Chris24601

I'll second the need to do a serious pass, particularly Blue-side, on its 1-20 missions. The Praetorian + Statesman/Sister Psyche deaths did a huge number on the comprehensibility of the low level content blueside (Red-side you're mostly a self-serving type so its early content doesn't feel nearly so out of order). Basically, I think some things about where things are in the timeline need to be settled because right now its a quantum mess where one minute Penny Yin is some teeny-bopper hanging with Clockwork looking for her daddy, and not 5 minutes later you can start her task force where she's a grown women, then in the Lady Grey taskforce she's back to being a teen again. As much as killing Statesman off was a cathartic "take that!" at Jack, it fudged up a LOT of the low level content by making it retroactive in the previous "zone level = time order" staple. I'd actually suggest semi-reversing that decision in that, prior to the level band where you can run the signature stories where they die (Level 40) that the game treats Statesman and Psyche as alive. This means you don't have to change any of the late game content (Ms. Liberty can continue to give out the TF, Maria Jenkins still gives out the revised Praetorian missions), but perhaps switching out the Penelope Yin model handing out the Task Force in Independence Port to her younger version (or maybe a hybrid costume to show a little time has passed since Faultline) and making a few dialogue tweaks to how she's acting in that level range as Sister Psyche's protégé (vs. her replacement). Some slight dialogue tweaks in the newer lower level material that acted like Statesman/Psyche had always been dead when you play them would do a LOT to make it feel more coherent along with one other tweak... ... Put the Signature Story Arcs into the regular contacts/find contact system (perhaps in place of the First Ward ones) at the appropriate levels. Now new players will get exposure to some of the more interesting missions that also have a grander story connected to the lore as part of them. Have completing each one unlock the next contact in the chain (with the last of the Who Will Die arc unlocking the first for Pandora's Box) and I think a lot of the story of City of Heroes as new players are experiencing it will hold together a lot better. Because right now a rather significant part of the Blue-side lore and what's going on with Penny Yin and several other factors is hidden off in contacts you don't even know exist unless you've read the wiki. Plus it gives you 12 more contacts to replace all the First/Night Ward ones with on the Search for Contacts bar.

I have, for brief minutes had up to 65 million inf on hand. One ATO set and a few LotGs later I’m back down to my typical sub-million level until I get enough merits for another big splurge. Getting the 28 ATO sets x 6 x 2 (standard for leveling, superior for my current 50) x c. 8,000,000 inf per ATO… means I’ve easily gained more than 3 billion (4 billion if I stop to think of all my clothes horsing)… I just don’t have much that’s liquid.

Is there an actual a reason why the ancillaries shouldn’t just use the normal formulas for powers? If the goal is useful interesting choices the option needs to either supply something so lateral to what an AT can already do to be valuable in that way, or be at least as good as their other power options. Worth noting for the lateral offerings; various melee sets can offer some meaningful debuffs/status effects and even ranged attacks (40’ is enough for runners), so when you’re laying out an Ancillary ranged power for scrappers; taking a look at what they can already do with Claws’ Focus (excellent damage with knockdown), or Kinetics’ Focused Burst (not to mention their 40’ cones) or for status effects, remember that Street Justice can dish the pretty reliable stunning, knockdown and knockup… or Dark’s to-hit debuffs, etc. Similarly, controllers who slot for damage instead of duration (and sets like gravity with Propel) should be considered when deciding what the scale for a useful single target ranged attack you’re offering them would be. Ancillaries need to offer options at least as good as what players can get from the right options in their native sets or what’s even the point of them? And similarly those options of comparison should include things like the P2W (START) powers. The incidental accuracy and recharge set bonuses people get as part of set bonuses if you’re not trying to make every power a proc bomb will be more than enough to turn an origin bonus blackwand into something doing about as much as fully slotted Zapp (in non-snipe mode) with a 95% hit rate vs. most targets and an 8-ish second recharge… with no direct slot investments at all (just taking advantage of the global set bonuses). Low-level unslottable gap fillers that exist outside the normal power structure shouldn’t be competitive with Ancillary pool powers in my opinion.

