Chris24601

Lore-wise, both Miss Liberty and Ms. Liberty can throw lightning bolts (not something associated with Hera) and, at the least, Miss Liberty was ageless like her dad (per the lore, Miss Liberty was born in 1939 and died in 2012... does she look 73 in the signature story arc?). Further, Ms. Liberty's in-game description notes that she has superhuman strength and endurance "as well as" the power of the Liberty Belt. The Paragon Wiki notes under Incarnates that "Both Ms. Liberty and Miss Liberty also possess some measure of superpowers genetically inherited from the patriarch of the family, Statesman, who himself derived his powers from the Well of the Furies." Personally, I figure it was passed on the same way that Hercules was superhuman because his dad was Zeus. As I recall, there was some clarification, maybe in one of the AMA's, that the Greek Gods were basically just superhumans of the ancient past and Zeus was basically powered up by the Well the same way Marcus Cole was. If so it would stand to reason that the power would get passed on just like it did to a lot of Zeus' kids in the myths. Regardless, the canon is Miss and Ms. Liberty both have superhuman powers that include super-strength (Martial Arts powerset because Scrappers don't get super strength, but seriously, they can kick super-powered robots to pieces... there's super-strength involved), invulnerability and the lightning bolt power because they inherited them from Statesman. Its' may not be considered "Incarnate Strength," but it comes from the same source.

Scrapper/Stalker choices are extremely lacking in diversity. Darkness? Sure. Fire? No problem. Exploding Shurikin? Got you covered. Laser Beam Eyes? Kinda outta nowhere, but sure. Lightning? ... Err... break character to unlock the patron pool and recolor it (Thank God we added instant switching via Null the Gull... that would have sucked to have to do 40+ character breaking missions over 8 days just because you had a concept involving using lightning... >_> ). Cold? Zilch. Earth (including throwing rocks)? Zero. Guns or Bows? Nada. Psionic Blasts? No Soup For You! The point being; dark ninja fire with laser eyes is NOT a great spread for heroic choices and Mu Mastery is the only villain pool that isn’t either a variation (Soul Mastery is basically prettier darkness in terms of theme) or with very specific animations that are hard to reflavor.

I think you’re overthinking it a bit. Ms. Liberty has essentially the same powers as Grandpa, just not at incarnate strength... as did her mother. Whatever made Marcus Cole an incarnate clearly had follow-on effects since his daughter and granddaughter were also long-lived (Miss Liberty was already active in 1963 so even if she was in her 20’s then she sure didn’t look to be in her 70s when she died almost 50 years later), super-strong, invulnerable and can channel lightning and they had those abilities because of who their father/grandfather was. It may not be incarnate strength Zeus-iness, but it’s definitely inherited because granddad had Zeus’ power inside him. For that matter, the Olympian Guards were non-incarnate clones of Emperor Cole and also possess similar powers. You can say that’s not the power of Zeus, but to me incarnate-boosted lightning powers aquired because an ancestor had the power of Zeus and incarnate lightning powers from a Zeus-shaped connection to the Well feels like a distinction without a difference. We just interpret the lore differently is all, and until someone “official” does something to conform or deny one, the other or both there is no actual right answer.

Not exactly. Here’s the exact words from the SSA; “What happened to the energy contained in Pandora’s Box?” “It has dissipated, Character. The power still exists, yes - in one form or another. But it has spent too long disconnected from a host, and has lost all form. In time, it will manifest in other ways, but never again to the same degree.“ As I previously mentioned, Ms. Liberty already has SOME of the power of Zeus. It’s why she has the lightning bolt and thunder strike powers. Her pulling off grandpa’s lightning doesn’t require her to gain NEW powers (except in the purely game mechanic sense), just a boost to the super strength, invulnerability and lightning powers she already has. The point being; there’s enough wiggle room between the “power collects” and “the power still exists and will manifest again” to justify buffing Ms. Liberty with fly, Hammer of Justice and Zeus’s Lightning... all of which are just boosts to what she already has.

