Excraft

Well it's definitely better than the brooding, sullen Superman in the Snyderverse. I don't know if the pendulum has swung too far to the other extreme now though. Wait and see I guess. This is my hesitation with this film as well.

Thanks, I did read it. It's about encouraging people to take a tour of bases entered into the most recent contest. To me, that kind of discussion belongs in the bases sub-forum.... where there is already threads about entries, asking questions and such. That's what the bases sub-forum is for, just like we have sub-forums for bugs, suggestions and ideas, comic and hero culture etc. to help organize topics. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't visit bases or enjoy bases or admire and appreciate the hard work people put into them. Far from it.

I never suggested that Jar Jar Binks was anything other than ridiculous and awful. Hayden Christensen didn't exactly give an Oscar worthy performance for sure in the prequels, but he's looked upon a lot more fondly now and being brought back for more work as the Anakin/Darth Vader for Obi Wan and Ahsoka. That's because of how awful the new stuff is. I don't see anyone clamoring for more Finn or Poe or another Han Solo film .....

This should go into the Bases sub-forum.

I disagree. The prequels for sure weren't as well received or regarded as the original trilogy, however you needed the new Kathleen Kennedy/JJ Abrams/Rion Johnson crap to put things in perspective and to realize just how much worse the franchise could get. Lucas adding digital effects back into the original trilogy was done to re-release them and make more money selling the same VHS/DVDs again, and to satisfy his desire to do things with the story he couldn't do at the time due to lack of technology. Personally, I'll gladly take Ewoks any day of the week over any of the crap from the new films. It's the same with Star Trek Enterprise. That show was thought of as the worst of the worst for the Trek franchise at the time. It took garbage like Discovery and absolute sewage like Section 31 to show just how much worse the franchise could could get.

With respect, I don't think we want to start barring people from the forums, even temporarily, for suggesting workarounds to an issue or not supporting an idea.

No. There is no way to know what existing characters played "the correct/righteous way" in order to get the badge.

The "hide and deny" behavior isn't isolated to just Focused Feedback threads. I can give examples if needed.

Sometimes a point needs to be repeated in order for it to sink in.

I'm sure that there are people here now looking for more obscure insults they can use to skirt the "continuum".

Thank you for this clarification. Apologies if my point wasn't clear. I was more questioning the "continuum of insults" part. The neckbeard example is a pretty good one in that it is meant as an insult, and from what I can gather it was reported. Since a GM didn't think someone being called a neckbeard is insulting, no action was taken, so the person who reported it is left feeling like others weren't dealt with fairly. But whatever. I wasn't trying to make a big deal out of it. I get that you all don't want people arbitrarily reporting stuff just to silence others as that makes perfect sense. I wasn't responding to you, nor was I suggesting that GMs should automatically action anything that gets reported just because someone reports a post. You misunderstood my post.

I agree with this 100%. The ignore feature is a wonderful thing. More people should use it in my opinion. I could very well be wrong, but this reads to me as if our opinion really isn't as important as yours or any GM. So long as you all don't find something rude of take offense, whatever behavior was reported is acceptable. That "continuum" of insults can go both ways on many topics. Now, let me clarify since "intent" is difficult to judge by reading text on an internet forum. Please allow me to say that I mean no disrespect by making that statement. I am not looking to start an argument with you, nor am I suggesting you're doing anything wrong. I'm simply sharing my observation to your post and it is meant as no personal insult toward you or any other GM. As to the topic at hand, I agree with those who've said just continue what you're doing.

I don't need to imagine the PL options being gone. It already exists. Anyone can log into Brainstorm server here and roll up as many level 50s as they want with all of the enhancements, badges and inf that they want in a couple of minutes with no restrictions. There are other servers out there that allow you to create a level 50 with all badges, accolades, enhancements and billions of inf right from the start. There's no population there. That's an abundantly clear indication most people don't want an "I win" button. If it were, Brainstorm would be heavily populated and there would be more and more people migrating to other servers. As I pointed out earlier in the thread, and there are many HC posts about this over the years that confirm this is their philosophy as well, people fundamentally want to feel like they've earned something. Given the population here, that experience and feeling like you've earned something is what most people are getting from playing here. That's why they're here and not elsewhere. A great thing about HC is there are options for all kinds of people to play how they like. Don't like the low level content? Don't do it. Hit the S.T.A.R.T. vendor, grab your double XP boosters and DFB/DiB/SBB your way into the 30s, or PL yourself in AE all the way to 50. Want to play through every single story arc the game has to offer? Go for it. There's something here for everyone. These are you problems. There is already plenty of variety in terms of power set combinations and builds you can make. If you're not using powers that you usually skip, then don't skip them. If you're bored PLing and sick of DFBs, stop doing them. I don't know how you're planning builds, but for me, I never take anything I don't need. If you are, then again that's a you problem. Nothing about saga mode makes lower level content "more interesting" to play. This is a non-answer. We're not talking about chess. We're talking about this game, and like other games, this one offers tangible rewards for running content in the form of XP, inf, merits etc. that are used as currency and to incentivize people to run the content. What's the tangible reward with saga mode to incentivize actually playing the content? This isn't "new and exotic" builds though, it's just changing the order in which you take your abilities. You eventually wind up in the same place. You're still stuck within the parameters of your chosen powersets and power pools. So you can take higher tier powers first. So what? You'll have to take your lower tier powers at later levels, so you essentially wind up in the same place, except in saga mode you're gimped from being saddled with SOs only. Correct. You don't need to min/max all the time. You can choose to make SO only builds right now. You can choose to play through the story content the old-fashioned way right now. There are people in a couple of SGs I'm in who have weekly "crawl" teams playing and leveling through running story content. There's nothing stopping you from doing this too.

Given that they've said the very first thing they did when the joined HC was to PL in AE, I imagine the "fun factor" for having a nuke at level 2 would wear off within a few minutes.

This is an extremely simple question to answer. City of Heroes was launched 21 years ago come this April. After 21 years (and counting), it still has a loyal following and manages to attract new players. Even after 21 years, there are a lot of people still here, still finding something they enjoy to keep them playing. So the extremely simple answer to your question is "a very long time." Far, far longer than I suspect the utterly trivial amount of time it would take before you became bored with running low level content in "saga mode". It's not making the content more interesting though. It's shuffling the order of what level you can take a power. You ignored these questions, so I'll ask them again. Where is the incentive to actually play the content using saga mode in lieu of just PLing a saga mode alt in AE to finish the build first? Or running DFB, DiB to skip the first 20 or so levels? Where and what is the actual tangible reward for doing playing saga mode? What are some "new and exotic builds" that can be made in saga mode that can't already be made? What's the incentive to continue playing saga mode when you're limited to SOs and will always be outclassed and outperformed by others who are able to take full advantage of the invention system?