It would be pretty hard to balance, I’d imagine, but given the current state of ancillaries, it does feel like an extra slot or two would actually be more useful than choices of powers you didn’t feel were important enough to take in the first 35 levels, subpar options, and a few that are good enough to actually be worth taking (that under the current paradigm are who knows how many updates away from being made just as subpar because of some formula that itself could stand a reasonable looksee to see if it even makes sense) Honestly? When players like me are taking the leadership pool powers first available at level 4 in their 30-40s instead of ancillaries because they’re actually going to be useful to augment what you already have… When they snag Aid Other instead of ancillaries because even without slotting it’ll help keep the rescuees you’re supposed to keep alive in later missions from dying… When you’re picking up Air Superiority on a Scapper just because it’s got solid control and good recharge instead of an ancillary… When the only objection to making them better is that you could always “proc bomb” it in a way I’m 90% sure the original designers of the invention system never intended… … I’d say that indicates a fundamental design problem with the ancillary powers as a whole. And I would agree with that assessment. There’s no reason for what is effectively a T10 power in terms of unlock level to perform worse than the starter powers do. Hell, with sufficient global accuracy and recharge I often find the Blackwand and Nemesis Statf more useful at high level than the Ancillary blasts are… they hit as hard or harder with comparable recharge. The only reason I don’t use them on all my toons is because I want to use something that actually fits my character’s theme and not something that looks like you’re playing WoW with the cosmetics turned off. Put simply; I feel there’s nothing game-breaking or unbalancing about what are effectively T10-14 powers for a character being able to match the capabilities of another AT’s starter (T1-3) powers. A level 35 lightning blaster will have much better powers than their starters to outshine a Level 35 scrapper who gets a full T1 lightning bolt (4s recharge) as an ancillary power… the need to make that scrapper’s bolt underperform even the T1 bolt of the blaster doesn’t make the Blaster feel more powerful… it just makes the Scrapper wonder why they switched alignments to run a villain arc just because their high level concept was supposed to be able to throw down some lightning occasionally if the power pick isn’t even going to match spamming their native T1 on a target).

If you need multiple damage procs just to make an ancillary competitive (losing set bonuses, acc, recharge, etc. to frankenslotting in the process), then clearly there’s a problem with the base power. Not everyone is a Mids optimizer; some people just want to throw a set of Thunderstrike into their Mu Bolts and expect it to not be outperformed by your starter attack since it didn’t even unlock until level 35.

One example; Mu Bolts going from 6s (almost enough with full slotting and sufficient global recharge to make a chain out of the four blasty Mu powers) to 8s (just enough to get that annoying "Woom" of a power not quite recharged)? Also: - Fire Blast going from 6s to 8s - Dark Blast going from 6s to 8s - Netherworld Tentacles from 16s to 20s - Oppressive Gloom from 8s to 16s - Torrent going from 15s to 30s - Fossilize going from 80' to 60' - Chain Fences going from 8s to 16s - Electric Fence going from 4s to 8s - Shocking Bolt going from 16s to 24s - Shocking Bolts range also going from 80' to 60' - Static Discharge going from 12s to 24s and 14.82 to 27.3 End for a measly .91 to .958 damage increase. - Explosive Blast going from 16s to 32s - Char going from 16s to 24s and range from 80' to 60' - Fire Cages going from 16s to 20s - Frostbite going from 16s to 20s - Laser Beam Eyes going from 6s to 8s - Dominate going from 16s to 24s - Psionic Tornado losing a quarter of its damage over time. - Mu Lightning from 9s to 12s - Darkness Night going from 10s to 20s - Oppressive Gloom going from 8s to 16s All of those were already inferior to the standard versions of those powers in primary/secondaries. They're already weak enough that the only reason to ever use them is if, for some reason, you aren't able to use your normal primary/secondary attacks (ex. snagging a runner) They're already subpar (ex. fully slotted Mu Bolts can still fail to drop minion runners)... why make them even worse? Particularly when, by the time you unlock the ancillary pools, you've already taken every Primary and Secondary power you're actually interested in since they're all unlocked well before you hit level 35... so your upper level experience is nothing but filler powers you're taking as slot mules or purely for a cosmetic theme (sidebar - it also ticks me off that lightning themed ancillaries for several ATs are locked behind villain content) you'll never use in challenging content because they're all inferior to the powers you've had unlocked since your teens to early-20's. The move to make the capstones of your primary and secondary earlier, along with this process of nerfing the hell out of powers already inferior to the primary and secondary ones, has made the back half of the leveling process a boring grind with nothing to really look forward to except filling in the slots on your actually useful powers and then getting your incarnate powers. Ancillary powers should be something you look forward to; not something you treat as an annoyance because you're not getting something actually useful like more slots at levels 35, 38, 41, 44, 47 and 49... just powers you're going to use as mules or ignore outside of faffing about against things that aren't actually a threat to you.