According to the lore she’s a Martial Arts/Invulnerability Scrapper (though I suspect that’s more a function of Scrappers not having the Super Strength set... she’s depicted in other media as having super-strength in the “lift great weights” sense) and does have the Lightning Bolt and Thunder Strike powers as well so she’s already got some of Zeus’ strength (as did her mother). I don’t see why she couldn’t get a bit of boost by some means. Yeah, the power of Zeus got spread far and wide at the conclusion of the Pandora’s Box SSA, but another point of that arc is that the power always gathers, flows and pools where strength already exists. So Ms. Liberty could have gotten more of Zeus’ dispersed powers than others since she already had some for it to pool with and BOOM, like a thunderbolt, her powers get an upgrade.

To be fair, if the game hadn’t been shut down, Sirocco and Ice Mistral we’re going to get a heel/face turn and become heroes (you can definitely see the groundwork in the Dark Astoria arc). This would have let Red Widow slide in and replace him as one of the patrons. I always figured it was just a cool bit of zone phasing like Matt Habashery’s wife being by his side after you rescue her to reflect that the team you helped was continuing their heroic mission (in a general offscreen sense). And to be fair, the New Praetorians arcs were literally on test when the shutdown happened so it’s not like the devs left it hanging because they lost interest; they left it hanging because they lost their jobs and the whole game shut down. Another dangling plotline was BAB getting hospitalized by the guy sent to “break” him (seen in the personal mission at the end) while you were out fighting the Petrovic brothers and I wonder if the intent wasn’t to phase him out so there’d be less confusion between him and up and the redeemed Marauder going forward in a variation of the “One Steve Limit” trope (i.e. Battle Maiden can stay because she’s an evil twin and could get a redesign to fit Malta’s aesthetics, but two heroic Michael Whites couldn’t last) I do want to reiterate too that a possible reason the State’s version of the LRSF isn’t already on Oroboros is that the old version just may not have been part of the leaked code and therefore not recoverable without a lot of effort akin to writing a new SF from scratch. I also agree with the idea that they should have subbed a powered up Ms. Liberty in for States in the Freedom Phalanx instead of just leaving that hole. Let Posi be the leader due to experience sure, but giving States’ slot on the team to his granddaughter makes thematic sense.

At least the HC devs made the New Praetorians aftermath arc available all the way to 50 (I believe on test at shutdown it was to be 35-40) so you don’t HAVE to do it before the Incarnate Trials. This is also why I’d really like to see the “Who Will Die?” arc streamlined into a single arc in the early 40s and a story arc version of the Incarnate Trials done for level 50 with the “New Praetorians” arc unlocked after its completion. In the level band equals passage of time aspect you’d kick off 40 with Statesman and Sister Psyche’s dying and the Freedom Phalanx in disarray. This also puts RularuuWade in the same band that the Shadow Shard is found. If you haven’t already, Tina McIntyre then introduces you to the Praetorian threat in the 40-45 range which continues into Maria Jenkins arc in 45-50 then the Praetorian War arc for incarnates (with the opening contacts for the Excalibur quest and Dark Astoria being introduced at the appropriate points). Completing that arc unlocks the New Praetorians and Last Bastion arcs which effectively close out the Praetorian story. Then combine the Pandora’s Box SSA into a normally accessed arc and make it into the launching pad for any new incarnate content as the Box and the Well are clearly connected and as was said at the end, that energy is now out there in the world so it will eventually pool into new incarnate threats. The Battalion don’t HAVE to be as game shatteringly powerful as intended (i.e. eat the wells of entire civilizations) in this new universe and we can leave concepts like The Dimensionless out entirely); still a threat, just not one that actually requires creating an Omega slot and essentially saying after we blow up the Dimensionless it’s time to just start over with a CoH2 like the original devs suggested. The point being; the LRSF and MLTF as level 50 events would fit as occurring after States and Sister Psyche died in that case. One thing that I think slightly hampers CoH in this regard is that while it was live they bucked the usual MMO tread by keeping the level cap at 50 and then sending PCs back to interact with things in the older zones meant to represent the past. Then backfilling content that clearly happens AFTER other content to all level bands instead of just as new content at a new top tier. For example, if “Who Will Die?” and the replacement Yin and Miss Liberty TFs and Maria Jenkins arcs were introduced as level 50-60 content in the new Kallisti Wharf zone with all mission doors in the KF zone the progression of events would feel more intuitive I think. Instead its peppered throughout the existing 1-50 climb and zones and even cancels out older events you need to understand the replacement.

