Chris24601

RP-wise, I’d say that “murdering gang members” character is a Vigilante as the game defines alignment (villainous ends justify means, but still nominally with altruistic ends in mind). The biggest problem with Vigilante in CoH is their tip missions mostly require you to either hold the idiot ball or RP as an already high-functioning psychopath to choose it over the hero choice its placed next to. By contrast, the Homecoming original vigilante mission has a much greater degree of nuance to it in terms of, is it justice to let the villain get away with murder (he’s still going away for other lesser crimes, but it’s a slap on the wrist compared to his true crimes)? What this thread has really helped me realize is that you can actually lay out CoX’s alignments on a pretty basic grid of means and ends; Hero = Altruistic ends, ends do NOT justify means. Vigilante = Altruistic ends, ends DO justify means. Villain = Selfish ends, ends justify means. Rogue = Selfish ends, ends do not justify means. It’s also worth noting that, in terms of external observed morality, the means used (immediate impact) are often more important than the ends (long term impacts) as far as how an audience views things and their appeal. That’s why the dashing rogue is even a trope. Objectively Danny Ocean is a criminal who’s robbing a legitimate business to get back at the guy who took his girl. But he’s charming, he’s targeting a business in a field widely regarded as virtually legalized crime with strong ties to organized crime, headed by an asshole victim who chooses money over the girl, and he pulls it off through a clever plan and his wits rather than violence. So when he ends up with both the money and the girl the means used make his entirely selfish goals feel justified to general audiences. If he’d organized a crew of killers to go in; shoot up the customers, kill security guards for just doing their legitimate jobs, and took his ex-wife back at the barrel of a gun after blowing the casino owner’s brains out… well, he’d be the villain of the story and normal audiences would be left wondering where the hero of the story is who’s going to stop him. How many members of the audience would be okay with that story? The criminal gets out of prison, organizes a team of murderers who rob a casino, kill a bunch of bystanders, kidnap the criminal’s ex-wife… and get away with the money and the ex-wife scott free? That’s the main reason Red Side is 20% the size of Blueside… and would be only 10% without enough rogue content to keep some of the more general audience satisfied. Lack of agency is, I think, a convenient excuse. There are plenty of stories of roguish characters being swept along by events and having to use their wits to keep from meeting a sticky end. Some of the worst villains in history were “just following orders.” The biggest turn off to Redside, at least in my opinion, is that human nature includes a sense of justice. We don’t like injustice. We want to see people get their just deserts. Most people just don’t enjoy stories where injustice is allowed to stand; where the bad guy gets away with it. Which is why in fiction intended for mass consumption so much effort in stories with a less than heroic protagonist is spent on justifying their actions; to satisfy the audience’s desire for justice. It’s why the target in nearly every heist story is an asshole or unfeeling corporation at best (and often a worse criminal or corrupt corporation than the one pulling the heist). It’s why stories where the protagonist is an assassin focus on some wrong the target has done to deserve getting put down. The big problem Redside is a lot of content is you getting away (or being materially complicit) with crimes against people who don’t deserve it and those no clear labels for which content does or does not comport with that sort of minimalistic standard of a target who “deserves it.” Sidebar: one thing CoV did get right in this regard was make Longbow overall just enough of an asshole/international war crime for violence against them to feel justified (ex. using miniguns against civilian targets/in areas packed with civilians, using flamethrowers period, invading a foreign country as an NGO for purposes of instituting regime change, deciding their hurt fee fees make it justified for them to overrule and attempt to destroy a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force… and this is before you get to some of the rank hypocrisy and corruption of individual members). Part of this is indeed due to the lack of agency. The game’s structure just doesn’t allow you to begin and engage in schemes at your whim. You only have the choice of accepting or refusing contacts. Heck, you even lack the agency to back out of story arcs if you find yourself tasked with kicking puppies and giving cancer to children. The worst case for a Blueside character is you end up fighting a boring or too difficult enemy group, but you never have to worry that your actions will be justified by the mission/arc. For a Redside character there’s a chance with each mission, unless you’ve played it before or went to research it on the wiki, that you’ll be locked into something you might consider to be crossing the moral event horizon and essentially ruining your enjoyment of the character thereafter. So you’ve just added an extra burden to the normies who wanna be the charming rogue if they wanna avoid accidentally becoming Homelander… or they can just make another hero and not have to worry about it. Which, again, is why I think the least labor intensive way of getting more people to try out Redside is just provide clear indications of whether a given contact/arc is going to be geared for Rogues (acceptable targets) or require you to be a Villain (harms innocents). Remove that extra effort needed to not have your character turn into someone you’d hate and you’ll likely get more people willing to give a shot at a charming rogue.