What's NOT too late for this page? Undoing some of the nerfs to powers that, even on live, aren't outperforming your t1-3 powers.

Then I would suggest that the best way to do THAT would be to stop treating the Ancillary/Patron pools like red-headed stepchildren who need to be beaten down lest they outshine the primaries and secondaries. With the changes made to primary/secondary power access, you're now able to slot the entirety of your Primary/Secondary powers by level 32; IF you're even taking all of them. Making the back half of leveling (given the slowdown at 35+ compared to the earlier levels 35 has always felt like the mid-point for most characters to me) into some drudgery where you're not getting something defining, but low-tier powers you're probably using mostly for carrying set bonuses (or are edge-cases falling outside the metrics) because they can barely compete with your T1-3 powers you've had since the singles is NOT the way to go. When you unlock Mu Mastery for a Scrapper and pick up Mu Bolts, it should NOT be making a little "fizzle" sound (seriously... the Mu Mystics get these satisfying boom/cracks to their bolts and you get "fisssss"), doing less damage than your T1 attack with twice the recharge... and the rest of the power continue the trend. Just using them is sub-optimal unless you, for some reason, can't actually get into melee distance with a target. But that's where we're at with them now; powers that are only good for cosmetics in trash fights because they're not allowed to match the capability of your main powers despite having to wait 35 levels to get them. Its to the point where I actually look at levels 35, 38, 41, 44, 47 and 49 as "Dead" levels because I have to pick a near useless power, vs. the levels where I get more slots to fill out actually useable ones. That's NOT the sort of thing you want as the reward for pushing through 35 levels just to unlock them; a "That's it?" I mean, if you don't want them to be any better than the basic pool powers; why even bother locking them to level 35+? Even if you took them at ordinary pool tier levels none of them would be competing with your primaries or secondaries for usefulness. In short, I think the entire CONCEPT of the Epic/Ancillary pools and their metrics needs a sound looking at.

Having tried more of the sets out, I’m going to make a blanket statement, that the basic ranged attacks for melee archetypes would be better served if you reduced the base damage instead of increasing the recharge times. Because of their nature, the melee ATs are never going to have sufficient ranged powers to really chain anything, so being able to have something to tag runners (typically on their last sliver of health) and not have to worry so much about whether or not its recharged is going to have much more utility than a hard-hitting slow recharge ranged attack power (that’s what a snipe is for). Leaving some sets with quicker, but less damaging, ranged attacks while others have the longer recharge higher damage ones would allow players the choice of which version is best for them.