For Khelds that bond with existing heroes... a luminous/umbral ranged, melee, assault and armor sets might be some low-hanging fruit in terms of reusing existing art assets. Ex. The PBs Luminous blast set includes a light, medium and heavy single-target blast, a cone and targeted AoE, a build-up and a nuke... throw in maybe the flare and photon seekers and you’ve got all nine powers for a ranged set. While it may look a little short on melee attacks with just Radiant Strike, Incandescent Strike and Solar Flare, it would also need a build-up power and several melee sets include a short range cone and blast so Gleaming Blast and Photon Scatter with 40’ ranges could be added bringing it to six and a generic taunt/confront bring it seven. It really the just needs a tier 1 and 2 light and heavy strike and... coincidentally, the dwarf-form attacks have animations that show up on the human-form model in the power customization screens so it’s two single-target melee attacks could be pulled from there to round out a “Luminous Melee” set. A blaster secondary using the three melee strikes and another build up plus some of the other support/self buff effects; essence boost, conserve energy, reform essence and quantum flight gets you to eight powers; one more as a passive buff and you’d have it done. An Assault set would just need to pull from the ranged and melee sets above. An armor set is pretty much already done too, you just need to figure out where to slot mez protection into it. It’d be more work, but adapting the Kheldian bubbles with force field animations, plus the glowing touch heal power and fx could probably create a buff set of some type that mixes resist with heals. Warshade versions of the ranged, blaster secondary and armor sets, plus a control set (maybe a debuff set) would also be real contenders for having enough art assets to create. * * * * The point of all that though is that you could then mix and match those with sets on every non-epic AT to reflect a Kheldian who has merged with an existing super-powered being and has a mix of both powers. Or you could use two sets together on some ATs to create a human-only Kheld who has specialized in the particulars of an AT instead of the generalist tri-form. ... Or be a mad scientist who’s built a suit that channels the same cosmic power as the Kheldians do. It’s City of Heroes... anything’s possible.

And lo, you have discovered the TRUE endgame*... 😀 * I mean, we have A THOUSAND character slots PER SERVER. What are they there for if not to use them?

My process is pretty simple. Do a different path each time. My first toon back went blue after the Galaxy tutorial (and the connected new Atlas Park contacts and new KIngs content), so my next started red-side with the Breakout tutorial and my third was Praetorian. My next hero did Outbreak, the original origin contacts, followed by the Hollows and old issue 0-1 story arcs. I’d guestimate there’s enough content for at least 3-4 separate trips through blueside without repeating an arc. There’s probably 2-3 trips through redside. My current Praetorian is level 36 in Night Ward and still hasn’t taken the portal to Primal Earth yet (by my estimates I’ll be about level 40 so should be able to jump right to the Portal Corps and then New Praetorians arcs and will probably wrap it with the mission to save Last Bastion from Hamidon on Praetorian Earth). They also did only the Warden arcs in Praetoria (outleveling stuff is a serious thing there) so there’s probably 2-3 more routes through the 1-20 content I can take. And by the time I’ve gone through those seven separate routes, repeating something from 6-7 passes through is long enough back that it doesn’t feel like I’ve just done it.