You’re overthinking it. April 2005 = 1 year, and 19 more years brings you to 20 years and 2005+19=2024. or we can literally just count it… April 2004 = launch April 2005 = 1 year Anniversary April 2006 = 2 year Anniversary 2007 = 3 2008 = 4 2009 = 5 2010 = 6 2011 = 7 2012 = 8 2013 = 9 2014 = 10 2015 = 11 2016 = 12 2017 = 13 2018 = 14 2019 = 15 2020 = 16 2021 = 17 2022 = 18 2023 = 19 April 2024 = 20 year Anniversary

I think you misunderstood what they’re asking for; multiple characters has no bearing. What they’re asking for is “what percentage of players have ANY character that is Redside aligned?” What percentage of players have never even tried Redside? What percentage have a Redside character above level 10? Above level 20? 30? 40? How many have Redside 50’s? That’s useful information to have.

Last night ran the level 30-40 rogue tip mission where you go into the Rikti base to get a cure for Psimon. The first time through I defeated the base commander and couldn’t find the radio to call Psymon until I killed everything on the map to get the last spawn indicator which revealed it 38’ into the wall (beneath one of the narrow tunnels that runs up the sides of the room). Couldn’t activate it to finish the mission. I exited the mission, reset it, went in again and finally found the radio after another kill all 12 feet under the center podium in the boss room. Still unreachable. Third try it FINALLY appeared where I could click on the radio to finish the mission.

Honestly, so long as the scalars matched the other pool powers, I feel like “weapon sets” would be fairly low-hanging fruit for an expansion. The main limiter I can forsee is the same one that hits a Dual Pistols/Tac Arrow Blaster… the system only supports two “costume-based” weapons… the third is invisible in animations (which I leveraged for said blaster as being “missiles”). This means they would probably need to either be coded like shield defense to not be selectable with certain power sets (i.e. you could add an assault rifle to a broadsword scrapper, but not dual pistols… and couldn’t use either with dual blades; you also would probably want to lock out the assault rifle pool from characters who already have an assault rifle powerset). -or- The pool powers would need to built with specific fixed models in their animations akin to the temp powers that have weapon draws as part of them. Of the two, I actually think the second is the better way to go and, further, to keep it from becoming basically a third power set (once you’re to five related attack powers you’re basically a set in my book) I would suggest that instead several weapon options be grouped under the same power pool to make them interesting fillers, but not something you could completely define your character with. Example: Medieval Weapons Pool might be Knife (fast), Sword (heavy), Throwing Knife (must have one power), Bow (must have one power) and Weapon Mastery (must have two powers, buffs the powers you have). Modern Weapons Pool might be Pistol, Rifle, Dual Pistols (one prior pick; leaves both pistols drawn if you use pistol), Rifle Burst (one prior pick), and Grenade (two prior picks). Eastern Weapons Pool might be Katana, Throwing Star, Katana Slice, Star Spray (cone), and Caltrops. Basically, enough to mix some type of weaponry into your build without overwhelming your build or stepping onto the toes of the builds that actually have a weapon-based primary or secondary.

Agreed and seconded. I think a generic “face target and extend both hands” for the animation/interrupt time of Aid Other and that sorta “foerarms arms up flex” when you activate Aid Self would be sufficient for 90% of builds that don’t want a green medical tricorder. If it has to include drawing an object for some reason, I’d suggest a wand/staff or medicine bag as an alternate to the tricorder would probably cover most of the use cases where a tech-ish option makes sense.