My question is the need to nerf the the recharge time on Mu Bolts. It’s been six seconds since it got introduced and that made it feel a little zippier; an important aspect when, like the starting characters, you don’t actually have enough to make a full chain when stuck at a given range band. I know 6s vs. 8s isn’t THAT much of a nerf, but with good global recharge the 6s base is enough to pull off a semi-respectible chain with mu bolt each going between zapp, electric shackles, and ball lightning for those times when melee is just really impractical. I get the drive to make all the powers the same for easier balancing*, but for me this move is just killing the spirit of certain things (like how Rad’s super quick T1 really set it apart for Defenders, then the Blaster version is up at 4s so the playstyle doesn’t carry through to the other AT, it’s just another plays like every other blast set with different animations… sometimes a guy just wants to mash the 1 key against trash mobs and that super fast recharge made that practical). * I spent a long time on a game project doing something similar only to realize I’d essentially crushed any uniqueness out of my classes because they all worked the same way with just fluff text saying they were different. Letting them have differences made my end users happier because not everyone values the same things equally… I think the same is true of power sets. Defenders/Corruptors are way more interesting because Devices, Force Fields, Kinetics, Storm, etc. all do very different things.

Just a note that many of the Female leg textures are misaligned at the knees. The Vanguard texture, for example has an identical issue where the inner leg texture clips into the plate on the front of the leg near the knee. This suggests the issue is not with the textures, but with the UV mapping of the female figure. Fix the UV map for the figure and ALL the original textures will work as intended without needing to re-edit them.

Deleted to put it in Focused Feedback where it belongs.

I don’t suppose this includes fixing the misaligned texture wrapping on the female thighs, does it? I’d honestly trade most of the above for a texture pass fix on the female legs as a lot of the more detailed textures fail to align properly and the Blood Widow pattern is particularly obvious.

Nothing to fear good citizen. All the architects in the city secretly belong to the Midnighters. Their building designs cause people to regularly trace out geomantric patterns that prevent the Things from the Outer Darkness from being able to invade our realm. You may gripe about the long commute to your office in the back end of the building, but its either that or Tentacles!!! coming out of places you don't even want to think about*. * the back of my refrigerator; what are you, a pervert?

You'd lose that bet. I used the Trams throughout the Library of Souls arc just today because its not that much further to a tram from the base portal and it saves an entire loading screen just bouncing from Talos to Founders to Altas in various combinations. So, how many dollars (or donuts, I'm not picky) do I win?

I’ve got a suggestion on that. The original reason for those phasing volumes was to cut down on the number of actual instances that would need to be generated by the number of new players/toons the live devs expected to be present at low levels. This is why only the last mission of each arc was actually properly instanced even when you were sent indoors. However, technical limits and populations march on. So my suggestion is that, instead of phases, have each mission send us into an instanced section of Atlas/Mercy via Enter Mission by speaking to a contact (which a lot of the later post Atlas/Mercy missions used) with only the non-combat phases left in the open world and perhaps de-phased (a permanent Hellion bust from the first arc and the murder scene investigation and hero speaking to angry citizens from the two middle arcs wouldn’t be bad things to leave unphased). Basically, you could throw a bounding box around the Northwest corner of Atlas Park and use that map for pretty much all the first and third arcs and one of the Northeast corner for both of the second arcs. So, for example Habashy’s arc might be a quick street hunt (five Hellions in the unphased open world isn’t ridiculous), then he sends you to the officer only, instead of telling you to go north to the lake area, he sends you to an instance where you rescue hostages to unlock the underground section and recover the artifact. Exiting the mission puts you back at the police officer and your mission bar says to call Matthew. Change the “beat up specific guy for disguse” into another short open world hunt mission for any Hellion that allows you to enter the door for the non- combat walk around to find a flier mission, then instanced mission as normal. For the Vahz mission, keep the talk to the detective/witness as a non-phased element in Atlas Park (some RP-er might need an open crime scene at some point) and turn the sewer part into an instance. Talk to the hero turned entertainer and have them send you to a instance to stomp some Vahz and rescue people. Exit by entertainer and run final instanced mission normally. For the Skulls arc, the hunt could probably stay open world as could “click open world glowies.” Just unphase those areas but leave enough Skulls in the area to handle the hunt portion. Leave the hero firing up an audience as an unphased element. Actually, there’s not much phasing in that arc anyway. For the Thiery Arachnos arc, create an instance of that whole chunk of Atlas on fire. Theiry sends you in and you fight Arachnos. Exit by Thiery. He sends you in again to fight more Arachnos Commanders and merge the destroy towers mission in with that, replacing the mission turn in dialogue with pretty much the same thing as comm chatter box text. Exit and run the final door mission and turn in with Habashy as before (and his unphased wife... because invisible non-combat NPCs isn’t really an issue the way phase volumes are). That should render Atlas phase volume free and some of the instances replacing phase volumes may not even need to be identical; a small outdoors warehouse section would work for the Arachnos missions just as well as the specific Atlas Park layout for example.