The thing I’d most like to see is some better grading of XP awards (i.e. a Council Boss with a rocket launcher and leap kick are not the same level of threat as a Carnie Master Illusionist despite being worth equal XP). Whether that is codeable I don’t know, but I will point to the Rikti Communications Officers conning as LTs for color coding and XP rewards despite having the minion tag as at least one example where XP and level/class weren’t uniform. The XP adjustments for custom foes in AE are another. There is harder content in the game; the groups that turn up in Dark Astoria, Soldiers of Rularuu, Malta, Carnies, etc.; but because your rewards are the same for beating up machine gun wielding Council/5th Column, a lot of groups go after those. Maybe that would change if Carnie Master Illusionists were worth twice the XP/inf or had twice the drop rate for rare salvage/incarnate threads. I also think some groups could get a nice difficulty bump (more accurately a difficulty smoothing) if you expanded the level range of certain mobs. There’s a noticeable difficulty spike for the Circle of Thorns when Fire Casters disappear and Earth casters show up... then everyone breathes a sigh of relief in the 40s when the Earth Casters drop off for Air casters. Likewise, the shift from darkness-based ghosts and their -to-hit to Nerva ghosts and their cold damage shifts difficulty around further. The LT and boss mages only occurring in specific bands also sends their difficulty bouncing around like its a bungee jumper. I think the Circle could be a much more interesting foe overall if all those casters and ghosts and demons had their upper level bands expanded to 54. So in your 20s the fire casters show up, but don’t disappear at 30... instead now its earth and fire casters, then air then ice casters added to. There could be ruin and death mages in the same spawn; succubi and lashers all the way to 54. Likewise, I think the 51+ Council could get a nice buff out of adding re-colored IDF (replacing the Cor Leonis) and War Works (replacing Mek Men) to their lineup as an extrapolation from the New Praetorians arcs (the remnants of Scott’s forces joining and bringing that Praetorian tech with them) and then tossing in the Nictus faction mobs (dark nova and dwarfs + shadow shards) on top to reflect the rise of Arkhan in the Council’s hierarchy with Requiem and Vandal’s departure back to the 5th Column). I’d be much more interested in seeing tweaks to 51+ mobs like that, along with commensurate reward increases for their more difficult nature simply because adding new mobs would hopefully be easier than a lot of the other suggestions in terms of coding.

My headcanon is that my natural archery/tac arrrow’s armor is lined with incarnate thread mesh, their bow is enhanced using incarnate thread-based myomer (for increased draw strength) and incarnate shard arrowheads. I wear incarnate tech, but am not incarnate myself.

I think the idea with Emps is that there remains something you just have to work for by doing actual Incarnate content or via Vet levels. Further, if you’re not running explicitly Incarnate content to jump ahead a bit the Vet level rewards and Incarnate XP slot unlocks work together to essentially add some extra levels to your progression... Vet level 1 gets your Alpha and a T1 for it. Vet2 gets you a T2 for it. During Vet2 you’ll unock Interface and Judgement and be able to slot t1s for them. Once you get your first Emp reward from Vet levels you can slot a T3 alpha for the level shift. Etc. Yes, there’s a relatively easy mission chain that can get you two per run that can speed this up a bit, but at 8 per rare and 30? per very rare that’s still 6-7 hours of grinding the same four missions to get one tier 4 power (not counting Vet levels). Maybe it’s worth grinding four times to get your t3 alpha early (or run a couple more of the Dark Astoria arcs so you get the Emps without having to repeat the same content), but 19 more times for the t4? PASS. Now imagine if you could convert reward merits into Emps. What sort of ratio would you need to keep someone from just banking their merits from 1-50 and then slot up to at least t3s in everything at once (converting for the threads and Incarnate XP)? I guess I’m at least sympathetic enough to the “give us something to work for” crowd to let them keep Incarnate progress as something they can show off for their efforts (versus trying to make it a grind for costume parts or base items). ETA: in terms of symmetry, I view it like diamonds. Once you break it down you can’t just take the shards and fuse them back together and get the same diamond back. Likewise, once you’ve turned your reward merits into something, you can’t just convert them back into reward merits (I think there’s a grossly inefficient 1mill inf per merit option, but that’s about it). The other main symmetry items (hero/villain merits to reward merits and Emps to the even larger version) exist to make emailing them between alts easier due to limitations of the email system and it’s worth noting that you can’t actually buy anything with those types of merits (all the hero merit items from live are now bought with reward merits for example).