It’s still a datapoint, particularly in relation to the ratio of heroes to vigilantes. Speaking from personal experience, I have many straight heroes in my roster and I have a few rogues. I have no villains or vigilantes; the latter specifically because I see no advantage to the alignment’s access to redside over just being a hero. I don’t have any straight villains because I find the villain options; including villain tip options; repugnant enough that I’ve re-rolled redside characters over getting stuck on a repugnant mission chain… I’d rather redo 30 levels than have some stains on my PC. And I don’t know how fine grained you could get on a database query from the dev side. Maybe you could filter the ratio through the presence of certain badges (ex. Rogues with TF completion badges vs. those without… rogues with or without badges or soveniers you gain from specific villainous arcs) that might better indicate whether a character is rogue for playing with friends convenience or out of some content preference. Speaking again personally, I find the Rogue tip options in the Isles to consistently emphasize your character’s wits and cunning along with avoidance of unnecessary cruelty. The villain and vigilante options remind me consistently of the SWTOR darkside choices; i.e. let’s be petty or blind to broader consequences. They’re like choosing to play the character the Graves’ arc writes you as. As stated by someone here previously, Imp-side might be the preferred faction over there, but most of those players make mostly lightside choices. The devs over there have gone so far as to say the ratio of light to dark choices over there is essentially 90% light. This tracks with some other media preference data as well, which is that something like 90% of general audiences prefer traditional story construction with the protagonist as the “hero of their own story”, while only about 10% of general audiences was interested in choosing to experience subversions (which would include the protagonist being an outright villain who gets away with harming innocents). Basically, the main thing holding back Red-side is natural human preferences. The only reason it’s closer to 20% than 10% Redside is probably that it IS possible to, with work, play a more traditional protagonist over there (the Danny Ocean or Deadpool taking on people who are even worse than them). Avoiding the Peter Thermaris and Westin Phipps type contacts, deliberately failing Marshal Brass’ mission, working with Hardcase, LOTS of Rogue tip missions when content gets thin, etc. What a lot of people probably don’t want to hear is that if you REALLY wanted to increase the Redside ratios, the devs should go with my “Pick A Side” and make it “The ROGUE Isles” with an express focus on being a witty/charming rogue who’s getting ahead by sticking it to “The Man” while dodging the corrupt military government and its RIP lapdogs.* ** A step along the way would then be to go into all those arcs where you’re required to be a monster to complete them and add either deliberate loss conditions (a la Marshal Brass or many of Phipps’ arcs) or outright moral choices to thwart them (ex. a way to NOT go through with Peter Themari’s plan to break Pyriss… that one is failable, but only in a way that’s arguably worse). The hardest part would be supplying such options to the Patron-tier missions where you’re working directly for Arachnos’ top people. That might almost require completely new alternative content; maybe even initiating some sort of “Grand Theft Country” where you seek to actually break Arachnos’ hold over the Rogue Isles (i.e. Arachnos is still around as an evil organization, and might even still hold Grandville, but YOU are the one deciding the fate of the Rogue Isles going forward… just in time to run into the Praetorian invasion and other incarnate wackiness where what you chose for the Rogue Isles to become could be handled with a couple of dialogue flags). I dunno, I’ve only just started thinking about it. * Similarly, really play up Longbow as gung ho idiot vigilantes who are making things worse by invading a foreign country on the pretext of liberating it from “evil” while employing miniguns and flamethrowers against civilian populations. They’re basically the Captain Hammers (from Dr. Horrible) of Superheroes. ** Yeah, I know that’s not what those who genuinely love playing the Dr. Doom’s wanna hear, and I’m not even sure I advocate for it because it would be swiping something away by essentially making that type of play fairly vestigal. But I’m answering the question of “what could be done to increase the Redside population” and the only genuine answer there IS make the content there a lot more “lovable rogue” and way less “despicable villain.” Playing a true villain is always going to be niche. Even the Grand Theft Auto franchise falls behind Mario, Tetris, Pokemon, and Call of Duty (and nearly half of it is just GTA5) and has way more play options than just being a cackling villain regardless. So you either accept it as a niche that only a small percentage of players will ever find interesting and make the best of that small percentage while staying true to that niche… or you compromise the niche to give it the broader appeal to grow it.