What I actually liked about the proposed Perez Park revamp was that it wouldn't need an Echo version. The idea was that the Circle would raise a chunk of their city into the sky above the park so the ground level would still be the low level hazard zone with a floating island (side bar: there's a map in Scirocco's patron arc that is basically exactly this and roughly a kilometer long so the asset already exists) so far above it that it would either need to be a separate zone accessed by a portal, or otherwise so far up that you'd have to deliberately fly up to it in order to aggro anything.

Honestly, I think the best solution to The Coming Storm that plays to Homecoming's strengths would be to replace it as a singular uber-force and instead make it a pile up of simultaneous threats with the Battalion as the straw that broke the camel's back. In terms of lore, the Rikti fought their dimension's battalion ages ago and their advanced tech was taken from the Battalion. Similarly their mutated appearance was necessitated by having to adapt to world "terraformed" to better suit the Battalion. Ergo, we already HAVE the meshes in game to do a viable Battalion because they're effectively a pallet-swapped and upgraded version of the Rikti (maybe re-scale and pallet swap some of their elite bosses/AVs as level 54 LTs and regular bosses) with Shivan foot soldiers (level 54 minions and underlings). But then make that only one threat... the Storm is that we also have a revamped Council with Praetorian tech launching a new offensive, the Circle of Thorns is lifting Orenbega from the earth and turning it into a floating island above Perez Park, Lord Recluse launches a new masterplan to replace the Web and Project Destiny, Malta transforms itself with Battle Maiden's nanites, Rularu's Cult reorganizes and are creating incursions into Primal Earth to finally try and break their master free, Primal Hamidon breaches the dimensional barriers and merges with Praetorian Hamidon to become the multidimensional Hamidon Prime, etc. All these things hitting at once are the result of the future Armageddon and each one is something that the Homecoming team could tackle one threat at a time as part of a growing puzzle where it takes all the heroes and villains acting in concert (rather than a single destined hero) to actually survive the Storm.

My suggestion for Power Siphon is to make it like Follow Up on Claws... a melee attack that starts off a period where you can build stacks and, if you slot enough recharge, can essentially be permanent. Maybe, set the stacks to 50-75% of their current values with the idea that you'll be playing a mini-game of maintaining stacks pretty much full-time in combat (slightly more involved than even Follow Up since that only builds stacks from itself... this would build stacks from every hit you make). Option two for Power Siphon is make it an auto-power something like Blaster Defiance where once you pick it, each hit automatically adds a stack (with the cyclone effect around you triggering when you reach full stacks as a visual cue that you're at/maintaining full stacks). My personal peeve with the set overall is that it plays like Claws' slower gimped cousin. Both have the same sort of ranged attack, PBAoE and ranged knockback cone... but KM's effects let it work for a lot more concepts (martial arts, magic, repulsor tech, etc.) while claws are... claws. The cast time/recharge on a lot of the attacks could stand some speeding up. For example, Focused Burst takes nearly twice as long to cast and has about a 30% longer recharge time compared to Claws' Focus for about a 20% increase in damage. Burst vs. Spin is similarly gimped and and does even less damage despite being in a higher tier (I know... secondary effects, but the ultimate secondary effect is death... which claws delivers).

