structure is that the protagonist must get their just deserts. That means if your story protagonist is a straight up villain (ex. MacBeth) they need to be defeated in the end. Darth Vader is cool and people may fantasize about being him, but most who do are NOT fantasizing about when he murdered the younglings. They’re mostly fantasizing about having the power to do whatever they want to people they feel have wronged them. He also gets bonus points for his ultimate heroic sacrifice proving that he wasn’t actually “all bad.” The way you write around this issue and allow the villain to win in fiction is right there in the fantasy... the audience needs to feel that the villain’s victim(s) deserve what comes to them. That’s why heist films often revolve around stealing from a corrupt or evil target (or is being done under duress and a critical part of the story is how the protagonist(s) ultimately reverse the situation to deal with the villain who put them under duress). It’s also why many villain solo titles end up pitting them against a bigger bad (including hypocritical heroes; one reason why the “Longbow is mind controlling villains” arc works because their righteous comeuppance feeling earned). The number of potential players who will enjoy arcs where you get away with harming the innocent is, if the numbers the professors of screenwriting provided hold true in this medium, about 10% of the audience of a heroic one (including one where a villain targets someone deserving). Basically, if you want to grow the Red-side population you need more content that is less Westin Phelps crushing the hopes of the innocent (appeals to maybe 10% of general audiences) and more like the Rogue alignment and morality missions where the plucky protagonist outplays the bigger bads and/or hypocritical heroes and walks away with whatever they were after in the process (appeals to 90% of general audiences). Or to be even more succinct; write mainly for the rogues with an option for being a complete monster instead of writing arcs for complete monsters as the default (that may or may not have an option to fail a final timed mission to feel a bit less like a heel). The biggest problem vanilla Red-side had, from my experience was that while there were a fair number of more rogue-ish missions in the lower levels... those really started to peter out in favor of “be a complete monster” missions the higher in level you get. In lieu of new content (which will take time), one way to help make Red-side more appealing would be to clearly label the existing contacts/arcs as either “Rogue” (primary targets of the arc ‘deserve’ it) or “Villain” (primary targets don’t deserve it) AND adjust contact introductions so that you don’t need to finish a villain arc to be introduced to a new rogue contact or visa versa. This will create a cleaner path for those who want to experience Red-side without playing as a complete monster (and make it easier for those who do want to be complete monsters to pick the right contacts as well).

My issue is that my theme pretty much required an electricity based epic/ancillary pool, but charge or electricity mastery just isn't available to a scrapper (or tanker or brute or stalker for that matter). You've basically got fire, dark, weapons and laser-eyes; while lightning, a rather significant elemental theme, can only be gained via the villain arcs (adding cold mastery for the melee ATs would also be appreciated). I solved the problem in my head by declaring that my character also has an evil Praetorian version who went to the Rogue Isles at level 20, and that the unlock missions were done by said evil twin who didn't actually need the arc to unlock their innate ranged lightning powers, but did those things because they were a villain (rogue technically). Maces and Spirit Sharks and Ghost Widow's particular brand of necromancy? sure, make those patron dependent. But LIGHTNING? That's just such a generic power concept that gating it behind a villainous dip is ridiculous. Leave off the tier-5 Summon, re-color the default to blue and make Charge Mastery with only four picks a thing for the melee ATs. And yes, add a cold mastery option too while you're at it.

Indeed, this is kinda where all of these various discussions ultimately break down... there is a truly massive gulf between; - a fresh 50 slotted with SO’s and has “normal” thematic power picks (i.e. picks pool powers based on theme rather than mechanical strength). and - a 50 that’s taken all the “power” pool picks (hasten, tough, weave, etc.) that’s been fully IO’d with purple sets and all six incarnate slots filled with tier-4s. -Throw in a well-slotted 49 IO build into that evaluation as well, because it probably outperforms the SO-slotted 50. So where exactly do you balance a theoretical level 50 piece of content? Because what will be a challenge for the SO’d 50 at +0/x1 would be a cakewalk even at +4/x8 for the purple IO’d perma-hastened full t4 incarnate and what would be a challenge for that uber-50 would utterly destroy the SO-only 50. THAT is the perspective that many of these “nerf” threads are coming from... that the state of the late game due to the combination of IO’s, incarnates and powers like hasten create such a disparity in performance that creating content that can challenge without being either overwhelming or a cakewalk to non-trivial portions of the playerbase is virtually impossible.