Frankly I think calling them “support” classes is Holy Trinity BS. A controller is just as soloable as a scrapper or brute. Frankly, juggling control and your own buffs/debuffs while widdling down a large spawn is a whole different type of challenge than a scrapper rolling through the same content (see the final mission in the Sister Solaris Dark Astoria arc for how differently these two can play... especially since I’ve typically found it much easier on a blaster or controller than a scrapper or brute). There are any of a billion Holy Trinity-based MMOs if that’s the playstyle someone wants. The ability of any AT with any power sets to solo content and do so in completely different ways is a FEATURE not a bug. “You rolled support so shouldn’t even TRY to solo” is crap that can stay in all those Trinity-based games. I’m here (versus playing the trinity-based MMO I was stuck with for the last seven years and haven’t touched once since my return here) precisely because CoH is NOT like all those other MMOs.

Can you describe HOW it crashes? Is it just a rapid crash to your desktop or a "lost connection to mapserver" that lasts a minute or so before dumping you to the login screen. These details matter a LOT in determining the cause. For example, the latter has been plaguing a number of players and there are a couple of solutions presented in threads related to those issues (probably on page 2 or 3 by now, but look for "Mapserver" in the thread title). The former is where employing Homecoming's new Crash Reporting system (full info dump) would be helpful to the Homecoming team in sorting out what's happening.

SG Mode is extremely useful. I always promote my current main to guild leader so I can adjust the colors on all my costumes at will. Some days I wear a black shirt, some days a red shirt others a blue shirt. I have tan, blue and black pants... ALL from one costume slot. It's almost like the character has a real person's wardrobe or something crazy like that. 😀

This can’t be repeated often enough. I’m just gonna put the link here to where someone who’d worked in the industry explained how prestige content tied to grind was literally designed to prey upon players and get them to part with their money. And if you look at a lot of the last content released by Paragon Studios, you could see the pressure by the higher ups to increase profits by any means necessary because those last arcs were practically commercials for the new power sets and costume options you could purchase using Paragon Points (i.e. by spending real money; either the stipend granted with a subscription or direct purchase). Homecoming doesn’t have that pressure because of its non-profit focus. This allows it to not just be a place to play the game we love again, but to embrace practices that are psychologically healthier for the players who engage with it; where your worth is found in what you create and in how you help your fellow players, not in grinding for virtual items to show off how much better at grinding you are.

Taken from the Suggestions board that I’d just learned to live with, but really does annoy me when I think about it; Nerf Sound Effects and Music volumes. I play with them set to 3% and 2% respectively and they still overwhelm all but the loudest parts of music or audio I’m streaming at max volume in the background. The settings that don’t blow out my eardrums are so low there’s no ability to fine tune them at all... going up or down a percent on the FX is a 33% change and it’s worse for the in game music. So, I’d like to see a global Sound Effects and Music nerf of 50%. Alternately, I want implementation of the old long-promised FREEM visual sound effects system. This is a comic book world; we should be reading, not hearing, the sound effects. 😁

I run with my in-game sounds at 3% and music at 2% and both will still overwhelm all but loudest parts of music playing at full volume on iTunes or YouTube. There’s very little gradation you can do when you’re down at that level. Going to 2% or 4% is a 33% reduction or increase. I’d be for a global 50% nerf in sound volume (then I could tune it all the way up to 6%).