Nope... mainly because the whole game lore contradicts the "dead" thing. The lore is that you are equipped with a medi-porter as part of becoming a registered hero/get on the radar of Project Destiny. It's basically a medical monitor and teleporter that will automatically recall you to a hospital if your vitals are too close to death where supertech med bays heal you in pretty short order. Also, comic book lore in general contradicts permanent death for characters... at worst its a time-out/chance for some afterlife R&R until some writer interested in using you again comes up with some plot to bring you back... or, if you're obscure enough, just brings you back with no explanation whatsoever. Some people have died and returned so many times that in-universe its regarded as a joke (its so common for X-Men that when Banshee died his daughter refused to believe it and stated he'd be back sooner or later because that's just how it works for them).

For me, I always take the faster recharging attack of the t1-2 first and will almost always get both just because you can use those as all but a complete attack chain to smash through just about anything on base difficulty regardless of how low you're exemped by a mission/TF. I'm playing for stress relief, not a challenge, just being able to spam 2-3 attacks on mostly minions and LTs with virtually no risk is what I'm looking for after 10 hours at work.

The invention tutorial doesn't even pop up when you get in the level range and isn't even a part of the "Find Contacts" list. If you're a new player you literally have to know its there to even be aware of it. Similarly, the Shooting Stars/Dr. Graves "tutorials" barely touch on the Auction House, you basically run by it and unless you're actually paying attention to Flambeux's blather you could zip right past it too. Frankly, we have an /ah command. I think the proper solution if the Market is intended to be used by everyone is to do what every MMO who's added such a market after launch has done... Add a big shiny button that says "Auction House" on it to UI (basically a free-floating /AH macro) and attach a "Help/Guide" button to the top of the Auction House UI that goes over the parts of the Auction House. In addition, if the intention is that people are going to use merits primarily to buy items to sell on the AH for inf, then in addition to the notice that "You've received your first Merit Reward" that you can just click OK and promptly forget about, how about having it drop a mission into your mission log that tells you to go talk to a Merit Vendor NPC (not the generic terminals, one of the ones in the ugly gold and purple outfits) who will have a bit of dialogue that also includes, "Many things available from merit vendors are quite valuable and can be sold for large amounts of Influence/Infamy/Information using the Auction House. You can access the Auction House by clicking the big gold button that says AH on your screen." Alternately... MERGE the Merit Vendor UI into the Auction House so you open the Auction House UI to spend your merits. Another thing that would be extremely useful to merge into the Auction House UI would be a built in window that displays your enhancements, recipes and salvage instead of needing to open them separately. I can't begin to tell you how much trouble people I've introduced to the game have finding all of the sub-menus and systems that veteran players take for granted. Yes, you can ask for help and we're friendly, but a lot of the people I've brought in are hesitant to ask in general chat (instead they shoot Tells at me) because they expect the community here to be like all the other MMO communities; toxic e-peen jerks who mock or even give bad advice to newbies for the Lolz. Basically, I feel like there is a ton of badly designed UI elements related to rewards (inf, merits and drops) and markets (NPC vendors and the market) that CoH veterans only find acceptable because they're used to them rather than because any new person joining the game would be able to figure them out. We may be extremely tolerant of people running missions and building toons their own way, but a lot of this game's interfaces are their own exercise in "Lern2Play Newb!" Associated side-bar to the above. The Outbreak/Breakout/Precinct 5 Tutorials are just so much better for completely new players to actually figure out the game than the Galaxy City one. There are actual explanations of things while the Galaxy City one just throws you into the deep end with just the barest of "click this now" from a voice over. I would suggest that if you really wanted to improve the accessibility of all these various systems, you should look at updating Outbreak/Breakout/Precinct 5 to include merits and the AH and move the Galaxy City Tutorial to a "know the game, but still want a quick intro scene" line vs. the genuine new player tutorials that give the player the time to actually read through mission dialogues that explain things like enemy threat color coding, inventory tabs and how to rearrange items in your power trays.