In regard to the bolded part, I wonder what the behavioral change would be if they just swapped Hasten and Burnout in the Speed pool. Would it become like the pre-inherent Stamina of old? The thing you sacrificed two much less useful power picks to obtain? Or would it's utility with the availability of IO recharge set bonuses and the cost of two of Burnout, Flurry and Superspeed be enough that other power pool picks would start to look more attractive? Because I think a big part of how universally Hasten is regarded in many builds stems from the fact that it takes so little investment to get it. It is literally a single power pick to obtain its benefit... you don't need to suffer through the bad picks in Presence to get to the top tier pick of the pool. You don't have to take one of the weak melee attacks first like you do for Tough and Weave. Its as close to FREE as a pool pick can possibly get in terms of its utility. And if it IS still so good that it's still worth taking two rather subpar powers to get it (see Old School Stamina), then I think that would also argue for just how overpowered it is as a tier-1 pool power pick and that the solution either needs to be; A) make it universal like the Inherent Fitness pool, B) make the swap between Burnout and Hasten permanent, or C) scale back the level of recharge bonus Hasten provides.

Regarding the changes to Enhancements effectively dropping TOs and relegating DO's to role of cheaper slotting at the lowest levels, I'd like to make a suggestion; Color-code the Enhancement text using the standard colors to make it easier to see at a glance whether something is a DO or SO and make it easier for new players who are familiar with traditional color coding by rarity to realize that DO's are meant to be inferior to SOs. My suggestion would be that DO's titles would be green (default level -2 colors) while SO's titles would be blue (level -1 color), leaving common IOs as white and the set IOs as yellow, orange and purple. That way when a new player gets a drop they'll see green (traditionally a mid-grade drop in the green, blue, purple, gold hierarchy used by many other games) DOs and blue SOs (a step up for both CoH and the common hierarchy used elsewhere) which plays to the common expectations that a blue is better than a green. Then, by the time they get to IOs they should be familiar enough with CoH's color schemes to judge white, yellow, orange and purple IOs appropriately.

Oh, I don’t disagree on that. A class without at least a required t1 attack can’t even reliably deal enough damage to deal with a -1/x0 mission. The P2W attacks lack the accuracy and recharge needed to make them a sustainable attack chain leaving you basically Brawl and pool attacks... and if you’re selecting those you may as well have a primary or secondary set with real attacks in it. By contrast, a support/assault (i.e. dominator secondary) based character would be something worth pursuing... though I’d rather see it done by proliferation of dominator secondaries to defenders and corruptors than building another AT. For that matter an Assault/Armor option for Sentinels who want a mix of melee and ranged attacks in addition to reasonable protection would also be an interesting thing to see tried. But doubling up on the same set category, particularly when neither has attacks, seems like a recipe for disaster... akin to someone running a “pure healer” empathy defender with the leadership toggles and only the t1 attack with no slots.

Regarding “what about the AV at level 20 when you’re poor and badly built?” Leave the mission aside, level up several times running easier content, then come back and curbstomp the grey conning AV. That’s how I finally soloed the Envoy of Shadows on my first toon; a fire blaster; back in the days of i4 and it’s a tactic that works right up to the present day... if you can’t take a 49 EB (minimum difficulty) as a 50+1 anything with a tray of inspirations you’ve got way bigger problems than that.

The fact that “it’s fine if you rely on this one specific pool power and multiple sets of IOs that go for 10mil each and massive amounts of recharge” says it’s not actually fine. Indeed, it’s just another example of how Hasten utterly warps the rest of the game around itself because if a billion inf build with Hasten can fix it; it’s not actually broken according to some people.

I don’t know that there will be an omega slot; at least on HC. They notably reworked the incarnate screen from live; removing the “coming soon” slots like Omega so that it now lists only alpha, judgement, interface, lore, destiny and hybrid in a pattern that doesn’t suggest any more are coming. Frankly, given the lack of profit motive and smaller dev team, I don’t think increasing the power curve even more would be particularly healthy for the game. Even the live devs in their post-closure AMAs admitted that, had they gone all the way through to Omega, they’d have to shut the whole thing down and launch a CoH2 afterwards because it would have thrown everything so far out of whack. Other than making it even harder to balance high end content (compare the difference between a fresh 50 and a fully t4’d incarnate), there’s no real benefit to adding even more power at the top in. Heck, it’s already stupid easy to solo AVs and monsters with a solidly t3’d incarnate with just the six alpha-hybrid slots.

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.