What I would be very interested to know is the ratio of Rogue-aligned to Villain-aligned (and in relation, the ration hero-aligned to vigilante-aligned). The reason I bring it up is because, in my experience, a lot more people wanna be Deadpool or Loki or Danny Ocean (yeah, he’s charming… he’s a also a career-criminal) or, at worst, late-season Walter White, than wanna play The Red Skull or Homelander or Obadiah Stane. Nor do many wanna play the sorta guy who beats up/kills old ladies to steal their wedding rings and releases plagues on cities for kicks. The biggest problem Redside has is that there’s a much greater divide between the Rogue and Villain alignments than there is between the Hero and Vigilante alignments when it comes to tasks and motivations. Rogues are selfish, but they have lines they won’t cross. Villains don’t have lines. The result is there exist entire red-side arcs that players with a Rogue-like mindset are going to avoid. One of the biggest issues I have with the new Striga missions was the choice to make the new contacts sequential with working for a literal neo-nazi required to get to the more “roguish” arcs there. By the same token, those who DO want to play The Red Skull aren’t going to enjoy being a mere rogue in those arcs. By contrast, thwarting a villainous plot works for both heroes and vigilantes with the only difference being maybe a kill or imprison option after you beat them down. The result is that Redside has a schizophrenic identity crisis where whole chunks of what content exists is unpalatable for your concept just because the Villain and Rogue are so different from each other. Solving this isn’t going to be easy, but like eating an elephant, it can be done if you take it one bite at a time. The two most viable routes as I see it are; A) Pick a side: Decide whether you want it to be the Rogue Isles* or the City of Villains** and start tweaking and adding significant content for the chosen direction. Leave the older content that doesn’t fit for those who want it, but focus on presenting a more coherent story. If you went “Rogue Isles” for example, it would make sense to rejigger the Mayhem Mission dialogue so you’re not robbing the bank to steal the working stiffs’ savings; you’re after the safety deposit box of someone who “deserves” it (ex. The CEO of Cage Consortium or Countess Crey). Similarly, while you COULD cause mass destruction, arson and kidnapping on the way… if you wanted to be more Roguish; offer a mission bonus (say one of the temp powers you can get from the raiding sidequest) if you complete the mission WITHOUT triggering any bonus time from destroyed objects or side objectives. By contrast, if you wanted villainous focus… offer influence for each object destroyed during the Mayhem Missions… the more destruction, the more civilians you take out, the more infamy you score during the mission. B) Make the divide clear: Run down the available contacts and label them as “Rogue” or “Villain”… so when they come up it’d say “Hardcase (Rogue)” or “Westin Phipps (Villain).” Then rejigger introductions so doing a rogue arc isn’t required to unlock a villain arc and you don’t have to do a villain arc to unlock a rogue arc. Then continue to follow this guideline for future content. While B doesn’t solve the lack of content issues, but it at least steers you clear of starting story arcs where your selfish, but wouldn’t hurt a child, rogue leaves you wishing you could beat your contact into paste instead of saying “yes, I’d love to infect children with a flesh-eating virus for you.” Sidebar: a way to completely drop a story arc without completing it so it doesn’t count against your active total would be much appreciated in this regard. Players shouldn’t have to go read a Wiki just to avoid having their character do things they consider reprehensible when being able to just quit a story arc at the same point your PC would “nope” out of continuing to assist could prevent it. More options to deliberately mess up the contacts’ plans via mission failure or adding a moral choice (ex. instead of waiting 90min to fail Marshal Brass’ mission, you could just add an option like “(Lie) Sure, I’ll take out those generators (deliberately fail mission)” to make the feeling of agency more immediate and less passive. Adding a similar option to screw over many of the more reprehensible contacts like Peter Themari would also be appreciated. * i.e. the default assumption is player characters are selfish, but not completely immoral, rogues trying to get ahead in a nation ruled by a superpowered despot… your crimes are mostly directed at Arachnos and the elites of the Isles who ally with them and other “even worse” criminals. ** i.e. the default assumption is you’re a hardened criminal willing to do anything to get the notice of and rise through the ranks of Arachnos to become, in essence, another patron of evil.