If the "vs." part is a matter of dev focus, I'd definitely agree new content is the way to go. The first and easiest method would be, as someone previously suggested; adding more tip missions. The reason is simple; they're individual elements of repeatable content that don't need to be connected to anything other than the present tip system; i.e. no new contacts, no changes to any zones, only a few paragraphs of text each. That means they can be implemented piecemeal without necessarily needing a whole issue/page to add them. As suggested, they don't even need to offer a moral choice (one could argue that accepting or dismissing the tip would be the moral choice), just be new content. Related to this, I also agree with the idea of decoupling radio mission locations from level and, perhaps with that, expanding the level ranges for certain groups... or at least having logical transitions (ex. running the Midnighter missions at lower levels gets you Lost and specific Rikti bosses while at higher levels they're all Rikti). The second thing I'd like to see in this regard is, especially blue-side, is Zone Revamps and Consolidation. When the snap hit, I ended up trying several alternatives, but the one I really want to mention here is "Vanilla SWTOR." A LOT of the older zones in City of Heroes lack much character and are, by and large, empty. Mission doors are randomly assigned and sometimes don't even have specific zones they have to be in. By contrast; every last corner of each world in the initial 1-50 SWTOR had a purpose related to one of the missions in the game. If there was a mission that required you to hunt 10 of X, by golly there was a specific region of the map where those things spawned in regularly. If the mission called for you to go to a specific generator and repair it, there was a specific generator in a specific part of the map you had to go to. In CoH that sort of design is really only present in the revised Atlas/Mercy intro arcs and, to a lesser extent, parts of Praetoria. What I'd like to see is mission content created or modified to be like that. Lock the missions of the old story arcs to specific doors in the same zone as the contact unless it absolutely needs to be in another zone. Add specific locations for the mobs needed for mission completions to spawn. For example, "Defeat X Carnies" in CoH is a pain in the butt because they only spawn on Peregrine Island at night... and the random number generator is just as likely to drop Malta or Rikti or Nemesis onto a given spawn point. Having a specific section of the map where it ALWAYS spawns Carnies (or Nemesis or Malta or Rikti) would make those missions a LOT smoother. Related to this is the idea of Consolidation. I've suggested this before, but I think the game could benefit from blowing Skyway off the map the same way Galaxy City was (link it to the Admiral Sutter TF) and all of the zone events and contacts there moved to Steel Canyon (and Steel getting a face-lift by replacing many of the buildings with the newer ones from Praetoria... of which there are hundreds to choose from) to make it a more modern and active zone (adding a great monster and Troll raves/Supa-Trolls in addition to the existing fire event). Because seriously, other than ground access to Faultline and Bloody Bay, the Synapse TF and roads to nowhere WHAT is there that actually makes Skyway worth visiting that couldn't be done just as well by adding a Tram in Faultline and dropping Synapse and the Bloody Bay chopper in Steel Canyon (perhaps moving Positron and the bulk of the Posi 1 mission doors to Faultline, where the bulk of the Posi 2 TF also occurs)? Repeat this one zone pair at a time and decide for each just what the purpose of each Zone is other than just filling up space and creating the illusion of choice in advancement (i.e. you can get the contact from Steel who gives you a set of missions or the contact from Skyway who gives you the exact same set of missions... or at least did back in the old days). For example... What is the purpose of Independence Port that can't be accomplished by the docks of Talos Island? Now maybe both DO serve a purpose, but maybe they don't. For me, Talos is a convenient mid-level hub because you've got a trainer, base portal and merit vendor all right next to a Tram, but it has a ton of dead space you only fly past on your way to mission doors. The only reason to hit IP outside of a specific mission is the level 30 Icon mission, the Yin TF, the starting phases of a Terra Volta respec trial and Lusca. The giant Golden Gate-ish bridge is also visually appealing, but there's a whole lot of just dead space there that feels like it needs MORE; like "you could chop the far north and everything south of the Terra Volta entrance off and make villain zones out of them and 90% of Blue players would never notice they were missing" empty. That would be my focus way more than adding new zones; Fill in the existing ones. You could even make a contest out of it by having "Write an Independence Port focused AE story arc and the top X (as judged by the devs) will become new story arcs for the zone."