So what you’re REALLY saying is we need to cut the number of Blue-side zones and make the remaining ones more dramatic... 😉 This part is why I three-quarters seriously lobby for Skyway to get the Galaxy City treatment and for Steel Canyon to be revamped using the barely seen skyscraper assets from Praetoria’s Imperial City and Neutropolis zones to make it look like the hypermodern cityscape it’s meant to be. Maybe add a mission arc that uses the destroyed Skyway City instanced map (from the mission with Praetorian Fusion and Jane Temblor) to explain why the whole zone is now locked down and inaccessible. Relocate the Troll rave event and Synapse TF to Steel so it’s got a little more going on (actually, given the focus and level range of his TF, Position and all his TF missions in Steel might make even more sense if they were moved to Faultline). I’d also be a fan of a Hollows update where they actually permanently fill the crater with lava as it was in the “Who Will Die?” arc (including the perma-twilight lit from below look) just to make that place more visually dynamic (just move any mission tags to doors above the lava’s surface, but otherwise leave the zone missions alone).

Which is probably why they’re willing to entertain negotiations and haven’t come down on the rogue servers... CoH is so far outside their target market (and the playerbase across all of them small enough that any profits would be a rounding error) that it’s not actually worth expending even token resources on. Regardless, there are a myriad of reasons that things could be considered “impossible” 7+ years ago that no longer apply now. So, in addition to the Kheld non-shifting form forms, another I’d like to see is the perfectly smooth metallic they have for the males (metallic 2 I think it is) ported over to the females. I’ve got a concept for an ex-Widow (a psi-melee stalker) who’s dropped the overt spider-themed bits, but still employs the armored bodysuit in their costume and it’d look a lot better without the seams on the basic metallic texture.

To be fair to the original devs, some of the stuff was less “impossible” in a technical sense, but rather “impossible” in the sense of... “if we let every player run around with two auras and both a back and a butt cape simultaneously it’s going to crash out the graphics on the lower end machines some of our players use every time that person has to go to Atlas Park.” You have to remember they were making decisions based on computer processing capabilities from nearly a decade ago (to more than a decade ago in the case of low end machines of the time) when making these decisions. Nearly a decade of advancements in computer processing just make some of those problems irrelevant. For example... trying to run max graphics settings on the computer I ran CoH on during the retail years would have dropped my frame rate to 10/sec or less. The completely average machine I have today runs CoH at max settings as smooth as butter. I remember the devs having pre-release downloads before issues went live because the full update would take HOURS to download (whereas if you downloaded the pre-release just the last changes needed to be downloaded). Now the whole of CoH can be downloaded from scratch using Tequila in 15-20 minutes. The point is, just because modern computers make it easy now, doesn’t mean it wasn’t actually “impossible” back in 2004-2012.

My opinion is you should post about this topic here; https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14177-consolidated-coh-difficulty-thread-includes-poll/

Cross-promotion with my thread on Kheld-forms; I’d like the option to not change into a squid or lobster when you enter the form, just switch to those abilities and maybe pick up a default Kheld glowie aura. As someone in that thread mentioned, the form powers already have animations tied to them in the power customization window so there’s not even work needed for that. The reason for this is entirely that I want to see the costume I put all that work into designing without needing to create a relatively gimped human-only build.

I will add that one non-optional part of difficulty adjustment I would be for is a rebalance of the rewards. Carnies and Rularuu ARE more difficult than Council of the same level and the xp/inf/salvage awards should reflect that. Heck, maybe some of the harder enemy group missions could even have small merit rewards. Also worth mentioning in terms of increased difficulty is that a lot of it (particularly some of the harder TFs) can be quite time consuming and I suspect the current player base skews older than a lot of MMOs with correspondingly less free time to play. As such, breaking some of that harder content up into more digestible chunks akin to Posi 1/2 or adapting some of the trials that take 16-24 members into conventional task forces might also make it easier to run.