I knew the “last witch” would be Ms. Peebles just from the title. I’m holding off running until I get a confirm on whether or not there’s a morality option to not kill her. I felt a bit of mood whiplash running through the new Striga material, particularly that it was gated in order so you can’t, say, skip working with the Nazi/5th Column if you want to the heist against the Sky Raiders or the dealing with the Banished Pantheon’s curse. I always go rogue immediately (I’m already hitting Null to turn off the movement power popup bar… it’s an extra two seconds) and have a rather curated list of “merc”, “strike it rich schemes” and “going after worse guys” arcs I pursue since I loathe playing straight-up cackling evil villains (it’s also ultimately why I end up just going hero eventually… once you hit Grandville there’s a real derth of Rogue morality content; the Vanguard arcs and Rogue tip missions can only carry you so far).

What it says on the tin. I noticed it during the new Orpheus arc since I had been working on the badge ahead of going hero for the Atlas Medallion. Got into the mission and none of the vampyri kills were counting. Looked closer and realized their faction was 5th Column instead of Council. Dunno if that's intended or not, but did want to report it.

I’d like an option for all the chain wrapped leather gloves to use any of the “smooth/bare” texture options instead of just leather. The base texture is already available under smooth/bare as one of its options so that suggests they use the same UV maps. I’ve got a couple bruisers who’d look a lot better with something other than the leather or wrap underneath (ex. fingerless gloves). My other request would be for the Organic Armor over skin texture that some of the Awakened have.

See… my first toon all the way back on live was a pre-IO-era magic blaster. So, not knowing any better, I deliberately sought out all the magic contacts and soon had memorized the layouts of all the crystal cave and Oranbega maps, including where all the hostages were likely to spawn. I had no idea the other maps were so much more open and easier to navigate and other mob groups so much easier until after I’d mastered mob-pulling without mez-protection (except via inspiration) against the Circle of Thorns on Oranbega maps. After that EVERYTHING was easy.

Eh, I think finding out she’s also Sister Psyche’s protégé if you happen to bounce over to IP for a TF would be a nice surprise, but the whole “when you first encounter her she’s surrounded by non-hostile clockwork” (the Psynapse TF is also in the 15-20 range and by then it is known that the Clockwork are psychic constructs not robots) is alreaekinda a big clue. She’s also friends with two other supers when you first meet her and gives you Clockwork pets as a temp power. That’s another big clue. So her also being in IP as the pre-WWD Sister Psyche’s new sidekick (Aurora being both a married woman and member of the Vindicators) isn’t THAT big a spoiler. So, yeah, I’d say have the Penny in IP either use the same model as Faultline and Lady Grey TF… or make some changes to the newer or older Penny Yin* model to make it so that it’s plausible that Faultline/LGTF is just Penny in her off-duty clothes (sorta like Ms. Liberty in Pocket D right now is chillaxing in her off-duty attire) would also resolve some of the temporal weirdness. And that’s the main thing I’m suggesting, really. The new lower level content that arrived with the shift to Freemium was all geared for rushing players past the other content up to the new Incarnate Trial grind and was designed to feel like it was going on in the same timeframe; not the years before that the low level zones initially represented. The result is a sort of asynchronous feel to different parts of the Blueside material as newer NPCs drop plot bombs for older material like it’s common knowledge. I think it could almost entirely be solved with some text passes and, maybe, a few more asset-related tweaks (I bring up Penny mostly because she is the most obviously “not in same time frame” character standing around and it’s largely because her new costume is a Rob Leifield-esque hot mess of over-design that draws your attention because of how awful it is). * if they’d just give costumed Penny long hair (or younger Penny the club hair of her newer model) it’d at least not be quite as obvious at a glance that the costumed one is intended to be years older than her original model. Instead we could just dunk on her tragic teen hero fashion sense as God intended.

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.