Instead of locking Incarnates to level 50 content, I’d suggest it instead be limited to level 51 content (i.e. content run at level 50 with the difficulty turned to at least +1 for level 51-52 enemies). Maybe it even needs to be higher than that, but the idea is that doing so provides a simple and deliberate toggle to allow or disallow incarnate abilities by the mission leader just setting the difficulty at a certain level. And again, the two things I keep coming back to are; A) You could already build Superman or Thor (selected because they’re basically the strongest of the mainline heroes in their respective universes) before there was ever an Incarnate system. B) The Incarnate system wasn’t added to improve the health of the game... it was added to obviate the 1-50 game with unbalancing abilities in order to promote a monetizeable endgame grind to appease NCSoft. It doesn’t matter how much you might like the Incarnate system; I loved my 80’ electronet arrows and they were nowhere near as disruptive as incarnate powers yet still got nerfed for what the devs believe is the good of the game. For the health of the overall game Incarnate powers really need to be reigned in. One obvious and simple fix would be that the Alpha Slot level shift should be made into an Incarnate Shift (i.e. only functions in incarnate content like the other two). As a fix that still offers something to those who like the Incarnate powers, add a difficulty option to the game for turning on/off Incarnate powers. Turning it on not only allows incarnate powers and level shifts to be used, but adds level shifts to all opponents (I’d base it on difficulty... +1 level shift per +1 difficulty... so at +4 the opponents would also have +4 level shifts applied) and drops special “aspect” opponents into the missions (like quantums, but for Incarnates). In trade... allow incarnate powers to function all the way down to level 1 even when exemplared as long as the difficulty option for incarnates is toggled on. This then opens up ALL the old content for Incarnate Oroboros teams to challenge themselves against.

Check my previous post in this thread... that was my moderate position, but since you're claiming we should all be ignored I figured I'd just drop my real, non-moderated, thoughts on incarnates. To sum up my feelings... Incarnates were bad design (and a poor fit for a game where you could already easily build Superman or Thor as a normal level 50 character; no incarnate powers needed) foisted on Paragon Studios by NCSoft insisting that the game have a Korean MMO-style endgame grindfest they could monetize. It was deliberately unbalanced relative to the 1-50 game for the same reason the BIS raid gear in other MMOs is OP... to get people to view the 1-50 game the same way it is in virtually every other MMO; as the speedbump to the real game where endless grinding for random gear drops is the only way to advance, and then every so often once enough are close enough to the top tier, they drop a new raid and level of gear with all new grinding for the next tier of unbalanced gear to obtain. Rince, repeat, collect paychecks. Frankly, the ONLY reason Incarnate powers are seen as a normal part of the game here is because of the decision to incorporate incarnate XP, threads and emp merits into veteran levels and general content. If it was still behind the usual Incarnate Trial grindfest (or Dark Astoria for a trivial amount of incarnate rewards) it'd be as niche as PVP is. MAYBE people grind for the Alpha, but the rest would be a small amount of diehards too busy working for their t4s on the iTrials to influence the way the level 45-50 game is played (i.e. most people with Judgement would be running iTrials for the xp/threads/components they need to upgrade that and unlock the higher tier powers and not Peregrine Island radio missions). We are free of the need for the monetized grind and, with it, the need for brokenly OP powers that existed only to be monetized. My honest opinion... take the brief outrage lumps and do what's actually good for the long term health of the game by either removing or completely siloing (as PVP is siloed) the Incarnate system*. This will make it infinitely easier to develop new content, particularly stories that need to be level 50 to make sense. * If the system is removed, re-balance the story/mission content for normal level 50s (I've similarly long suggested that the Incarnate Trials be reworked into a story arc/taskforce format handed out at level 45-50... one of the problems with gating major story elements behind massive trials is its can be hard to stop and read the flavor text when everyone's hellbent on getting through the trial ASAP).